is
a copy of this remarkable "DECLENSION ON INDEFINITE SPECIFYING ADNAMES,"
and just one half of the table is wrong: "_Some, more, most; Some, less,
least_; Little, less, least; Few, fewer _or less_, fewest _or least;
Several, more, most_; Much, more, most; Many, more most."--_Oliver B
Peirce's Gram._, p. 144.

[183] Murray himself had the same false notion concerning six of these
adjectives, and perhaps all the rest; for his indefinite _andsoforths_ may
embrace just what the reader pleases to imagine. Let the following
paragraph be compared with the observations and proofs which I shall offer:
"Adjectives that have in themselves a superlative signification, do not
properly admit of the superlative or [the] comparative form superadded:
such as, 'Chief, extreme, perfect, right, universal, supreme,' &c.; which
are sometimes improperly written, 'Chiefest, extremest, perfectest,
rightest, most universal, most supreme,' &c. The following expressions are
therefore improper. 'He sometimes claims admission to the _chiefest_
offices;' 'The quarrel became _so universal_ and national;' 'A method of
attaining the _rightest_ and greatest happiness.' The phrases, so perfect,
so right, so extreme, so universal, &c., are incorrect; because they imply
that one thing is less perfect, less extreme, &c. than another, which is
not possible."--_Murray's Gram._, 8vo, Vol. i, p. 167. For himself, a man
may do as he pleases about comparing these adjectives; but whoever corrects
others, on such principles as the foregoing, will have work enough on his
hands. But the writer who seems to exceed all others, in error on this
point, is _Joseph W. Wright_. In his "Philosophical Grammar," p. 51st, this
author gives a list of seventy-two adjectives, which, he says, "admit of
_no variation of state_;" i. e., are not compared. Among them are _round,
flat, wet, dry, clear, pure, odd, free, plain, fair, chaste, blind_, and
more than forty others, which are compared about as often as any words in
the language. Dr. Blair is hypercritically censured by him, for saying
"_most excellent_," "_more false_," "the _chastest_ kind," "_more perfect_"
"_fuller, more full, fullest, most full, truest_ and _most true_;" Murray,
for using "_quite wrong_;" and Cobbett, for the phrase, "_perfect
correctness_." "Correctness," says the critic, "does not admit of _degrees
of perfection_."--_Ib._, pp. 143 and 151. But what does such a thinker know
about correctness? If this excel