Wilde, though
under no illusion as to the folly of the quite unselfish suit-at-law
he had been persuaded to begin, nevertheless so miscalculated the
force of the social vengeance he was unloosing on himself that he
fancied it could be stayed by putting up the editor of The Saturday
Review (as Mr Harris then was) to declare that he considered Dorian
Grey a highly moral book, which it certainly is. When Harris foretold
him the truth, Wilde denounced him as a fainthearted friend who was
failing him in his hour of need, and left the room in anger. Harris's
idiosyncratic power of pity saved him from feeling or shewing the
smallest resentment; and events presently proved to Wilde how insanely
he had been advised in taking the action, and how accurately Harris
had gauged the situation.
The same capacity for pity governs Harris's study of Shakespear, whom,
as I have said, he pities too much; but that he is not insensible to
humor is shewn not only by his appreciation of Wilde, but by the fact
that the group of contributors who made his editorship of The Saturday
Review so remarkable, and of whom I speak none the less highly because
I happened to be one of them myself, were all, in their various ways,
humorists.
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