>>>>> There is little disagreement that he was the greatest writer in history, as you say.
>>>>
>>>
>>>Disagree. He is the "greatest" only to those who believe he is the greatest. Who has sampled all the writers that ever were? And how will they be compared across styles and times and other metrics? "The greatest" - a pointless attribution other than as a purely personal, culturally and traditionally subjective opinion.
>>
>>I agree with the disagreement. For certain definitions of "greatest" this may be true - for instance, as in "greatest among the authors known to those who were educated in an english-speaking country".
>
>You would actually need to extend this list of qualification much further because can we compare poets with play-writes with story-tellers? Can we compare a writer from 1000 years ago to today? Can we compare an American writer with an English one? You end up with such a long list of qualifiers that the title becomes worthless.

You can compare anything with anything. The results may be usable, ridiculous, irrelevant... all the way to meaningless.