His vanity had been full-fed with cloistered triumphs; he was at once pleasure-loving, vainly self-confident and weak; he had been encouraged for years to give way to his emotions and to pamper his sensations, and as the Cap-and-Bells of Folly to cherish a fantastic code of honour even in mortal combat, while despising the religion which might have given him some hold on the respect of his compatriots.

What chance had this cultured honour-loving Sybarite in the deadly grapple of modern life where the first quality is will power, the only knowledge needed a knowledge of the value of money.

I must not be understood here as in any degree disparaging Oscar.

I can surely state that a flower is weaker than a weed without exalting the weed or depreciating the flower.
The first part of life's voyage was over for Oscar Wilde; let us try to see him as he saw himself at this time and let us also determine his true relations to the world.

Fortunately he has given us his own view of himself with some care.
In Foster's _Alumni Oxonienses_, Oscar Wilde described himself on leaving Oxford as a "Professor of AEsthetics, and a Critic of Art"-- an announcement to me at once infinitely ludicrous and pathetic.
"Ludicrous" because it betrays such complete ignorance of life all given over to men industrious with muck-rakes: "Gadarene swine," as Carlyle called them, "busily grubbing and grunting in search of pignuts." "Pathetic" for it is boldly ingenuous as youth itself with a touch of youthful conceit and exaggeration.