Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1882-01-26
ETHEREAL ETHETICISM.
As Exemplified In the Person OF the Beloved
and Immortal Oscar.
OUR lEsTHETIc VISITOR.

| MIR Oscar Wilde, the yonng English poet. who
| is popularity believed TO be the original OF Dn
| London as the leader of the aesthetic movement,
| arrived in this city last week. The following
| sketch OF Mr.: Wilde was prepared by an ardent
| aesthetic whose enthusiasm has perhaps led
him to somewhat oyerestimate the greatness Of
| his revered leader.
The Master is among us, and although
the worshippers of the Beautiful will
hasten to lay their lilies at his grand
and earnest feet, there be those who
know him not To them it may be told
that the Master is the son-speaking
after the manner of worldlings-of Sir
| William Wilde, well-known irish ocu-
list, and of Lady Wilde, that sweet soft
thistle of poesy, in whose verses, signed
''Speranza," are found the promise and
potency of the poetry of her marvellous
son. He is about twenty eight years
old, and graduated from Magdalen
College, Oxford, in 1873, when he won
the Newdigate Prize for English verse,
and he has since devoted himself to the
cause of which he is the revered leader.
He is tall, with broad shoulders, and
yet with lily-like grace of form. His
face is oval, with q chin of imperial
splendor and an earnestly precious nose
His hair flows over his shoulders, and,
like the glorious dawn, he is beardless.
Clothed with white lily, and a few other
less utterly divine garments, he is
Beauty and Soul and Horticulture and
Silent Music mingled together.
1t is as the incarnation of estheticism
and the avatar of the unutterable that
the Master is chiefly known in this coun-
try. Americans have gained some little
knowledge of him from studying the
! solemn and beautiful ceremonies of Pa
ttence, mystery" which the profane
vainly regard as trivial and amusing
farce, and in which the Master is held
up to our admiration under the guise of
Bunthorne. Estheticism has been rash
ly defined as the search for the Beauti-
full, but those who have studied the
words of the Master, as written in his
volume of poems, know that this is but
half the truth. The aesthetic reveres
Beauty, but he also reveres all that is
unthinkable and intensely uniformed.
He perceives the supernal beauty of
ugliness, the nearness of the infinitely
remote, and he is, Us one of the minor
aesthetic poets has exquisitely sung,
AS pure the perfume of parting,
And subtle and sanity as sim"
The Master has labored but in vain if
he has not taught these great and blush
yellow truths. He has shown us how
blessed and compact are the hollowness
and worthlessness of life. He has led
us with his reckoning lily into the en-
chanted land where all is beauty. and
where by comparison even gas and
CATERS would seem prosaic and earthly
He is come as the missionary of the es-
thetic to the benighted millions of
America to whom a lily is nothing but
lily, and who have never dreamed that
it is music and religion and ancient and
modern languages and the use of the
globes and perforated chest protector
To doubt his success would be to doubt
the sanity both of the Master and of his
| disciples.
While he is here the Master will not
only lecture-as the earthly-minded
would doubtless characterize his price
less utterances-bu will produce on the
stage tragedy which he has written.
We who may live to see not only the
beginning, but the second or even the
third act of that tragedy, will have
known joys sadder than any surprise
party, and more cooling and soothing
than purgatorial flames.