The famous talkers of the past, Coleridge, Macaulay, Carlyle and the others, were all lecturers: talk to them was a discourse on a favourite theme, and in ordinary life they were generally regarded as bores.

But at his best Oscar Wilde never dropped the tone of good society: he could afford to give place to others; he was equipped at all points: no subject came amiss to him: he saw everything from a humorous angle, and dazzled one now with word-wit, now with the very stuff of merriment.
Though he was the life and soul of every social gathering, and in constant demand, he still read omnivorously, and his mind naturally occupied itself with high themes.
For some years, the story of Jesus fascinated him and tinged all his thought.

We were talking about Renan's "Life" one day: a wonderful book he called it, one of the three great biographies of the world, Plato's dialogues with Socrates as hero and Boswell's "Life of Johnson" being the other two.

It was strange, he thought, that the greatest man had written the worst biography; Plato made of Socrates a mere phonograph, into which he talked his own theories: Renan did better work, and Boswell, the humble loving friend, the least talented of the three, did better still, though being English, he had to keep to the surface of things and leave the depths to be divined.

Oscar evidently expected Plato and Renan to have surpassed comparison.
It seemed to me, however, that the illiterate Galilean fishermen had proved themselves still more consummate painters than Boswell, though they, too, left a great deal too much to the imagination.