underpraise

British critics of my generation always preferred to underpraise with conviction rather than overpraise with enthusiasm.

But whether on sufficient or insufficient evidence I do think that Hand was a great judge and therefore I think that Gunther underpraises him when he writes in the first sentence of the book, "Learned Hand is numbered among a small group of truly great American judges of the twentieth century."" Why the pussyfooting, and the hiding behind numberers?