The Grammar of English Grammars, page 697 by Gould Brown
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nning, on Emancipation_, p. 52. "Which, we are sensible, are more inconclusive than the rest."--_Blair's Rhet._, p. 319.
"Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes."--_Shak._
OBS. 10.--Comparison must not be considered a general property of adjectives. It belongs chiefly to the class which I call common adjectives, and is by no means applicable to all of these. Common adjectives, or epithets denoting quality, are perhaps more numerous than all the other classes put together. Many of these, and a few that are pronominal, may be varied by comparison; and some participial adjectives may be compared by means of the adverbs. But adjectives formed from proper names, all the numerals, and most of the compounds, are in no way susceptible of comparison. All nouns used adjectively, as an iron bar, an evening school, a mahogany chair, a _South-Sea_ dream, are also incapable of comparison. In the title of "His Most Christian Majesty," the superlative adverb is applied to a _proper adjective_; but who will pretend that we ought to understand by it "_the highest degree_" of Christian attainment? It might seem uncourtly to suggest that this is "an abuse of the king's English," I shall therefore say no such thing. Pope compares the word Christian, in the following couplet:--
"Go, purified by flames ascend the sky, My better and more Christian progeny."--Dunciad, B. i, l. 227.
IRREGULAR COMPARISON.
The following adjectives are compared irregularly: _good, better, best; bad, evil_, or _ill, worse, worst; little, less, least; much, more, most; many, more, most_.
OBSERVATIONS.
OBS. 1.--In English, and also in Latin, most adjectives that denote place or situation, not only form the superlative irregularly, but are also either defective or redundant in comparison. Thus:
I. The following nine have more than