, although it may be
still far off, when all English verbs will form their praeterites
weakly; not without serious damage to the fulness and force which in
this respect the language even now displays, and once far more eminently
displayed{193}.

{Sidenote: _Comparatives and Superlatives_}

Take another proof of this tendency in our own language to drop its
forms and renounce its own inherent powers; though here also the
renunciation, threatening one day to be complete, is only partial at the
present. I refer to the formation of our comparatives and superlatives;
and I will ask you again to observe here that curious law of language,
namely, that wherever there are two or more ways of attaining the same
result, there is always a disposition to drop and dismiss all of these
but one, so that the alternative or choice of ways once existing, shall
not exist any more. If only it can attain a greater simplicity, it seems
to grudge no self-impoverishment by which this result may be brought
about. We have two ways of forming our comparatives and superlatives,
one dwelling in the word itself, which we have inherited from our old
Gothic stock, as 'bright', 'bright_er_', 'bright_est_', the other
supplementary to this, by prefixing the auxiliaries 'more' and 'most'.
The first, organic we might call it, the indwelling power of the word to
mark its own degrees, must needs be esteemed the more excellent way;
which yet, already disallowed in almost all adjectives of more than two
syllables in length, is daily becoming of narrower and more restrained
application. Compare in this matter our present with our past. Wiclif
for example forms such comparatives as 'grievouser', 'gloriouser',
'patienter', 'profitabler', such superlatives as 'grievousest',
'famousest'; this last occurring also in Bacon. We meet in Tyndale,
'excellenter', 'miserablest'; in Shakespeare, 'violentest'; in Gabriel
Harvey, 'vendiblest', 'substantialest', 'insolentest'; in Rogers,
'insufficienter', 'goldener'; in Beaumont and Fletcher, 'valiantest'.
Milton uses 'virtuosest', and in prose 'vitiosest', 'elegantest',
'artificialest', 'servilest', 'sheepishest', 'resolutest', 'sensualest';
Fuller has 'fertilest'; Baxter 'tediousest'; Butler 'preciousest',
'intolerablest'; Burnet 'copiousest', Gray 'impudentest'. Of these
forms, and it would be easy to adduce almost any number, we should
hardly employ any now. In participles and adverbs in 'ly', these organic
comparatives a