Chapter 9 No.9

(Pall Mall Gazette, September 20, 1894.)

To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette.

SIR,-Will you allow me to draw your attention to a very interesting example of the ethics of modern journalism, a quality of which we have all heard so much and seen so little?

About a month ago Mr. T. P. O'Connor published in the Sunday Sun some doggerel verses entitled 'The Shamrock,' and had the amusing impertinence to append my name to them as their author. As for some years past all kinds of scurrilous personal attacks had been made on me in Mr. O'Connor's newspapers, I determined to take no notice at all of the incident.

Enraged, however, by my courteous silence, Mr. O'Connor returns to the charge this week. He now solemnly accuses me of plagiarising the poem he had the vulgarity to attribute to me. {172}

This seems to me to pass beyond even those bounds of coarse humour and coarser malice that are, by the contempt of all, conceded to the ordinary journalist, and it is really very distressing to find so low a standard of ethics in a Sunday newspaper.-I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

OSCAR WILDE.

September 18.