And this will now plainly appear, if, instead of serious and comic, we supply the words
duller and dullest; for the comic was certainly
duller than anything before shown on the stage, and could be set off only by that superlative degree of dulness which composed the serious.
`So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth's fate, watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and
duller in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away.
Aurelia and Hannah had gone on in the dull round and the common task, growing
duller and
duller; but now, on a certain stage of life's journey, who should appear but this bewildering being, who gave wings to thoughts that had only crept before; who brought color and grace and harmony into the dun brown texture of existence.
A phrenologist and a mesmerizer came -- and went again and left the village
duller and drearier than ever.
Hutchinson was favored with ally such extraordinary inspiration, he made but a poor use of it in his history; for a
duller piece of composition never came from any man's pen.
Of course, the picture is over-colored; it was the vice of Thackeray, or of Thackeray's time, to surcharge all imitations of life and character, so that a generation apparently much slower, if not
duller than ours, should not possibly miss the artist's meaning.
I saw that she was a good housekeeper, for while she talked she kept a corner of her eye on the servants to see that they made no balks in handling the body and getting it out; when they came with fresh clean towels, she sent back for the other kind; and when they had finished wiping the floor and were going, she indicated a crimson fleck the size of a tear which their
duller eyes had overlooked.
Poor Cathy, frightened from her little romance, had been considerably sadder and
duller since its abandonment; and her father insisted on her reading less, and taking more exercise.
Human beings--human children especially--seldom deny themselves the pleasure of exercising a power which they are conscious of possessing, even though that power consist only in a capacity to make others wretched; a pupil whose sensations are
duller than those of his instructor, while his nerves are tougher and his bodily strength perhaps greater, has an immense advantage over that instructor, and he will generally use it relentlessly, because the very young, very healthy, very thoughtless, know neither how to sympathize nor how to spare.
The facts are much
duller. Strickland, a boy fresh from school, went into a broker's office without any feeling of distaste.
'Yes, because it's so dull here: but then he makes it still
duller by taking himself off: and if he were not married I might have him instead of that odious Sir Thomas.'
It was remembered, at an after-period, that a
duller wedding-party had never been assembled together.