of less; as the word sweet changes into sweeter, sweetest, and
sweetish; which may be termed three degrees of comparison besides the
positive meaning of the word; which terminations of _er_ and _est_ are
seldom added to words of more than two syllables; as those degrees are
then most frequently denoted by the prepositions more and most.

Adjectives seem originally to have been derived from nouns
substantive, of which they express a quality, as a musky rose, a
beautiful lady, a stormy day. Some of them are formed from the
correspondent substantive by adding the syllable _ly_, or _like_, as a
lovely child, a warlike countenance; and in our language it is
frequently only necessary to put a hyphen between two nouns
substantive for the purpose of converting the former one into an
adjective, as an eagle-eye, a Mayday. And many of our adjectives are
substantives unchanged, and only known by their situation in a
sentence, as a German, or a German gentleman. Adjectives therefore are
names of qualities, or parts of things; as substantives are the names
of entire things.

In the Latin and Greek languages these adjectives possess a great
variety of terminations; which suggest occasionally the ideas of
number, gender, and the various cases, agreeing in all these with the
substantive, to which they belong; besides the two original or
primary ideas of quality, and of their appertaining to some other
word, which must be adjoined to make them sense. Insomuch that some of
these adjectives, when declined through all their cases, and genders,
and numbers, in their positive, comparative, and superlative degrees,
enumerate fifty or sixty terminations. All which to one, who wishes to
learn these languages, are so many new words, and add much to the
difficulty of acquiring them.

Though the English adjectives are undeclined, having neither case,
gender, nor number; and with this simplicity of form possess a degree
of comparison by the additional termination of ish, more than the
generality of Latin or Greek adjectives, yet are they less adapted to
poetic measure, as they must accompany their corresponding
substantives; from which they are perpetually separated in Greek and
Latin poetry.

2. There is a second kind of adjectives, which abound in our language,
and in the Greek, but not in the Latin, which are called ARTICLES by
the writers of grammar, as the letter _a_, and the word _the_. These,
like the adjectives above described, suggest