, or positive, becomes [the] comparative by adding r or er; and the superlative by adding st or est, to the end of it. And the adverbs more and most, placed before the adjective, have the same effect; as, wise, more wise, most wise."--Murray's Grammar, 2d Ed., 1796, p. 47. If a man wished to select some striking example of bad writing--of thoughts ill conceived, and not well expressed--he could not do better than take the foregoing: provided his auditors knew enough of grammar to answer the four simple questions here involved; namely, What is the positive degree? What is the comparative degree? What is the superlative degree? How are adjectives regularly compared? To these questions I shall furnish direct answers, which the reader may compare with such as he can derive from the foregoing citation: the last two sentences of which Murray ought to have credited to Dr. Lowth; for he copied them literally, except that he says, "the adverbs more AND most," for the Doctor's phrase, "the adverbs more OR most." See the whole also in Kirkham's Grammar, p. 72; in Ingersoll's, p. 35; in Alger's, p. 21; in Bacon's, p. 18; in Russell's, p. 14; in Hamlin's, p. 22; in J. M. Putnam's, p. 33; in S. Putnam's, p. 20; in R. C. Smith's, p. 51; in Rev. T. Smith's, p. 20.
OBS. 4.--In the five short sentences quoted above, there are more errors, than can possibly be enumerated in ten times the space. For example: (1.) If one should say of a piece of iron, "It grows cold or hot very rapidly," cold and hot could not be in the "positive state," as they define it: because, either the "quality" or the "object," (I know not which,) is represented by them as "without any increase or diminution;" and this would not, in the present case, be true of either; for iron changes in bulk, by a change of temperature. (2.) What, in the first sentence, is erroneously called "the positive state," in the second and the third, is called, "the positive degree;" and this again, in the fourth, is falsely identified with "the simple word." Now, if we suppose the meaning to be, that "the positive state," "the positive degree," or "the simple word," is "without any increase or diminution;" this is expressly contradicted by three sentences out of the five, and implicitly, by one of the others. (3.) Not one of these sentences is true, in the most obvious sense of the words, if in any other; and yet the doctrines they were designed to teach, may have been, in general, correctly gathered from the examples. (4.) The phrase, "positive in signification," is not intelligible in the sense intended, without a comma after positive; and yet, in an armful of different English grammars which contain the passage, I find not one that has a point in that place. (5.) It is not more correct to say, that the comparative or the superlative degree, "increases or lessens the positive," than it would be to aver, that the plural number increases or lessens the singular, or the feminine gender, the masculine. Nor does the superlative mean, what a certain learned Doctor understands by it--namely, "the greatest or least possible degree." If it did, "the thickest parts of his skull," for example, would imply small room for brains; "the thinnest," protect them ill, if there were any. (6.) It is improper to say, "The simple word becomes [the] comparative by adding r or er; and the superlative by adding st or est." The thought is wrong; and nearly all the words are misapplied; as, simple for primitive, adding for assuming, &c. (7.) Nor is it very wise to say, "the adverbs more and most, placed before the adjective, have the same effect:" because it ought to be known, that the effect of the one is very different from that of the other! "The same effect," cannot here be taken for any effect previously described; unless we will have it to be, that these words, more and most, "become comparative by adding r or er; and the superlative by adding st or est, to the end of them:" all of which is grossly absurd. (8.) The repetition of the word degree, in saying, "The superlative degree increases or lessens the positive to the highest or lowest degree," is a disagreeable tautology. Besides, unless it involves the additional error of presenting the same word in different senses, it makes one degree swell or diminish an other to itself; whereas, in the very next sentence, this singular agency is forgotten, and a second equally strange takes its place: "The positive becomes the superlative by adding st or est, to the end of it;" i. e., to the end of itself. Nothing can be more ungrammatical, than is much of the language by which grammar itself is now professedly taught!
OBS. 5.--It has been almost universally assumed by grammarians, that the positive degree is the only standard to which the other degrees can refer; though many seem to think, that the superlative always implies or includes the comparative, and is consequently inapplicable when only two things are spoken of. Neither of these positions is involved in any of the definitions which I have given above. The reader may think what he will about these points, after observing the several ways in which each form may be used. In the phrases, "greater than Solomon,"--"more than a bushel,"--"later than one o'clock," it is not immediately obvious that the positives great, much, and late, are the real terms of contrast. And how is it in the Latin phrases, "Dulcior melle, sweeter than honey,"--"Præstantior auro, better than gold?" These authors will resolve all such phrases thus: "greater, than Solomon was great,"--"more, than a bushel is much," &c. As the conjunction than never governs the objective case, it seems necessary to suppose an ellipsis of some verb after the noun which follows it as above; and possibly the foregoing solution, uncouth as it seems, may, for the English idiom, be the true one: as, "My Father is greater than I."--John, xiv, 28. That is, "My Father is greater than I am;"--or, perhaps, "than I am great." But if it appear that some degree of the same quality must always be contrasted with the comparative, there is still room to question whether this degree must always be that which we call the positive. Cicero, in exile, wrote to his wife: "Ego autem hoc miserior sum, quam tu, quæ es miserrima, quod ipsa calamitas communis est utriusque nostrùm, sed culpa mea propria est."--Epist. ad Fam., xiv, 3. "But in this I am more wretched, than thou, who art most wretched, that the calamity itself is common to us both, but the fault is all my own."
OBS. 6.--In my Institutes and First Lines of English Grammar, I used the following brief definitions: "The comparative degree is that which exceeds the positive; as, harder, softer, better." "The
