Part 46 (1/2)
”Those nice shades, by which _virtues and vices_ approach _each one another_”--_Murray's Gra, rather than what it is Say, ”By which _virtue_ and _vice_ approach _each other_” Or: ”By which certain virtues and vices _approximate-- blend--become difficult of distinction_”
OBS 20--”Most authors have given the name of _pronoun adjectives_, ['pronouns adjective,' or 'pronominal adjectives,'] to _my, mine; our, ours; thy, thine; your, yours; his, her, hers; their, theirs_: perhaps because they are followed by, or refer to, some substantive [expressed or understood after them] But, were they adjectives, they must either express the quality of their substantive, or limit its extent: adjectives properly so called, do the first; definitive pronouns do the last All adjectives [that are either singular or plural,] agree with their substantives in _nuular, and _books_ plural; therefore _my_ is not an adjective Besides, _my_ does not express the _quality_ of the books, but only ascertains the possessor, the saenitive or substantive does, to which it is similar Examples: 'They are _my_ books;'--'They are _John's_ books;' &c”--_Alex Murray's Gram_, p 108
OBS 21--To the class of Participial Adjectives, should be referred all such words as the following: (1) The si_ lion,”--”A _raging_ bear,”--”A _brawling_ wo_ heart,”--”_Burning_ coals,”--”The _hearing_ ear, and the _seeing_ eye”--_Bible_ ”A _troubled_ fountain,”--”A _wounded_ spirit,”--”An _appointed_ time”--_Ib_ (2) Words of a participial appearance, for _ed_; as, ”The eve thy _sainted_ mother died”--_W Scott_ ”What you write of me, would make me more _conceited_, than what I scribble myself”--_Pope_ (3) Participles, or participial adjectives, reversed in sense by the prefix _un_; as, _unaspiring, unavailing, unbelieving, unbattered, uninjured, unbefriended_ (4) Words of a participial for the _dying_ and the dead”--”The _called_ of Jesus Christ”--_Rom_, i, 6 ”Dearly _beloved_, I beseech you”--_1 Pet_, ii, 11 ”The _redeemed_ of the Lord shall return”--_Isaiah_, li, 11 ”They talk, to the grief of thy _wounded_”--_Psalin_
OBS 22--In the text, Prov, vii, 26, ”She hath cast down many wounded,”
_wounded_ is a participle; because theis, ”_many men wounded_,”
and not, ”_ly numerous It is not easy to ascertain how many there are of them; because almost any simple participle may be set before a noun, and thus beco its earliest visit paid, And _parting_ su_ blooms delay'd”--_Golds formed at pleasure, are both numerous and various In their foriesan adjective to its noun, and giving to the latter the participial terhted, left-handed, full-faced, flat-nosed, thick-lipped, cloven-footed, high-heeled_ (2) In so _ed_, as above; as, _bell-shaped, hawk-nosed, eagle-sighted, lion-hearted, web-footed_ (3) In some, the object of an active participle is placed before it; as, _, fortune-hunting, sleep-disturbing_ (4) Soh it is seldoed, four-legged_ So, _one-leaved, two-leaved, three-leaved, four-leaved_: or, perhaps better as Webster will have them, _one-leafed, two-leafed, &c_ But, upon the same principle, _short-lived_, should be _short-lifed_, and _long-lived, long-lifed_ (5) In some, there is a combination of an adjective and a participle; as, _noble-looking, high-sounding, slow-, hard-finished, free-born, heavy-laden, only-begotten_ (6) In some, we find an adverb and a participle united; as, _ever-living, ill-judging, well-pleasing, far-shooting, forth-issuing, back-sliding, ill-trained, down-trodden, above-mentioned_ (7) Soht be reversed with a preposition between the, care-crazed, travel-soiled, blood-bespotted, dew-sprinkled_ (8) A few, and those inelegant, ter-looked-for, unthought-of, unheard-of_ (9) Some are phrases of many words, converted into one part of speech by the hyphen; as, ”Where is the _ever-to-be-honoured_ Chaucer?”--_Wordsworth_
”And, with _God-only-kno-gotten_ light, Infor's Gift for Scribblers_, p 49
OBS 24--Nouns derived froood writers; yet we sometimes meet with them: as, _hard-heartedness_, for hardness of heart, or cruelty; _quick-sightedness_, for quickness of sight, or perspicacity; _worldly-ain; _heavenly- of ancestors or descendants, we take the noun, _father, rand_; for the second generation; _great_, for the, third; and then, sorees reat-great-grandfather_ ”What would ht I, could she know that thou art to be chopped up for fuel to warhters_!”--_T H
Bayley_
MODIFICATIONS
Adjectives have, commonly, no modifications but the forms of _comparison_
Comparison is a variation of the adjective, to express quality in different degrees: as, _hard, harder, hardest; soft, softer, softest_
There are three degrees of comparison; the _positive_, the _coree_ is that which is expressed by the adjective in its sie_; a _”
The _coree_ is that which is _ contrasted with it: as, ”A whale is _larger_ than an elephant; a mouse is a ree_ is that which is _most_ or _least_ of all included with it: as, ”The whale is the _largest_ of the anilobe; the mouse is the _smallest_ of all beasts”--_Dr Johnson_
Those adjectives whose signification does not adrees, cannot be compared; as, _two, second, all, every, immortal, infinite_
Those adjectives which may be varied in sense, but not in form, are compared by means of adverbs; as, fruitful, _more_ fruitful, _most_ fruitful--fruitful, _less_ fruitful, _least_ fruitful
OBSERVATIONS
OBS 1--”Soree of coround, that it does not iree But no quality can exist, without existing in soh the positive is very frequently used without reference to any other degree; as it is _the standard_, hich other degrees of the quality are compared, it is certainly an essential object of the coht in fact with more propriety say, that there are five: 1, the quality in its standard state, or positive degree; as _wise_: 2, in a higher state, or the co; _; _less wise_: 4, in the highest state, or superlative ascending; _; _least wise_ All gras theh they differ about the names, by which these forms should be called: and as those names are practically best, which tend least to perplex the learner, I see no good reason here for deviating fro custom”--_Churchill's Gram_, p 231
