An innumerable number is an absurd expression, which is used by some persons,—not, it is to be hoped, “an innumerable number” of times.
Seraphim, for seraph; the plural for the singular. Even Addison says: “The zeal of the seraphim breaks forth,” etc. This is as ludicrous as the language of the Indiana justice, who spoke of “the first claw of the statute,” or the answer of the man who, when asked whether he had no politics, replied, “Not a single politic.”
People, for persons, “Many people think so.” Better, persons; people means a body of persons regarded collectively, a nation.
Off of, for off. “Cut a yard off of the cloth.”
More perfect, most perfect. What shall be said of these and similar forms of expression? Doubtless they should be discouraged, though used by Shakespeare and Milton. It may be argued in their favor, that, though not logically correct, yet they are rhetorically so. It is true that, as “twenty lions cannot be more twenty than twenty flies,” so nothing can be more perfect than perfection. But we do not object to say that one man is braver than another, or wiser, though, if we had an absolute standard of bravery or wisdom,—that is, a clear idea of them,—we should pronounce either of the two persons to be simply brave or not brave, wise or not wise. We say that Smith is a better man than Jones, though no one is absolutely good but God. These forms are used because language is inadequate to express the intensity of the thought,—as in Milton’s “most wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best,” or the lines,
“And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.”
Milton abounds in these illogical expressions, as do the best Greek poets; and one of the happiest verses in the poems of W. W. Story is a similar intentional contradiction, as