Pater's review of Dorian Gray ultimately distanced the two writers and altered their relationship forever, as they never met again after it was published. Pater was generous with his compliments, but they come off as largely dismissive. He argues that the "dainty Epicurean theory" adds to the "decorative colour of its central figure, like so many exotic flowers, like the charming scenery and the perpetual, epigrammatic, surprising, yet so natural, conversations, like an atmosphere all about it. All that pleasant accessory detail, taken straight from the culture, the intellectual and social interests, the conventionalities, of the moment, have, in fact, after all, the effect of the better sort of realism." This jab mocks Wilde's distate for realism, and drives home Pater's argument earlier in his review that Dorian Gray severely misses the mark at encompassing a true Epicurean spirit. The review concludes with Pater maintaining that  "Mr. Wilde's work may fairly claim to go with that of Edgar Poe, and with some good French work of the same kind, done, probably, in more or less conscious imitation of it." 

Pater's fear of moral reproach and Wilde's reveling in the media circus over his controversial ideas proved to be the biggest difference between the two, and is likely to be behind Pater's disapproval of Wilde. He was well aware of Wilde's homosexual encounters in his private life, especially after Wilde introduced him to Alfred Douglas in 1890. The infamous controversy surrounding The Picture of Dorian Gray was perhaps one step too far for Pater, only made all the more distressing by the memory of his painful experience over The Renaissance.

https://studio.covecollective.org/anthologies/columbia-college-chicago-o...

https://victorianweb.org/authors/pater/hext2.html