On one of those last evenings in Algiers, Wilde seemed to have made up his mind not to say a single serious word. At last I became somewhat annoyed at the exaggerated wit of his paradoxes, and I said to him, 'You have got something better to talk about than this nonsense; you are talking to me as if I were the public. You ought rather to talk to the public as you know so well how to talk to your friends. Why is it your plays are not better? The best that is in you, you talk; why do you not write it?' 'Oh, well,' he cried immediately, 'my plays are not good, I know, and I don't trouble about that, but if you only knew how much amusement they afford! They are nearly all the results of a bet. So was _Dorian Gray_--I wrote that in a few days because a friend of mine declared that I could not write a novel. Writing bores me so.' [Illustration: OSCAR WILDE, 1893.] Then, turning suddenly towards me, he said, 'Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life--I have put only my talent into my works.' It was only too true. The best of his writing is but a poor reflection of his brilliant conversation. Those who have heard him talk find him disappointing to read. _Dorian Gray_ in its conception was a wonderful story, far superior to _La Peau de Chagrin_, and far more significant! Alas! when written, what a masterpiece spoiled. In his most delightful tales literary influence makes itself too much felt. However graceful they may be, one notices too much literary effort; affectation and delicacy of phrase[2] conceal the beauty of the first conception of them. One feels in them, and one cannot help feeling in them, the three periods of their generation. The first idea contained in them is very beautiful, simple, profound, and certain to make itself heard; a kind of latent necessity holds the parts firmly together, but from that point the gift stops. The development of the parts is done in an artificial manner; there is a lack of arrangement about them, and when Wilde elaborates his sentences and endeavours to give them their full value, he does so by overloading them prodigiously with tiny conceits and quaint and trifling fancies. The result is that one's emotion is held at bay, and the dazzling of the surface so blinds one's eyes and mind, that the deep central emotion is lost. He spoke of returning to London, as a well-known peer was insulting him, challenging him, and taunting him with running away. 'But if you go back what will happen? 'I asked him. 'Do you know the risk you are running?' 'It is best never to know,' he answered. 'My friends are extraordinary--they beg me to be careful. Careful? but can I be careful? That would be a backward step. I must go on as far as possible. I cannot go much further. Something is bound to happen ... something else.' Here he broke off, and the next day he left for England. The rest of the story is well-known. That 'something else' was hard labour.