the end of them:" all of which is
grossly absurd. (8.) The repetition of the word _degree_, in saying, "The
superlative _degree_ increases or lessens the positive to the highest or
lowest _degree_," is a disagreeable tautology. Besides, unless it involves
the additional error of presenting the same word in different senses, it
makes one degree swell or diminish an other _to itself_; whereas, in the
very next sentence, this singular agency is forgotten, and a second equally
strange takes its place: "The positive _becomes_ the superlative by adding
_st_ or _est_, to the end of it;" i. e., to the end of _itself_. Nothing
can be more ungrammatical, than is much of the language by which grammar
itself is now professedly taught!

OBS. 5.--It has been almost universally assumed by grammarians, that the
positive degree is _the only standard_ to which the other degrees can
refer; though many seem to think, that the superlative always implies or
includes the comparative, and is consequently inapplicable when only two
things are spoken of. Neither of these positions is involved in any of the
definitions which I have given above. The reader may think what he will
about these points, after observing the several ways in which each form may
be used. In the phrases, "_greater_ than Solomon,"--"_more_ than a
bushel,"--"_later_ than one o'clock," it is not immediately obvious that
the positives _great, much_, and _late_, are the real terms of contrast.
And how is it in the Latin phrases, "_Dulcior melle_, sweeter than
honey,"--"_Praestantior auro_, better than gold?" These authors will resolve
all such phrases thus: "_greater_, than Solomon _was great_,"--"_more_,
than a bushel _is much_," &c. As the conjunction _than_ never governs the
objective case, it seems necessary to suppose an ellipsis of some verb
after the noun which follows it as above; and possibly the foregoing
solution, uncouth as it seems, may, for the English idiom, be the true one:
as, "My Father is _greater than I_."--_John_, xiv, 28. That is, "My Father
is greater _than I am_;"--or, perhaps, "than I am _great_." But if it
appear that _some_ degree of the same quality must always be contrasted
with the comparative, there is still room to question whether this degree
must always be that which we call the positive. Cicero, in exile, wrote to
his wife: "Ego autem hoc _miserior_ sum, quam tu, quae es _miserrima_, quod
ipsa calamitas communis est utriusque nostrum, sed culpa m