Let us mark the bristling superlatives. Of adjectives in superlative form we find _most certain_, _soberest_, _wisest_, _most Christian_, _darkest_, _deepest_, _basest_, _lowermost_, _most dejected_, _most underfoot_, and _[most] downtrodden_. Of those words which have a superlative force or meaning, I would list—allowing that this must be a matter of judgment—_naught_, _cancel_, _broken_, _marvellous_, _fervent_, _eternal_, _universal_, _undoubtedly_, _supereminence_, _beatific_, _dateless_, _irrevoluble_, _eternity_, _inseparable_, _overmeasure_, _for ever_, and _eternally_. But the most interesting form of the superlative mode is the pattern of repetition by which Milton, through a progressive accumulation of substantives and adjectives, builds up a crescendo. First there will be one or more groups of two, then perhaps a group of three, and finally, for the supreme effect, a breathtaking collocation of five. Such a pattern appears in the concluding sentence of the prayer: _impairing_ and _diminution_; _distresses_ and _servitude_; _dignity_, _rule_, and _promotion_; _darkest_ and _deepest_; _control_, _trample_, and _spurn_; _raving_ and _bestial_; _slaves_ and _negroes_; _basest_, _lowermost_, _most dejected_, _most underfoot and downtrodden_. Here, it will be noticed, the sequence is 2-2-3-2-3-2-2-5. The pattern in itself is revealing. First there are two pairs which ready us for attaining the group of three; then another pair to rest upon before we attain the group of three again; then two more pairs for a longer respite while we ready ourselves for the supreme effort of the group of five. The prayer is not, of course, an ordinary passage; yet what is seen here is discoverable in some measure in all of Milton’s prose. He wrote in this superlative vein because his principal aim was the divorcement of good and evil. To show these wide apart, he had to talk in terms of best and worst, and being a rhetorician of vast resources, he found ways of making the superlative even more eminent than our regular grammatical forms make it, which naturally marks him as a great creative user of the language.