above all the scintillating, coruscating humour that lifted his
monologues into works of art.

Curiously enough he seldom talked of himself or of the incidents of his
past life. After the prison he always regarded himself as a sort of
Prometheus and his life as symbolic; but his earlier experiences never
suggested themselves to him as specially significant; the happenings of
his life after his fall seemed predestined and fateful to him; yet of
those he spoke but seldom. Even when carried away by his own eloquence,
he kept the tone of good society.

When you came afterwards to think over one of those wonderful evenings
when he had talked for hours, almost without interruption, you hardly
found more than an epigram, a fugitive flash of critical insight, an
apologue or pretty story charmingly told. Over all this he had cast the
glittering, sparkling robe of his Celtic gaiety, verbal humour, and
sensual enjoyment of living. It was all like champagne; meant to be
drunk quickly; if you let it stand, you soon realised that some still
wines had rarer virtues. But there was always about him the magic of a
rich and _puissant_ personality; like some great actor he could take a
poor part and fill it with the passion and vivacity of his own nature,
till it became a living and memorable creation.

He gave the impression of wide intellectual range, yet in reality he was
not broad; life was not his study nor the world-drama his field. His
talk was all of literature and art and the vanities; the light
drawing-room comedy on the edge of farce was his kingdom; there he ruled
as a sovereign.

Anyone who has read Oscar Wilde's plays at all carefully, especially