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y bestowed upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority."--_Dr. Johnson, Rambler_, Vol. ii, No. 93.
"Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverend than plausible, and more advised than confident; above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue."--_Bacon's Essays_, p. 145.
"The wisest nations, having the most and best ideas, will consequently have the best and most copious languages."--_Harris's Hermes_, p. 408.
"Here we trace the operation of powerful causes, while we remain ignorant of their nature; but everything goes on with such regularity and harmony, as to give a striking and convincing proof of a combining directing intelligence."--_Life of W. Allen_, Vol. i, p. 170.
"The wisest, unexperienced, will be ever Timorous and loth, with novice modesty, Irresolute, unhardy, unadventurous."--Milton.
IMPROPRIETIES FOR CORRECTION.
ERRORS OF ADJECTIVES.
LESSON I.--DEGREES.
"I have the real excuse of the honestest sort of bankrupts."--_Cowley's Preface_, p. viii.
[FORMULE.--Not proper, because the adjective honestest is harshly compared by est. But, according to a principle stated on page 283d concerning the regular degrees, "This method of comparison is to be applied only to monosyllables, and to dissyllables of a smooth termination, or such as receive it and still have but one syllable after the accent." Therefore, honestest should be _most honest_; thus, "I have real excuse of the most honest sort of bankrupts."]
"The honourablest part of talk, is, to give the occasion."--_Bacon's Essays_, p. 90. "To give him one of his own modestest proverbs."-- _Barclay's Works_, iii, 340. "Our language is now certainly properer and more natural, than it was formerly."--_Bp. Burnet_. "Which will be of most and frequentest use to him in the world."--_Locke, on Education_, p. 163. "The same is notified in the notablest places in the diocese."--Whitgift. "But it was the