“The honourablest part of talk, is, to give the occasion.”—­Bacon’s Essays, p. 90.  “To give him one of his own modestest proverbs.”—­ Barclay’s Works, iii, 340.  “Our language is now certainly properer and more natural, than it was formerly.”—­Bp.  Burnet.  “Which will be of most and frequentest use to him in the world.”—­Locke, on Education, p. 163.  “The same is notified in the notablest places in the diocese.”—­Whitgift.  “But it was the dreadfullest sight that ever I saw.”—­Pilgrim’s Progress, p. 70.  “Four of the ancientest, soberest, and discreetest of the brethren, chosen for the occasion, shall regulate it.”—­Locke, on Church Gov.  “Nor can there be any clear understanding of any Roman author, especially of ancienter time, without this skill.”—­Walker’s Particles, p. x.  “Far the learnedest of the Greeks.”—­Ib., p. 120.  “The learneder thou art, the humbler be thou.”—­Ib., p. 228.  “He is none of the best or honestest.”—­ Ib., p. 274.  “The properest methods of communicating it to others.”—­ Burn’s Gram., Prof, p. viii.  “What heaven’s great King hath powerfullest to send against us.”—­Paradise Lost.  “Benedict is not the unhopefullest husband that I know.”—­SHAK.:  in Joh.  Dict. “That he should immediately do all the meanest and triflingest things himself.”—­RAY:  in Johnson’s Gram., p. 6.  “I shall be named among the famousest of women.”—­MILTON’S Samson Agonistes:  ib. “Those have the inventivest heads for all purposes.”—­ASCHAM:  ib. “The wretcheder are the contemners of all helps.”—­BEN JONSON:  ib. “I will now deliver a few of the properest and naturallest considerations that belong to this piece.”—­WOTTON:  ib. “The mortalest poisons practised by the West Indians, have some mixture of the blood, fat, or flesh of man.”—­BACON:  ib. “He so won upon him, that he rendered him one of the faithfulest and most affectionate allies the Medes ever had.”—­Rollin, ii, 71. “‘You see before you,’ says he to him, ’the most devoted servant, and the faithfullest ally, you ever had.’”—­Ib., ii, 79.  “I chose the flourishing’st tree in all the park.”—­Cowley.  “Which he placed, I think, some centuries backwarder than Julius Africanus thought fit to place it afterwards.”—­Bolingbroke, on History, p. 53.  “The Tiber, the notedest river of Italy.”—­Littleton’s Dict.

   “To fartherest shores the ambrosial spirit flies.”
        —­Cutler’s Gram., p. 140.

    ——­“That what she wills to do or say,
    Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.”
        —­Milton, B. viii, l. 550.

LESSON II.—­MIXED.

“During the three or four first years of its existence.”—­Taylor’s District School, p. 27.

[FORMULE.—­Not proper, because the cardinal numbers, three and four are put before the ordinal first.  But, according to the 7th part of Obs. 7th, page 280th, “In specifying any part of a series, we ought to place the cardinal number after the ordinal.”  Therefore the words three and four should be placed after first; thus, “During the first three or four years of its existence.”]