He hoped by these means to give a certain stability to his projected institution, and to avoid the superficiality of mere enthusiasm.
Both here and elsewhere his great fault was an inveterate superficiality.
But this superficiality was accompanied by such wonderful acuteness within a certain range, by such an absolutely unsurpassed literary aptitude and sense of style in all the lighter and some of the graver modes of literature, by such untiring energy and versatility in enterprise, that he has no parallel among ready writers anywhere.
In the eyes of a Chinese connoisseur, no blue-and-white porcelain worthy of consideration exists, or ever has existed, except the kai-pien-yao, with its imponderable pdle, its wax-like surface, and its rich, glowing blue, entirely free from superficiality or garishness and broken into a thousand tints by the microscopic crackle of the glaze.
Both kinds reflect in their Voltairian superficiality Bolingbroke's manner of life, which was throughout uninspired by any great ideas or principles and thoroughly false and superficial.
