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It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its

unreality, and should combine the insincere character of a

romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays

delightful to us. Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think

not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our

personalities.

Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray's opinion. He used to wonder

at the shallow psychology of those who conceive the ego in man as

a thing simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence. To him,

man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a

complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange

legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted

with the monstrous maladies of the dead. He loved to stroll

through the gaunt cold picture-gallery of his country house and

look at the various portraits of those whose blood flowed in his

veins. Here was Philip Herbert, described by Francis Osborne, in

his Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James, as

one who was "caressed by the Court for his handsome face, which

kept him not long company." Was it young Herbert's life that he

sometimes led? Had some strange poisonous germ crept from body to

body till it had reached his own?