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Updated: May 5, 2025
With Macaulay the superlatives pour out as his native vernacular without heat or wrath, as a mere rhetorician's trick, as the favourite tones of a great colourist.
Buck Daniels was speaking seriously, hunting for words, and if he used superlatives it was because he needed them. "Extraordinary!" murmured the doctor, and he repeated the word in a louder tone. It was a rare word for him; in all his scholastic career and in all of his scientific investigations he had found occasion to use so strong a term not more than half a dozen times at the most.
Nevertheless, I have said already that I am no lover of superlatives, and in doctrine especially is this true. We need not expect a Confucius from the negro, nor yet a Chesterfield; but I am an enemy also of that blind and base hate against him, which conducts nowhere save to the de-civilizing of white and black alike. Who brought him here? Did he invite himself?
The endless punishments of hell appear to be an exploit of theory; they have a superadded appearance even in the Christian system; the same common tendency to superlatives and absolutes that makes men ashamed to admit that God is finite, makes them seek to enhance the merits of their Saviour by the device of everlasting fire.
But superlatives often have a value in inverse ratio to their intention. There is a curious story told by the Catholic historian, Novaes, that, after the death of Innocent, which took place in 1655, no one could be found willing to assume the charge of burying him. Word was sent to Donna Olympia that she should provide a coffin for the corpse; but she replied that she was only a poor widow.
She laughed a great deal at us, but she was evidently touched by his human interest, for she confided to him that it was not velvet at all, but furniture covering; and when we went away she pressed on us a bag of peanuts. She said she had more peanuts than she could eat a state of unbridled opulence which fitted in for me with all the other superlatives of that day.
It must be spoken out now, though death was preferable. And he was waiting. Did he guess? She could not tell. He had spoken no word but her name. He had expressed no surprise at her appearance, asked no reasons for it. Superlatives of suffering or joy or courage are hard to convey words fall so far short of the feeling. And Cynthia's pain was so far beyond tears.
It sees only a featureless presumption in that playing with superlatives which has entertained so many minds from Plotinus to the Hegelians with the delusion that such negative terms as the Absolute or the Unconditioned, can assert anything at all.
What right had he to call her "Dearest"? She was one of those unintelligible females who do not shower superlatives on every chance acquaintance. She must, no doubt, have been callous as judged by modern standards, or at least, singularly unimaginative, for among her few correspondents she had not one whom she addressed as "dearest."
Good-night. He came again next evening, and we dined together. He is a fine young fellow, and I got to like him greatly. He is fiery and enthusiastic and impulsive, and all his adjectives are superlatives, after the manner of earnest youth. But he is good-hearted and honourable to the core. We took to each other naturally, and he used to run up to my studio every evening at dusk.
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