 But he is
much more to me than a model or a sitter. I won't tell you that I am
dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that Art
cannot express it. There is nothing that Art cannot express, and I know that the
work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my
life. 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. A dream of form in days
of thought: - who is it who says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has
been to me. The merely visible presence of this lad - for he seems to me little
more than a lad, though he is really over twenty - his merely visible presence -
ah! I wonder can you realise all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for
me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion
of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The
harmony of soul and body - how much that is! We in our madness have separated
the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void.
Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me! You remember that landscape
of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge price, but which I would not
part with? It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why is it so?
Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me. Some subtle
influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the
plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for, and always missed.«
    »Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian Gray.«
    Hallward got up from the seat, and walked up and down the garden. After some
time he came back. »Harry,« he said, »Dorian Gray is to me simply a motive in
art. You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him. He is never more
present in my work than when no image of him is there. He is a suggestion, as I
have said, of a new manner. I find him in the curves
