Mr OSCAR WILDE'S volume of short tales, entitled Lord Arthur Savile's Crime; and other Stories, is, as might have been expected, full of clever attempts in epigram and fantasy. Nevertheless, the stories may be read as motel of defective art. Their wildly improbable and extravagantly fanciful nature suggests comparison with such works as The Dynamiter, but the superiority of Mr. Stevenson as an artist will at once be felt. 'However fanciful a story may be, it should yet be consistent with laws of its own, its several parts should hang together, and the style should be suitable to the subject. This is a principle of art which the true artist never allows himself to lose tight of, and in consequence his wildest tales have a logic and reality of their own, and the reader's imagination is carried along with them. But Mr. Wilde's stories are like the remembrance of & dream in waking hours; there is a complete want of harmony about them; they are not written in one key, and the style continually changes, as if the author had himself not decided what style to adopt. Moreover, though happy enough in dialogue, he seems to possess little purely narrative skill, and his style is never really dramatic because always, self-conscious and affected. Lastly, Mr. Wilde has overweighted his narrative with superfluous descriptions, and needlessly elaborate details, which, instead of adding to the vividness and general humour of the situation, seem out of place, and therefore heavy. 
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime is the story of a young man, of excellent character and benevolent disposition, who is told by a chiromantist that 'Murder' is written on the palm of his hand, and that he is fated to kill some one. He is engaged to a charming young lady, but feels that to marry her with this crime still hanging over him would be inconsistent with his high principles. He must commit his crime first, and then 'he could take her to his arms, knowing that she would never have to blush for him, never have to hang her head in shame'. Putting all selfish considerations aside, therefore, he at once begins to search for a victim, and first tries to poison an old lady. 'This failing, he next attempts to blow up his uncle, the Dean of Chichester, but with no satisfactory results. Depressed and discouraged by these failures, he walks one night down to the Thames Embankment. There be discovers the little chiromantist, who is the author of all his troubles, leaning over the parapet :

>>A brilliant idea flashed across him, and he stole softly up behind. Ina moment he bad seized Mr. Podgers by the legs and flung him into the Thames. There was a coarse oath, a heavy splash, and all was still Lord Arthur looked anxiously over, but could see nothiug of the chiromantist but a tall bat, pirouetting in an eddy of moonlit water. ... At 'last he seemed to have realized the decree of destiny. He heaved a deep sigh of relief, and Sybil's name came to bis lips. 
>>'Have you dropped anything, sir?' said a voice behind him suddenly. He turned round and saw a policeman with a bull's eye lantern,
>>'Nothing of any importance, sergeant', he answered smiling. 

There is abundance of humour, if not of novelty, in the idea of this story, yet somehow the reader is left with an impression that the idea is much better than the treatment of it. The variety of tone which we have already noticed produces a feeling of dissatisfaction and unrest. The opening, with its cynical remarks end reflections on society and life in general, reminds one of Dorian Gray. The author then proceeds in highflown melodramatic language to describe in a ludicrously elaborate way the horror of the hero when he is made aware of his fate; and then 'once more the style changes abruptly, and becomes as farcical as that of Mr. Anstey. The same incongruity occurs in 'The Canterville Ghost'. Again the idea is so good that one regrets it has not been more satisfactorily worked out. A haunted house is sold by a 'degenerate heir to an American family. Hitherto the ghost has had it all his own way, and has successfully haunted for several centuries; but, after the United States minister, his wife, bis daughter, and his twin sons are established at Canterville Chase, he is mortified and insulted every time he appears by finding that he can in no way terrify or appal them, and is merely a butt for the Practical jokes of the twins. They frighten him with a bogey of their own making, they rub out his ineradicable bloodstain with 'Pinkerton's Champion Stain Remover and Paragon Detergent'. The father presents him with a bottle of the 'Tammany Rising Sun Lubricator' to oil his chains, and the mother---who is 'an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language '---offers him a bottle of 'Dr. Dobell's Tincture' asa cure for indigestion. But the story is spoilt by the character of the ghost himself, who is neither one thing nor the other, neither flesh nor spirit. He never eats or sleeps, and can vanish into air and assume any shape he likes; but he suffers acutely when he knocks his shine, and he trips up over his winding-sheet when he runs, and talks to the minister's daughter about 'the / cheap severity of abstract ethics'. The end, moreover, of the story is absurdly incongruous 'and out of place. 
Mr. Wilde has talked, lectured, and written so much upon art that we may suppose him to be, in his own eyes, an authority on the subject. It is, therefore, the more surprising to find in these stories a want of artistic finish which we would only expect in a youthful beginner. Mr. Wilde is fond of epigram; he tells us, in the opening scene of Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, that at Lady Windermere's party there were 'several royal academicians disguised as artists'; we feel that he would himself be able to assume this disguise with greater success if he would try 'sometimes to be less clever and more natural. His stories might then have a more plausible ring in them, and his really bright wit a worthier setting.