Excerpt from The First Stone Roughly speaking we are invited to say of him, 'thy sins which were many are forgiven thee because at the end thou madest a beautiful, tearful book for the Sunday Schools.' The criticism of the time, which is always a few lengths ahead of the public sentiment or prejudice, commends us even to a more perilous and preposterous complaisance. Is it not time that somebody with a trifle of power over printer's ink spoke out? I think it is, and, accordingly, I seem to have said my say. I shall be told to remember that Wilde was a man of genius, and that he is dead. In view of what is happening under our noses, I refuse to forget that he is fearfully alive, that his genius belonged essentially to the stews, and that he spent his last literary strength on the deliberate production of a work which is disgraceful to humanity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.