I am reading (parts of) Hume’s History of England (jet lag and all that) and he raises “damning with damning praise” to new heights in his discussion of Cromwell, who he clearly detests everything about but must acknowledge Cromwell’s amazing success at achieving his aims.
“This artful and audacious conspirator had conducted himself in the parliament with such profound dissimulation, with such refined hypocrisy, that he had long deceived those who, being themselves very dexterous practitioners in the same arts, should naturally have entertained the more suspicion against others.”
And the volume is full of such wonderful, old fashioned, sentences.