صفحة 22 من 490

But in some curious way-I wonder will you understand me?-his

personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an

entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of

them differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was

hidden from me before. 'A dream of form in days of thought'-who

is it who says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has

been to me. The merely visible presence of this lad-for he seems

to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty-his

merely visible presence-ah! I wonder can you realize all that

that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh

school, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the

romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek.

The harmony of soul and body-how much that is! We in our madness

have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is

vulgar, an ideality that is void. Harry! if you only knew what

Dorian Gray is to me!