OBS 2--Churchill here writes plausibly enough, but it will be seen, both fro definitions of the degrees of comparison, that there are but three The couishable into the ascending and the descending, as often as we prefer the adverbial forular variation of the adjective itself; but this i them otherwise than simply as the comparative and the superlative The assumption of two comparatives and two superlatives, is not only contrary to the universal practice of the teachers of graainst it--that the regular rees of direes, is _no inflection_ of the adjective If there is any exception, it is in the words, _small, smaller, smallest_, and _little, less, least_ But of the smallness or littleness, considered abstractly, these, like all others, are degrees of increase, and not of diminution _Smaller_ is as completely opposite to _less small_, as _wiser_ is to _less wise_ _Less_ itself is a co, only when it diminishes some _other_ quality: _less little_, if the phrase were proper, reater_ or _ re of an adjective, and the co the opposite quality, are often considered synonymous, by those who do not discriminate nicely between ideas But _less i as _more prudent_; or _more brave_, the same as _less cowardly_”--_New Graiven of the three degrees of coraiven what may justly be called a _definition_, of any one of therammar, loose _remarks_, ill-written and untrue assertions, have sufficed The explanations found in : ”The positive state expresses the quality of an object, without any increase or diree increases or lessens the positive in signification; as, wiser, greater, less wise The superlative degree increases or lessens the positive to the highest or [the] lowest degree; as, wisest, greatest, least wise The si _r_ or _er_; and the superlative by adding _st_ or _est_, to the end of it
And the adverbs _more_ and _most_, placed before the adjective, have the same effect; as, wise, _more_ wise, _most_ wise”--_Murray's Grammar_, 2d Ed, 1796, p 47 If a --of thoughts ill conceived, and not well expressed--he could not do better than take the foregoing: provided his auditors knew enough of grammar to answer the four siree? What is the coree? How are adjectives regularly compared? To these questions I shall furnish _direct answers_, which the readercitation: the last two sentences of which Murray ought to have credited to Dr Lowth; for he copied them literally, except that he says, ”the adverbs _more_ AND _most_,” for the Doctor's phrase, ”the adverbs _more_ OR _most_” See the whole also in _Kirkhaer's_, p 21; in _Bacon's_, p 18; in _Russell's_, p 14; in _Hamlin's_, p 22; in _J M Putnam's_, p 33; in _S Putnam's_, p 20; in _R C Smith's_, p 51; in _Rev T Smith's_, p 20
OBS 4--In the five short sentences quoted above, there are more errors, than can possibly be enumerated in ten times the space For exarows cold or hot very rapidly,”
_cold_ and _hot_ could not be in the ”_positive state_,” as they define it: because, either the ”quality” or the ”object,” (I know not which,) is represented by them as ”without any increase or diminution;” and this would not, in the present case, be true of either; for iron changes in bulk, by a change of temperature (2) What, in the first sentence, is erroneously called ”the positive _state_,” in the second and the third, is called, ”the positive _degree_;” and this again, in the fourth, is falsely identified with ”the si to be, that ”the positive state,” ”the positive degree,” or ”the simple word,” is ”without any increase or diminution;” this is expressly contradicted by three sentences out of the five, and implicitly, by one of the others (3) Not one of these sentences is _true_, in the most obvious sense of the words, if in any other; and yet the doctrines they were designed to teach, athered fronification_,” is not intelligible in the sense intended, without a colish grae, I find not one that has a point in that place (5) It is not more correct to say, that the coree, ”increases or lessens the positive,”
than it would be to aver, that the plural nuender, the masculine Nor does the superlative mean, what a certain learned Doctor understands by it--naree_” If it did, ”the _thickest_ parts of his skull,” for example, would imply small room for brains; ”the _thinnest_,” protect them ill, if there were any (6) It is improper to say, ”_The si r or er_; and _the superlative by adding st or est_” The thought is wrong; and nearly all the words are _ for _assu_, &c (7) Nor is it very wise to say, ”the adverbs _more_ and _most_, placed before the adjective, _have the saht to be known, that the effect of the one is very different from that of the other! ”_The same effect_,” cannot here be taken for any effect previously described; unless ill have it to be, that these words, _ _r_ or _er_; and the superlative by adding _st_ or _est_, to the end of therossly 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 saree 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 _beco _st_ or _est_, to the end of it;” i e, to the end of _itself_ Nothing can be raht!
OBS 5--It has been alraree 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 readerthe several ways in which each forreater_ than Solomon,”--”_more_ than a bushel,”--”_later_ than one o'clock,” it is not ireat, 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 Soloreat_,”--”_more_, than a bushel _is overns 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 seelish idioreater than I_”--_John_, xiv, 28 That is, ”My Father is greater _than I areat_” But if it appear that _soree of the same quality must always be contrasted with the coree 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 mea propria est”--_Epist ad Fam_, xiv, 3 ”But in this I am _more wretched_, than thou, who art _most wretched_, that the calamity itself is common to us both, but the fault is all my own”