Therefore, Oscar was handicapped by a false start, and got a reputation[6] for shallowness and insincerity which he never retrieved until it was too late.
[Footnote 5: I touched upon Oscar's ignorance of art sufficiently I think, when I said in my book that he had learned all he knew of art and of controversy from Whistler, and that his lectures on the subject, even after sitting at the feet of the Master, were almost worthless.] [Footnote 6: Perfectly true, and a notable instance of Shaw's insight.] "Comedy: the criticism of morals and manners _viva voce_, was his real forte.

When he settled down to that he was great.

But, as you found when you approached Meredith about him, his initial mistake had produced that 'rather low opinion of Wilde's capacities,' that 'deep-rooted contempt for the showman in him,' which persisted as a first impression and will persist until the last man who remembers his esthetic period has perished.

The world has been in some ways so unjust to him that one must be careful not to be unjust to the world.
"In the preface on education, called 'Parents and Children,' to my volume of plays beginning with _Misalliance_, there is a section headed 'Artist Idolatry,' which is really about Wilde.

Dealing with 'the powers enjoyed by brilliant persons who are also connoisseurs in art,' I say, 'the influence they can exercise on young people who have been brought up in the darkness and wretchedness of a home without art, and in whom a natural bent towards art has always been baffled and snubbed, is incredible to those who have not witnessed and understood it.