ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ECHO DE PARIS : a Study from Life. By Laurence Housman. (Cape. 7s. 6d. net.) This little play has been written by Mr. Housman round an incident in real life, of which he was the witness. It was in Paris in the autumn of 1899, and took place outside a café, preliminary to a small luncheon party at which Oscar Wilde was the principal guest. Of the work itself the author tells us that he had intended to include 'it. in his Dethranements, since it is, like the dialogues in that book, a record of failure, " and failures interest me more generally than success. If I am asked why, my answer is that they seem to reveal human nature more truly, and, on the whole, more encouragingly, than anything else in the world." From the literary standpoint we find that the greatest interest of the play is in its preservation of some of Wilde's conversation. He was an artist who created out of his own personality a work of art, highly elaborate and artificial, like his poems, but none the less a more genuine achievement, perhaps, than anything that he wrote except a couple of comedies. Unfortunately, there was a flaw in the marble, so that the illusion he had built up was shattered, but that does not prevent it from having had, for a moment, a real existence. In the atmosphere of tragedy in which this scene is set there is little doubt that certain small affectations, an excessive urbanity, jar on the natural taste. None the less, it was worth while giving permanence to this hour of graceful 2onversation, an accomplishment which in itself is rare, but raised by Wilde to the artistic level of written work. He possessed most of the talents of the conversationalist, from the gift of epigram to the highly-developed power of anecdote which became in his hands often a lengthy and beautiful fable. Readers may wonder how accurately Mr. Housman has remem- bered. That we cannot tell ; but his reconstruction is all of a piece, and exhibits that elegant and paradoxical style which is one of the marks of his original.
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