OBS. 10.—Comparison must not be considered a general property of adjectives. It belongs chiefly to the class which I call common adjectives, and is by no means applicable to all of these. Common adjectives, or epithets denoting quality, are perhaps more numerous than all the other classes put together. Many of these, and a few that are pronominal, may be varied by comparison; and some participial adjectives may be compared by means of the adverbs. But adjectives formed from proper names, all the numerals, and most of the compounds, are in no way susceptible of comparison. All nouns used adjectively, as an iron bar, an evening school, a mahogany chair, a South-Sea dream, are also incapable of comparison. In the title of "His Most Christian Majesty," the superlative adverb is applied to a proper adjective; but who will pretend that we ought to understand by it "the highest degree" of Christian attainment? It might seem uncourtly to suggest that this is "an abuse of the king's English," I shall therefore say no such thing. Pope compares the word Christian, in the following couplet:—
"Go, purified by flames ascend the sky,
My better and more Christian progeny."—Dunciad, B. i, l. 227.
IRREGULAR COMPARISON.
The following adjectives are compared irregularly: good, better, best; bad, evil, or ill, worse, worst; little, less, least; much, more, most; many, more, most.
OBSERVATIONS.
OBS. 1.—In English, and also in Latin, most adjectives that denote place or situation, not only form the superlative irregularly, but are also either defective or redundant in comparison. Thus:
I. The following nine have more than one superlative: far, farther, farthest, farmost, or farthermost; near, nearer, nearest or next; fore, former, foremost or first; hind, hinder, hindmost or hindermost; in, inner, inmost or innermost; out, outer, or utter, outmost or utmost, outermost or uttermost; up, upper, upmost or uppermost; low, lower, lowest or lowermost; late, later or latter, latest or last.
II. The following five want the positive: [aft, adv.,] after, aftmost or aftermost; [forth, adv., formerly furth,[180] further, furthest or furthermost; hither, hithermost; nether, nethermost; under, undermost.
III. The following want the comparative: front, frontmost; rear, rearmost; head, headmost; end, endmost; top, topmost; bottom, bottommost; mid or middle, midst,[181] midmost or middlemost; north, northmost; south, southmost; east, eastmost; west, westmost; northern, northernmost; southern, southernmost; eastern, easternmost; western, westernmost.
OBS. 2.—Many of these irregular words are not always used as adjectives, but oftener as nouns, adverbs, or prepositions. The sense in which they are employed, will show to what class they belong. The terms fore and hind, front and rear, right and left, in and out, high and low, top and bottom, up and down, upper and under, mid and after, all but the last pair, are in direct contrast with each other. Many of them are often joined in composition with other words; and some, when used as adjectives of place, are rarely separated from their nouns: as, _in_land, _out_house, mid-sea, after-ages. Practice is here so capricious, I find it difficult to determine whether the compounding of these terms is proper or not. It is a case about which he that inquires most, may perhaps be most in doubt. If the joining of the words prevents the possibility of mistaking the adjective for a preposition, it prevents also the separate classification of the adjective and the noun, and thus in some sense destroys the former by making the whole a noun. Dr. Webster writes thus: "FRONTROOM, n. A room or apartment in the forepart of a house. BACKROOM, n. A room behind the front room, or in the back part of the house."—Octavo Dict. So of many phrases by which people tell of turning things, or changing the position of their parts; as, _in_side out, _out_side _in; up_side _down, down_side up; wrong end foremost, but-end foremost; fore-part back, fore-end aft; hind side _before, back_side before. Here all these contrasted particles seem to be adjectives of place or situation. What grammarians in general would choose to call them, it is hard to say; probably, many would satisfy themselves with calling the whole "an adverbial phrase,"—the common way of disposing of every thing which it is difficult to analyze. These, and the following examples from Scott, are a fair specimen of the uncertainty of present usage: