OBS. 10.—­The true nature of the Superlative degree is this:  it denotes, in a quality, some extreme or unsurpassed extent.  It may be used either absolutely, as being without bounds; or relatively, as being confined within any limits we choose to give it.  It is equally applicable to that which is naturally unsurpassable, and to that which stands within the narrowest limits of comparison.  The heaviest of three feathers would scarcely be thought a heavy thing, and yet the expression is proper; because the weight, whatever it is, is relatively the greatest.  The youngest of three persons, may not be very young; nor need we suppose the oldest in a whole college to have arrived at the greatest conceivable age.  What then shall be thought of the explanations which our grammarians have given of this degree of comparison?  That of Murray I have already criticised.  It is ascribed to him, not upon the supposition that he invented it; but because common sense continues to give place to the authority of his name in support of it.  Comly, Russell, Alger, Ingersoll, Greenleaf, Fisk, Merchant, Kirkham, T. Smith, R. C. Smith, Hall, Hiley, and many others, have copied it into their grammars, as being better than any definition they could devise.  Murray himself unquestionably took it from some obscure pedagogue among the old grammarians.  Buchanan, who long preceded him, has nearly the same words:  “The Superlative increases or diminishes the Positive in Signification, to the highest or [the] lowest Degree of all.”—­English Syntax, p. 28.  If this is to be taken for a grammatical definition, what definition shall grammar itself bear?

OBS. 11.—­Let us see whether our later authors have done better.  “The superlative expresses a quality in the greatest or [the] least possible degree; as, wisest, coldest, least wise.”—­Webster’s Old Gram., p. 13.  In his later speculations, this author conceives that the termination ish forms the first degree of comparison; as, “Imperfect, dankish,” Pos. dank, Comp. danker, Superl. dankest.  “There are therefore four degrees of comparison.”—­Webster’s Philosophical Gram. p. 65.  “The fourth denotes the utmost or [the] least degree of a quality; as, bravest, wisest, poorest, smallest.  This is called the superlative degree.”—­Ib.; also his Improved Gram., 1831, p. 47.  “This degree is called the Superlative degree, from its raising the amount of the quality above that of all others.”—­Webber’s Gram., 1832, p. 26.  It is not easy to quote, from any source, a worse sentence than this; if, indeed, so strange a jumble of words can be called a sentence. “From its raising the amount,” is in itself a vicious and untranslatable phrase, here put for “because it raises the amount;” and who can conceive of the superlative degree, as