Pagina 287 di 490

Indeed, there were many, especially among the very young men, who

saw, or fancied that they saw, in Dorian Gray the true

realization of a type of which they had often dreamed in Eton or

Oxford days, a type that was to combine something of the real

culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction and

perfect manner of a citizen of the world. To them he seemed to be

of the company of those whom Dante describes as having sought to

"make themselves perfect by the worship of beauty." Like Gautier,

he was one for whom "the visible world existed."