OBS. 6.—­The adjective little is used in different senses; for it contrasts sometimes with great, and sometimes with much. Lesser appears to refer only to size.  Hence less and lesser are not always equivalent terms. Lesser means smaller, and contrasts only with greater. Less contrasts sometimes with greater, but oftener with more, the comparative of much; for, though it may mean not so large, its most common meaning is not so much.  It ought to be observed, likewise, that less is not an adjective of number,[182] though not unfrequently used as such.  It does not mean fewer, and is therefore not properly employed in sentences like the following:  “In all verbs, there are no less than three things implied at once.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 81. “Smaller things than three,” is nonsense; and so, in reality, is what the Doctor here says. Less is not the proper opposite to more, when more is the comparative of many:  few, fewer, fewest, are the only words which contrast regularly with many, more, most.  In the following text, these comparatives are rightly employed:  “And to the more ye shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer ye shall give the less inheritance.”—­Numbers, xxxiii, 54.  But if writers will continue to use less for fewer, so that “less cattle,” for instance, may mean “fewer cattle;” we shall be under a sort of necessity to retain lesser, in order to speak intelligibly:  as, “It shall be for the sending-forth of oxen, and for the treading of lesser cattle.”—­Isaiah, vii, 25.  I have no partiality for the word lesser, neither will I make myself ridiculous by flouting at its rudeness.  “This word,” says Webster, “is a corruption, but [it is] too well established to be discarded.  Authors always write the Lesser Asia.”—­Octavo Dict. “By the same reason, may a man punish the lesser breaches of that law.”—­Locke.  “When we speak of the lesser differences among the tastes of men.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 20.  “In greater or lesser degrees of complexity.”—­Burke, on Sublime, p. 94.  “The greater ought not to succumb to the lesser.”—­Dillwyn’s Reflections, p. 128.  “To such productions, lesser composers must resort for ideas.”—­Gardiner’s Music of Nature, p. 413.

   “The larger here, and there the lesser lambs,
    The new-fall’n young herd bleating for their dams.”—­Pope.