OBS. 9.—­Extreme is from the Latin superlative extremus, and of course its literal signification is not really susceptible of increase.  Yet extremest has been used, and is still used, by some of the very best writers; as, “They thought it the extremest of evils.”—­Bacon.  “That on the sea’s extremest border stood.”—­Addison.  “How, to extremest thrill of agony.”—­Pollok, B. viii, l. 270.  “I go th’ extremest remedy to prove.”—­Dryden.  “In extremest poverty.”—­Swift.  “The hairy fool stood on th’ extremest verge of the swift brook, augmenting it with tears.”—­Shak.  “While the extremest parts of the earth were meditating submission.”—­Atterbury.  “His writings are poetical to the extremest boundaries of poetry.”—­Adams’s Rhetoric, i, 87.  In prose, this superlative is not now very common; but the poets still occasionally use it, for the sake of their measure; and it ought to be noticed that the simple adjective is not partitive.  If we say, for the first example, “the extreme of evils;” we make the word a noun, and do not convey exactly the same idea that is there expressed.

OBS. 10.—­Perfect, if taken in its strictest sense, must not be compared; but this word, like many others which mean most in the positive, is often used with a certain latitude of meaning, which renders its comparison by the adverbs not altogether inadmissible; nor is it destitute of authority, as I have already shown.  (See Obs. 8th, p. 280.) “From the first rough sketches, to the more perfect draughts.”—­Bolingbroke, on Hist., p. 152.  “The most perfect.”—­Adams’s Lect. on Rhet., i, 99 and 136; ii, 17 and 57:  Blair’s Lect., pp. 20 and 399.  “The most beautiful and perfect example of analysis.”—­Lowth’s Gram., Pref., p. 10.  “The plainest, most perfect, and most useful manual.”—­Bullions’s E. Gram., Rev., p. 7.  “Our sight is the most perfect, and the most delightful, of all our senses.”—­Addison, Spect., No. 411; Blair’s Lect., pp. 115 and 194; Murray’s Gram., i, 322.  Here Murray anonymously copied Blair.  “And to render natives more perfect in the knowledge of it.”—­Campbell’s Rhet., p. 171; Murray’s Gram., p. 366.  Here Murray copied Campbell, the most accurate of all his masters.  Whom did he copy when he said, “The phrases, more perfect, and most perfect, are improper?”—­Octavo Gram., p. 168.  But if these are wrong, so is the following sentence:  “No poet has ever attained a greater perfection than Horace.”—­Blair’s Lect., p. 398.  And also this:  “Why are we brought into the world less perfect in respect to our nature?”—­West’s Letters to a Young Lady, p. 220.