The Grammar of English Grammars, page 708 by Gould Brown

<< Return to Title Details & Download

 < previous  next > 

709

dying the correctest writers."--_Holmes's Rhetoric_, p. 27. Honest and correct, for the sake of euphony, require the adverbs; as, more honest, "most correct."--_Lowth's Gram., Pref._, p. iv. _Vast, vaster, vastest_, are words as smooth, as _fast, faster, fastest_; and more vast is certainly as good English as _more just_: "Shall mortal man be more just than God?"--Job, iv, 17. "Wilt thou condemn him that is _most just_?"--_Ib._, xxxiv, 17. "More wise, more learn'd, more just, more-everything."--_Pope. Universal_ is often compared by the adverbs, but certainly with no reënforcement of meaning: as, "One of the most universal precepts, is, that the orator himself should feel the passion."--_Adams's Rhet._, i, 379. "Though not so universal."--_Ib._, ii, 311. "This experience is general, though not so universal, as the absence of memory in childhood."--_Ib._, ii, 362. "We can suppose no motive which would more universally operate."--_Dr. Blair's Rhet._, p. 55. "Music is known to have been more universally studied."--_Ib._, p. 123. "We shall not wonder, that his grammar has been so universally applauded."--_Walker's Recommendation in Murray's Gram._, ii, 306. "The pronoun it is the most universal of all the pronouns."--_Cutler's Gram._, p. 66. Thus much for one half of this critic's twenty-two "superlatives." The rest are simply adjectives that are not susceptible of comparison: they are not "superlatives" at all. A man might just as well teach, that good is a superlative, and not susceptible of comparison, because "there is none good but one."

OBS. 13.--Pronominal adjectives, when their nouns are expressed, simply relate to them, and have no modifications: except this and that, which form the plurals these and _those_; and _much, many_, and a few others, which are compared. Examples: "Whence hath th

 < previous  next >