Yet by some extraordinary prescience, some inexplicable presentiment, the approaching catastrophe cast its shadow over his mind and he felt vaguely that the life-journey of genius would be incomplete and farcical without the final tragedy: whoever lives for the highest must be crucified.
It seems memorable to me that in this brief summer of his life, Oscar Wilde should have concerned himself especially with the life-story of the Man of Sorrows who had sounded all the depths of suffering.

Just when he himself was about to enter the Dark Valley, Jesus was often in his thoughts and he always spoke of Him with admiration.

But after all how could he help it?
Even Dekker saw as far as that: "The best of men That e'er wore earth about Him." This was the deeper strain in Oscar Wilde's nature though he was always disinclined to show it.

Habitually he lived in humorous talk, in the epithets and epigrams he struck out in the desire to please and astonish his hearers.
One evening I learned almost by chance that he was about to try a new experiment and break into a new field.
He took up the word "lose" at the table, I remember.
"We lose our chances," he said, laughing, "we lose our figures, we even lose our characters; but we must never lose our temper.

That is our duty to our neighbour, Frank; but sometimes we mislay it, don't we ?" "Is that going in a book, Oscar ?" I asked, smiling, "or in an article?
You have written nothing lately." "I have a play in my mind," he replied gravely.