At the Council of Clermont, in 1094, Pope Urban II depicted the miseries of Christians in Palestine, and, with a power of eloquence unsurpassed in his day, called upon those who heard him to wipe off from the face of the earth the impurities which caused them, and to lift their oppressed fellow-Christians from the depths into which they had been trampled.

It aims at comparatively little, but is perfectly successful in its aim, and unsurpassed for the incisiveness of its side strokes, and the courtly ease of a manner that never degenerates into mannerism.

Early in life Lorenzo became imbued with the conviction that his native tongue was unsurpassed as a medium for "the expression of noble thoughts in noble numbers."

He further possessed poetical powers of no mean order, in particular a lyrical gift almost unsurpassed among his fellows for grace and sweetness, howbeit somewhat lacking in the qualities of refinement and power.

In the same romance Lodge rose for once to a perfection of delicate conceit unsurpassed from his day to ours: Love in my bosom like a bee Doth suck his sweet; Now with his wings he plays with me, Now with his feet.

In the days of Ireland's fame and prosperity and of the flood-tide of her native language, he was a skilled craftsman, and the extant specimens of his work are unsurpassed of their kind.