regard to time, Prior should not have written '_more_
immediate.' _Dr. Johnson_."--_Ib._, p. 233. "Hooker has _unaptest_; Locke,
_more uncorrupted_; Holder, _more undeceivable_: for these the proper
expressions would have been the opposite signs without the negation: _least
apt, less corrupted, less deceivable_. Watts speaks of 'a _most unpassable_
barrier.' If he had simply said 'an unpassable barrier,' we should have
understood it at once in the strongest sense, as a barrier impossible to be
surmounted: but, by attempting to express something more, he gives an idea
of something less; we perceive, that his _unpassable_ means _difficult to
pass_. This is the mischief of the propensity to exaggeration; which,
striving after strength, sinks into weakness."--_Ib._, p. 234.

OBS. 9.--The foregoing remarks from Churchill appear _in general_ to have
been dictated by good sense; but, if his own practice is right, there must
be some exceptions to his rule respecting the comparison of adjectives with
a negative prefix; for, in the phrase "_less imprudent_," which, according
to a passage quoted before, he will have to be different from "_more
prudent_," he himself furnishes an example of such comparison. In fact,
very many words of that class are compared by good writers: as, "Nothing is
_more unnecessary_."--_Lowth's Gram., Pref._, p. v. "What is yet _more
unaccountable_."--ROGERS: _in Joh. Dict._ "It is hard to determine which is
_most uneligible_."--_Id., ib._ "Where it appears the _most unbecoming_ and
_unnatural_."--ADDISON: _ib._ "Men of the best sense and of the _most
unblemished_ lives."--_Id., ib._ "March and September are the _most
unsettled_ and _unequable_ of seasons."--BENTLEY: _ib._ "Barcelona was
taken by a _most unexpected_ accident."--SWIFT: _ib._ "The _most barren_
and _unpleasant_."--WOODWARD: _ib._ "O good, but _most unwise_
patricians!"--SHAK.: _ib._ "_More unconstant_ than the wind."--_Id., ib._
"We may say _more_ or _less imperfect_."--_Murray's Gram._, p. 168. "Some
of those [passions] which act with the _most irresistible_ energy upon the
hearts of mankind, are altogether omitted in the catalogue of
Aristotle."--_Adams's Rhet._, i, 380. "The wrong of him who presumes to
talk of owning me, is _too unmeasured_ to be softened by
kindness."--_Channing, on Emancipation_, p. 52. "Which, we are sensible,
are _more inconclusive_ than the rest."--_Blair's Rhet._, p. 319.

"Ere yet the salt of _most unrighteous_