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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: truth and takes no care of fact; she sees (as I remember Mr.
Swinburne insisting on at dinner) that Achilles is even now more
actual and real than Wellington, not merely more noble and
interesting as a type and figure but more positive and real.
Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal
considerations are no principle at all. For to the poet all times
and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and
eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present
preferable. The steam whistle will not affright him nor the flutes
of Arcadia weary him: for him there is but one time, the artistic
moment; but one law, the law of form; but one land, the land of
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