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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: probably use the words very vaguely, as an ordinary mob will use
ready-made paving-stones. There is not a single real poet or
prose-writer of this century, for instance, on whom the British
public have not solemnly conferred diplomas of immorality, and
these diplomas practically take the place, with us, of what in
France, is the formal recognition of an Academy of Letters, and
fortunately make the establishment of such an institution quite
unnecessary in England. Of course, the public are very reckless in
their use of the word. That they should have called Wordsworth an
immoral poet, was only to be expected. Wordsworth was a poet. But
that they should have called Charles Kingsley an immoral novelist
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