Then Mr. Wilde finishes his story by saying that on hearing a heavy fall Dorian Gray's servants rushed in, found the portrait on the wall as youthful looking as ever, its senile ugliness being transferred to the foul profligate himself, who is lying on the floor stabbed to the heart. This is a sham moral, as indeed everything in the book is a sham, except the one element in the book which will taint every young mind that comes in contact with it. That element is shockingly real, and it is the plausibly insinuated defence of the creed that appeals to the senses "to cure the soul" whenever the spiritual nature of man suffers from too much purity and self-denial. The rest of this number of _Lippincott_ consists of articles of harmless padding. [11] June 30th, 1890. * * * * * _When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself._ * * * * * OSCAR WILDE'S REPLY. "DORIAN GRAY." To the Editor of the _Daily Chronicle_.[12] Sir,--Will you allow me to correct some errors into which your critic has fallen in his review of my story, "The Picture of Dorian Gray," published in to-day's issue of your paper? Your critic states, to begin with, that I make desperate attempts to "vamp up" a moral in my story. Now I must candidly confess that I do not know what "vamping" is. I see, from time to time, mysterious advertisements in the newspapers about "How to Vamp," but what vamping really means remains a mystery to me--a mystery that, like all other mysteries, I hope some day to explore. However, I do not propose to discuss the absurd terms used by modern journalism. What I want to say is that, so far from wishing to emphasise any moral in my story, the real trouble I experienced in writing the story was that of keeping the extremely obvious moral subordinate to the artistic and dramatic effect. When I first conceived the idea of a young man selling his soul in exchange for eternal youth--an idea that is old in the history of literature, but to which I have given new form--I felt that, from an æsthetic point of view, it would be difficult to keep the moral in its proper secondary place; and even now I do not feel quite sure that I have been able to do so. I think the moral too apparent. When the book is published in a volume I hope to correct this defect. As for what the moral is, your critic states that it is this--that when a man feels himself becoming "too angelic" he should rush out and make a "beast of himself." I cannot say that I consider this a moral. The real moral of the story is that all excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its punishment, and this moral is so far artistically and deliberately suppressed that it does not enunciate its law as a general principle, but realises itself purely in the lives of individuals, and so becomes simply a dramatic element in a work of art, and not the object of the work of art itself.