If the case before Mr.Justice Charles had not been confused with the charges of conspiracy, there is no doubt that he too would have ruled out the evidence of Shelley, and then his summing up must have been entirely in favour of Wilde.
The singular malevolence of the prosecution also can be estimated by their use of the so-called "literary argument." Wilde had written in a magazine called _The Chameleon_.

_The Chameleon_ contained an immoral story, with which Wilde had nothing to do, and which he had repudiated as offensive.

Yet the prosecution tried to make him responsible in some way for the immorality of a writing which he knew nothing about.
Wilde had said two poems of Lord Alfred Douglas were "beautiful." The prosecution declared that these poems were in essence a defence of the vilest immorality, but is it not possible for the most passionate poem, even the most vicious, to be "beautiful"?
Nothing was ever written more passionate than one of the poems of Sappho.

Yet a fragment has been selected out and preserved by the admiration of a hundred generations of men.

The prosecution was in the position all the time of one who declared that a man who praised a nude picture must necessarily be immoral.