He told me long afterwards that he had rather a low opinion of Wilde's capacities, instinctive, deep-rooted contempt, too, for the showman in him, and an absolute abhorrence of his vice.
"That vile, sensual self-indulgence puts back the hands of the clock," he said, "and should not be forgiven." For the life of me I could never forgive Meredith; never afterwards was he of any importance to me.

He had always been to me a standard bearer in the eternal conflict, a leader in the Liberation War of Humanity, and here I found him pitiless to another who had been wounded on the same side in the great struggle: it seemed to me appalling.

True, Wilde had not been wounded in fighting for us; true, he had fallen out and come to grief, as a drunkard might.

But after all he had been fighting on the right side: had been a quickening intellectual influence: it was dreadful to pass him on the wayside and allow him callously to bleed to death.

It was revoltingly cruel! The foremost Englishman of his time unable even to understand Christ's example, much less reach his height! This refusal of Meredith's not only hurt me, but almost destroyed my hope, though it did not alter my purpose.