“Adam the goodliest man of men since born
    His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.”—­P.  Lost, B. iv, l. 324.

OBS. 8.—­“Such adjectives,” says Churchill, “as have in themselves a superlative signification, or express qualities not susceptible of degrees, do not properly admit either the comparative or [the] superlative form.  Under this rule may be included all adjectives with a negative prefix.”—­New Gram., p. 80.  Again:  “As immediate signifies instant, present with regard to time, Prior should not have written ’more immediate.’ Dr. Johnson.”—­Ib., p. 233.  “Hooker has unaptest; Locke, more uncorrupted; Holder, more undeceivable:  for these the proper expressions would have been the opposite signs without the negation:  least apt, less corrupted, less deceivable.  Watts speaks of ’a most unpassable barrier.’  If he had simply said ‘an unpassable barrier,’ we should have understood it at once in the strongest sense, as a barrier impossible to be surmounted:  but, by attempting to express something more, he gives an idea of something less; we perceive, that his unpassable means difficult to pass.  This is the mischief of the propensity to exaggeration; which, striving after strength, sinks into weakness.”—­Ib., p. 234.

OBS. 9.—­The foregoing remarks from Churchill appear in general to have been dictated by good sense; but, if his own practice is right, there must be some exceptions to his rule respecting the comparison of adjectives with a negative prefix; for, in the phrase “less imprudent,” which, according to a passage quoted before, he will have to be different from “more prudent,” he himself furnishes an example of such comparison.  In fact, very many words of that class are compared by good writers:  as, “Nothing is more unnecessary.”—­Lowth’s Gram., Pref., p. v.  “What is yet more unaccountable.”—­ROGERS:  in Joh.  Dict. “It is hard to determine which is most uneligible.”—­Id., ib. “Where it appears the most unbecoming and unnatural.”—­ADDISON:  ib. “Men of the best sense and of the most unblemished lives.”—­Id., ib. “March and September are the most unsettled and unequable of seasons.”—­BENTLEY:  ib. “Barcelona was taken by a most unexpected accident.”—­SWIFT:  ib. “The most barren and unpleasant.”—­WOODWARD:  ib. “O good, but most unwise patricians!”—­SHAK.:  ib. “More unconstant than the wind.”—­Id., ib. “We may say more or less imperfect.”—­Murray’s Gram., p. 168.  “Some of those [passions] which act with the most irresistible energy upon the hearts of mankind, are altogether omitted in the catalogue of Aristotle.”—­Adams’s Rhet., i, 380.  “The wrong of him who presumes to talk of owning me, is too unmeasured to be softened by kindness.”—­Channing, on Emancipation, p. 52.  “Which, we are sensible, are more inconclusive than the rest.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 319.