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I loved the Lord Henry character. While his outlook on like was jaded, his ways of expressing himself was nonetheless fresh and entertaining. Too, I suspect that Basil Hallward had him pegged to a large degree when he said, "You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose." He seemed to be one of those characters whose greatest delight in life was in puncturing pomposity wherever he found it, and always delighted when a remark of his discomforted the comfortable. His one liners, whether he actually believed what he was saying or not, were remarkable. "Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all." You've have to love a guy like that. That he so corrupted Dorian Gray perhaps owes more to Gray's impressionable nature than Lord Wotton's influence. He seemed to take every word that fell from Henry's lips as gospel truth, not to be challenged. To my way of thinking there seems to have been a bit of the true believer in Dorian Gray's makeup that's always dangerous, no matter what the creed or philosophy one places their faith in.
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