Proofed and corrected from the original edition for enjoyable reading. (Worth every penny spent!)

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[Oscar Wilde labored] at pages of manuscript that he knew no publisher would dare to put upon the open market? Some desultory leaves, now lost and scattered, were the only fruits that matured on the blasted tree, and among them the translation of Barbey d'Aurevilly's impassioned novel, "Ce Qui ne Meurt Pas"—"What Never Dies"—the gospel of infinite pity. It so struck the excommunicated Melmoth, the daily recipient of the warmest and kindest compassion, that he never rested until his pen, growing facile as of old for one brief, lucid moment, had transformed the tortured, lurid prose of
the romantic Frenchman into the polished, chosen phraseology of "Dorian Grey."

The story of strange passion exercised a weird fascination over the mind of Sebastian Melmoth, and the work, well worthy of perusal in its original form, becomes all the more entrancing by reason of the knowledge of the translator's talent .

It is difficult to praise the poet and at the same time blame the man. We forget the sin when we remember the end, and shudder to think that he is perhaps even now not at rest in the Parisian cemetery, so far away as to discourage the pilgrim, and not allow an echoing prayer to reach him. No criticism of his posthumous work will awake or lull him. Now and again, perchance, some scandalous breeze will waft his own real name over the forgotten tomb, the shadow of an insult, the ghost of a jeering affront.

Who could think that one so despised by a merciless world had in happier times as admirably caught and sustained the blasé, cynical, paradoxical style of modern society of the special class as did Dean Swift during the eighteenth century in his "Polite Conversation."

Not only did he think in epigrams, he almost seemed to dream them. But an intellectual existence cannot be sustained by epigrams only, and it is no secret that many of his detractors found fault with his poems. Knowing this, when ostracized, declassed and forsaken, he found in France a few moments of forgetfulness in wrestling with the thorny, prickly prose of the great French master of the romantic school.

The translation of Barbey's throbbing tale is a 'tour de force', which none but the wretched writer could have made presentable to the English reader.