most erroneous_.

OBS. 12.--_Honest, just, true, correct, sincere_, and _vast_, may all be
compared at pleasure. Pope's Essay on Criticism is _more correct_ than any
thing this modest pretender can write; and in it, he may find the
comparative _juster_, the superlatives _justest, truest, sincerest_, and
the phrases, "_So vast_ a throng,"--"_So vast_ is art:" all of which are
contrary to his teaching. "_Unjuster_ dealing is used in buying than in
selling."--_Butler's Poems_, p. 163. "_Iniquissimam_ pacem _justissimo_
bello antefero."--_Cicero_. "I prefer the _unjustest_ peace before the
_justest_ war."--_Walker's English Particles_, p. 68. The poet Cowley used
the word _honestest_; which is not now very common. So Swift: "What
_honester_ folks never durst for their ears."--_The Yahoo's Overthrow_. So
Jucius: "The _honestest_ and ablest men."--_Letter XVIII_. "The sentence
would be _more correct_ in the following form."--_Murray's Gram._, i, p.
223. "Elegance is chiefly gained by studying the _correctest_
writers."--_Holmes's Rhetoric_, p. 27. _Honest_ and _correct_, for the sake
of euphony, require the adverbs; as, _more honest_, "_most
correct_."--_Lowth's Gram., Pref._, p. iv. _Vast, vaster, vastest_, are
words as smooth, as _fast, faster, fastest_; and _more vast_ is certainly
as good English as _more just_: "Shall mortal man be _more just_ than
God?"--_Job_, iv, 17. "Wilt thou condemn him that is _most just_?"--_Ib._,
xxxiv, 17. "More wise, more learn'd, _more just_, more-everything."--_Pope.
Universal_ is often compared by the adverbs, but certainly with no
reenforcement of meaning: as, "One of the _most universal_ precepts, is,
that the orator himself should feel the passion."--_Adams's Rhet._, i, 379.
"Though not _so universal_."--_Ib._, ii, 311. "This experience is general,
though not _so universal_, as the absence of memory in childhood."--_Ib._,
ii, 362. "We can suppose no motive which would _more universally_
operate."--_Dr. Blair's Rhet._, p. 55. "Music is known to have been _more
universally_ studied."--_Ib._, p. 123. "We shall not wonder, that his
grammar has been _so universally_ applauded."--_Walker's Recommendation in
Murray's Gram._, ii, 306. "The pronoun _it_ is the _most universal_ of all
the pronouns."--_Cutler's Gram._, p. 66. Thus much for one half of this
critic's twenty-two "_superlatives_." The rest are simply adjectives that
are not susceptible of comparison: they are not "superlatives" at all.