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'She is to us in this London, what the run of water was to Theocritus in Sicily: the nearest to the visibly divine, he said, and was applauded. 'Good, and on you go. Top me a few superlatives on that, and I 'm your echo, my friend. Isn't the seeing and listening to her like sitting under the silvery canopy of a fountain in high Summer? 'All the comparisons are yours, Arthur said enviously.
And in the midst of these long-drawn superlatives and glittering contrasts come in short martial phrases, as brief and sharp as a drill-sergeant's word of command. "Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting" "The avenues were lined with grenadiers" "The streets were kept clear by cavalry." No man can forget these short, hard decisive sentences.
But he very rarely expresses his enthusiasm in superlatives: "a usefulish lot," and "a smartish few," meaning in Worcestershire "a very good lot," and "a great many," is about the limit to which he will commit himself.
The brute was annoyed at my coolness, and irritated all the more. Hitherto his language had not been strong enough to frighten me, so he improved its strength by some tremendous epithets, considerably above proof. I think he must have enjoyed the exclusive copyright, for I never knew his superlatives imitated.
The words, "my heart," "my jewel," "my little pet," "my queen," and the amorous diminutives of 1770, had a grace that was quite irresistible when they came from his lips. In short, the chevalier had the privilege of superlatives.
Evidently he was still young enough to deal in superlatives, for there had been other fine days that Summer; moreover, in likening himself to a pig, he was ridiculously unfair to six feet of athletic symmetry in which it would be difficult to detect any marked resemblance to the animal whose name is a synonym for laziness.
When I think of that little deep-voiced lady gathering the choicest spirits of her day together, and keeping so many notes in tuneful chime, I hardly know whether to use superlatives of admiration about her or superlatives of contempt about the fribbles who crush each other on staircases and babble like parrots in an aviary.
Certainly if the affair had only concerned a free distribution of sword-thrusts, the musketeer would have counted upon his companion; but in delicate dealings with a king, when the perhaps of an unlucky chance should arise in justification of Monk or of Charles of England, D'Artagnan knew Athos well enough to be sure he would give the best possible coloring to the loyalty of the survivor, and would content himself with shedding floods of tears on the tomb of the dead, supposing the dead to be his friend, and afterwards composing his epitaph in the most pompous superlatives.
All those long useless sermons were preserved because they had been made rich and rare by the expression of his passion. She understood him, and valued him at the proper rate, and measured him correctly in everything. He was so true, she knew him to be so true, that even his superlatives could not be other than true! But as for his reasoning, she knew that that came also from his passion.
He rose, wineglass in hand, and waited impressively for silence. For five minutes his tongue flowed on in praises of the Liberator of the people. He heaped superlatives on extravagant approval after the fashion of our political orators. "Need I put a name to this patriot and hero who has won the unbounded love and loyalty of my youth?" he asked rotundly.
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