It is all clear enough now in retrospect though I did not understand it at the time.
When he went to live with Bosie Douglas he threw off the Christian attitude, but afterwards had to recognise that "De Profundis" and "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" were deeper and better work than any of his earlier writings.

He resumed the pagan position; outwardly and for the time being he was the old Oscar again, with his Greek love of beauty and hatred of disease, deformity and ugliness, and whenever he met a kindred spirit, he absolutely revelled in gay paradoxes and brilliant flashes of humour.

But he was at war with himself, like Milton's Satan always conscious of his fall, always regretful of his lost estate and by reason of this division of spirit unable to write.

Perhaps because of this he threw himself more than ever into talk.
He was beyond all comparison the most interesting companion I have ever known: the most brilliant talker, I cannot but think, that ever lived.
No one surely ever gave himself more entirely in speech.

Again and again he declared that he had only put his talent into his books and plays, but his genius into his life.