This is a very different thing from the blind plagiary of those who cannot see their own way, and are themselves surprised to find that they have stolen. In their case, mistrust of their own powers is justifiable. But here, when the young poet, as an exercise--indeed as more than an exercise--catches the accent of Milton in words that deliberately set the doubtful faith of our day beside the noble assurance of the Puritans, and show by implication what that absolute belief meant to Milton, we are in the presence not of flattery, but of criticism, of exact appreciation. On the next page is the sonnet 'Quantum Mutata,' with the lines:-- "Witness the men of Piedmont, chiefest care Of Cromwell, when with impotent despair The Pontiff in his painted portico Trembled before our stern ambassadors"; and the suggestion, certainly not personal to Wilde, but chosen for its fitness to the poet of whom he is thinking-- "that Luxury With barren merchandise piles up the gate Where noble thoughts and deeds should enter by: Else might we still be Milton's heritors." If we were to take this view of the character of Wilde's imitations it would be an easy task to run through most of the book, showing how carefully he acknowledges his indebtedness to Arnold, to Swinburne, to Morris, much as a creative critic like Walter Pater courteously sets the name of Pico della Mirandola, or of Sir Thomas Browne, at the head of a piece of his own writing of which they have been less the occasion than the chosen keynote. But there is no need.