But as he says himself: "One has perhaps to go to prison to understand that.

And, if so, it may be worth while going to prison." He was by nature a pagan who for a few months became a Christian, but to live as a lover of Jesus was impossible to this "Greek born out of due time," and he never even dreamed of a reconciling synthesis....
The arrest of his development makes him a better representative of his time: he was an artistic expression of the best English mind: a Pagan and Epicurean, his rule of conduct was a selfish Individualism:--"Am I my brother's keeper ?" This attitude must entail a dreadful Nemesis, for it condemns one Briton in every four to a pauper's grave.

The result will convince the most hardened that such selfishness is not a creed by which human beings can live in society.
* * * * * This summer of 1897 was the harvest time in Oscar Wilde's Life; and his golden Indian summer.

We owe it "De Profundis," the best pages of prose he ever wrote, and "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," his only original poem; yet one that will live as long as the language: we owe it also that sweet and charming letter to Bobbie Ross which shows him in his habit as he lived.

I must still say a word or two about him in this summer in order to show the ordinary working of his mind.
On his release, and, indeed, for a year or two later, he called himself Sebastian Melmoth.