But in some curious way – I wonder will you understand me? – his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before.
– Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 1. Here Basil is describing his first meeting with Dorian Gray and his influence on him as a person and an artist. Dorian apparently brings out the best of Basil’s art skills and Basil is completely besotted with him. This passage was part of a larger extract from the novel read out and used against Wilde in the famous libel trial at London’s Old Bailey by lawyer Edward Carson. In his brutal 1895 cross-examination of the author Sir Edward asked Wilde: "Now I ask you, Mr. Wilde, do you consider that that description of the feeling of one man towards a youth just grown up was a proper or an improper feeling?" To which Wilde replied: "I think it is the most perfect description of what an artist would feel on meeting a beautiful personality that was in some way necessary to his art and life."