Mr. Oscar Wilde has been good enough to explain, since the publication of his book that it was intended neither for the 'British Child' nor for the 'British Public', but for the cultured few who can appreciate its subtle charms. The same exiguous but admiring band will doubtless comprehend why a volume of allegories should be described as A House of Pomegranates, which we must confess is not apparent to our perverse and blunted intellect. It consists of four storeys (we mean stories), 'The Young King', 'The Birthday of the Infanta', 'The Fisherman and his Soul', and 'The Star-Child', each dedicated to a lady of Mr. Wilde's acquaintance, and all characterized by the peculiar faults and virtues of his highly artificial style. The allegory, as we have had occasion to remark on former occasions, when discussing the work of Lady Dilke and Miss Olive Schreiner in this particular field, is one of the most difficult of literary forms. In Mr. Wilde's House of Pomegranates there is too much straining after effect and too many wordy descriptions; but at the same time there is a good deal of forcible and poetic writing scattered through its pages, and its scenes have more colour and consistence than those which we criticized in 'Dreams' and 'The Shrine of Love'. Mr. Wilde resembles the modern manager who crowds his stage with aesthetic upholstery and bric-à-brac until the characters have scarcely room to walk about. Take this inventory of the contents of a chamber in the young king's palace, which reads for all the world like an extract from a catalogue at Christie's ... The adornment of these 'beautiful tales', as Mr. Wilde modestly calls them, has been entrusted to Messrs. C. Ricketts and C.H. Shannon, and for combined ugliness and obscurity it would be hard, we imagine, to beat them. The full-page illustrations are so indistinctly printed that whatever excellence they may possess is lost to view, while the grotesque black-and-white woodcuts are hideous to behold. It is, perhaps, as well that the book is not meant for the 'British Child'; for it would certainly make him scream, according to his disposition, with terror or amusement.