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,”—­“Praestantior 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: