There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry—too much of myself!” cries the painter Basil Hallward to Lord Henry Wotton early in Oscar Wilde's fantastic and tragic novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. But, though Lord Henry remarks with his usual cynicism, “Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication,” Hallward continues to lament, “We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography.” Nor does the painter forget his self-accusations, for many years later in the story he repeats his charge to the beautiful young man who has been the subject of his painting: “I felt, Dorian, that I had told too much, that I had put too much of myself into it.”