The Grammar of English Grammars, page 680 by Gould Brown
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OBS. 8.--It is a common assumption, maintained by almost all our grammarians, that the degrees which add to the adjective the terminations er and est, as well as those which are expressed by more and most, indicate an increase, or heightening, of the quality expressed by the positive. If such must needs be their import, it is certainly very improper, to apply them, as many do, to what can be only an approximation to the positive. Thus Dr. Blair: "Nothing that belongs to human nature, is more universal than the relish of beauty of one kind or other."--Lectures, p. 16. "In architecture, the Grecian models were long esteemed the most perfect."--_Ib._, p. 20. Again: In his reprehension of Capernaum, the Saviour said, "It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom, in the day of judgement, than for thee."--_Matt._, xi, 24. Now, although [Greek: anektoteron], more tolerable, is in itself a good comparative, who would dare infer from this text, that in the day of judgement Capernaum shall fare tolerably, and Sodom, _still better_? There is much reason to think, that the essential nature of these grammatical degrees has not been well understood by those who have heretofore pretended to explain them. If we except those few approximations to sensible qualities, which are signified by such words as _whitish, greenish, &c._, there will be found no actual measure, or inherent degree of any quality, to which the simple form of the adjective is not applicable; or which, by the help of intensive adverbs of a positive character, it may not be made to express; and that, too, without becoming either comparative or superlative, in the technical sense of those terms. Thus _very white, exceedingly white, perfectly white_, are terms quite as significant as whiter and whitest, if not more so. Some grammarians, observing this, and knowing that the Romans often used their superlative in a sense merely intens