80. "In the first of these two sentences."--Ib., p. 162; Lowth, p. 120. According to the rule, it should have been, "In the former of these two sentences;" but this would be here ambiguous, because former might mean maker. "When our sentence consists of two members, the longest should, generally, be the concluding one."--Blair's Rhet., p. 117: and Jamieson's, p. 99. "The shortest member being placed first, we carry it more readily in our memory as we proceed to the second."--Ib., & Ib. "Pray consider us, in this respect, as the weakest sex."--Spect., No. 533. In this last sentence, the comparative, weaker, would perhaps have been better; because, not an absolute, but merely a comparative weakness is meant. So Latham and Child: "It is better, in speaking of only two objects, to use the comparative degree rather than the superlative, even, where we use the article the. This is the better of the two, is preferable to this is the best of the two."--Elementary Gram., p. 155. Such is their rule; but very soon they forget it, and write thus: "In this case the relative refers to the last of the two."--Ib., p. 163.
OBS. 14.--Hyperboles are very commonly expressed by comparatives or superlatives; as, "My little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins."--1 Kings, xii, 10. "Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given."--Ephesians, iii, 8. Sometimes, in thus heightening or lowering the object of his conception, the writer falls into a catachresis, solecism, or abuse of the grammatical degrees; as, "Mustard-seed--which is less than all the seeds that be in the earth."--Mark, iv, 31. This expression is objectionable, because mustard-seed is a seed, and cannot be less than itself; though that which is here spoken of, may perhaps have been "the least of all seeds:" and it is the same Greek phrase, that is thus rendered in Matt, xiii, 32. Murray has inserted in his Exercises, among "unintelligible and inconsistent words and phrases," the following example from Milton:
"And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide."--Exercises, p. 122.
For this supposed inconsistency, ho proposes in his Key the following amendment:
"And, in the lower deep, another deep Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide."--Key, p. 254.
But, in an other part of his book, he copies from Dr. Blair the same passage, with commendation: saying, "The following sentiments of Satan in Milton, as strongly as they are described, contain nothing but what is natural and proper:
'Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And in the lowest depth, a lower deep,
Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.' P. Lost, B. iv, l. 73."
Blair's Lectures, p. 153; Murray's Grammar, p. 352.
OBS. 15.--Milton's word, in the fourth line above, is deep, and not depth, as these authors here give it: nor was it very polite in them, to use a phraseology which comes so near to saying, the devil was in the poet. Alas for grammar! accuracy in its teachers has become the most rare of all qualifications. As for Murray's correction above, I see not how it can please any one who chooses to think Hell a place of great depth. A descent into his "lower deep" and "other deep," might be a plunge less horrible than two or three successive slides in one of our western caverns! But Milton supposes the arch-fiend might descend to the lowest imaginable depth of Hell, and there be liable to a still further fall of more tremendous extent. Fall whither? Into the horrid and inconceivable profundity of the bottomless pit! What signifies it, to object to his language as "unintelligible" if it conveys his idea better than any other could? In no human conception of what is infinite, can there be any real exaggeration. To amplify beyond the truth, is here impossible. Nor is there any superlation which can fix a limit to the idea of more and more in infinitude. Whatever literal absurdity there may be in it, the duplication seems greatly to augment what was even our greatest conception of the thing. Homer, with a like figure, though expressed in the positive degree, makes Jupiter threaten any rebel god, that he shall be thrown down from Olympus, to suffer the burning pains of the Tartarean gulf; not in the centre, but,
"As deep beneath th' infernal centre hurl'd,
As from that centre to th' ethereal world."
--Pope's Iliad, B. viii, l. 19.
REGULAR COMPARISON.
Adjectives are regularly compared, when the comparative degree is expressed by adding er, and the superlative, by adding est to them: as, Pos., great, Comp., greater, Superl., greatest; Pos., mild, Comp., milder, Superl., mildest.
In the variation of adjectives, final consonants are doubled, final e is omitted, and final y is changed to i, agreeably to the rules for spelling: as, hot, hotter, hottest; wide, wider, widest; happy, happier, happiest.
The regular method of comparison belongs almost exclusively to monosyllables, with dissyllables ending in w or y, and such others as receive it and st
