His palaces outshone those of his king, and few monarchs could afford such a display of plate as commonly graced the cardinal's table.
But among the Greeks themselves the two works of Pheidias which far outshone all others, and were the basis of his fame, were the colossal figures in gold and ivory of Zeus at Olympia and of Athena Parthenos at Athens, both of which belong to about the middle of the 5th century.
This is by no means the case; on the contrary, he is rather to be commiserated for his connexion with a brother who outshone him as he would have outshone almost any one.
The ease, too, with which he outshone men of vastly greater learning lured him from the task of intense and arduous study.
John Hales (1584-1656); Edmund Calamy (1600-1666); the Cambridge Platonist, Benjamin Whichcote (1609-1685); Richard Baxter (1615-1691); the puritan John Owen (1616-1683); the philosophical Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688); Archbishop Leighton (1611-1684) - each of these holds an eminent position in the records of pulpit eloquence, but all were outshone by the gorgeous oratory and art of Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), who is the most illustrious writer of sermons whom the British race has produced.