LORD ARTHUR SAVILE'S CRIME AND OTHER STORIES. By Oscar Wilde. (Methuen.) 5s. net.

This is the first instalment of what may be called a popular edition, to be issued in twelve volumes, of the works of Oscar Wilde. It will not be exhaustive, for it does not contain some of the special material exclusive to the limited edition recently issued by Messrs. Methuen; and one or two gaps are to be noticed in the list of contents. The remaining volumes, which will be issued at fortnightly intervals, will contain, in order, "The Duchess of Padua," "Poems" (including "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"), "Lady Windermere's Fan," "A Woman of No Importance," "An Ideal Husband," "The Importance of Being Earnest," "A House of Pomegranates," "Intentions," "De Profundis" and "Prison Letters," "Essays," and, in the concluding volume, "Salome," "A Florentine Tragedy" and "La Sainte Courtisane." The new edition is delightful to read and handle, and one could not wish a more attractive setting of witty and exquisite English. It should be mentioned that the volumes will be sold separately.

It is a little over twenty years since the first of the stories in this volume, which delighted by its polish and paradox while it alarmed some by its lighthearted treatment of the reprehensible crime of murder, was first given to the world. That world has spun a good way along its grooves since 1887, and the fact of the change is brought home by the inconspicuousness—almost, think of it!—the obviousness—of the Wilde paradox. The epigrams at which the eighties held their sides do not strike one to-day as particularly arresting. Probably that is because his habit of brilliant and audacious witticism has been absorbed into the current of contemporary thought; for a paradox is like a lighted match in a dark room till some one turns up the gas. At all events, the general illumination in the matter of the freer treatment of august and old-established conventions has increased greatly in the interval, for better or worse; and so there is a certain danger that some day the wit of Oscar Wilde will be found to be old-fashioned—a charge which is already brought, with excellent reason, against the construction of his plays.

The other tales in this volume include "The Canterville Ghost," with its queer mingling of burlesque and pathos (the burlesque more sincere than the pathos), and its now curiously out-of-date gibe at America:—

"I don't think I should like America."

"I suppose because we have no ruins and no curiosities," said Virginia satirically.

"No ruins! No curiosities!" answered the Ghost; "you have your navy and your manners."

—"The Portrait of Mr. W. H.," embodying a theory of Shakespeare's sonnets which has everything in its favour except evidence; and the smaller sketches of "The Sphinx Without a Secret" and "The Model Millionaire."

"Lord Arthur Savile's Crime" is, it is said, to be made the basis of a play for production by Mr. H. B. Irving; but it would seem a perilous task to reduce this piece of pure persiflage to the crude terms of the footlights. Even in these days of heroic stage burglars what would the gallery say to the Murderer Triumphant?