improper repetition of the article:  as, “Another such a man,” for, “An other such man.”—­“Bind my hair up.  An ’twas yesterday?  No, nor the t’other day.”—­BEN JONSON:  in Joh.  Dict. “He can not tell when he should take the tone, and when the tother.”—­SIR T. MOORE:  Tooke’s D. P., Vol. 15, p. 448.  That is—­“when he should take the one and when the other.”  Besides, the word other is declined, like a noun, and has the plural others; but the compounding of another constrains our grammarians to say, that this word “has no plural.”  All these difficulties will be removed by writing an other as two words.  The printers chiefly rule this matter.  To them, therefore, I refer it; with directions, not to unite these words for me, except where it has been done in the manuscript, for the sake of exactness in quotation.—­G.  BROWN.

[176] This is a misapplication of the word between, which cannot have reference to more than two things or parties:  the term should have been among.—­G.  BROWN.

[177] I suppose that, in a comparison of two, any of the degrees may be accurately employed.  The common usage is, to construe the positive with as, the comparative with than, and the superlative with of.  But here custom allows us also to use the comparative with of, after the manner of the superlative; as, “This is the better of the two.”  It was but an odd whim of some old pedant, to find in this a reason for declaring it ungrammatical to say “This is the best of the two.”  In one grammar, I find the former construction condemned, and the latter approved, thus:  “This is the better book of the two.  Not correct, because the comparative state of the adjective, (better,) can not correspond with the preposition, of.  The definite article, the, is likewise improperly applied to the comparative state; the sentence should stand thus, This is the best book of the two.”—­Chandler’s Gram., Ed. of 1821, p. 130; Ed. of 1847, p. 151.

[178] This example appears to have been borrowed from Campbell; who, however, teaches a different doctrine from Murray, and clearly sustains my position; “Both degrees are in such cases used indiscriminately.  We say rightly, either ‘This is the weaker of the two,’ or—­’the weakest of the two.’”—­Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 202.  How positively do some other men contradict this!  “In comparing two persons or things, by means of an adjective, care must be taken, that the superlative state be not employed:  We properly say, ‘John is the taller of the two;’ but we should not say, ‘John is the tallest of the two.’  The reason is plain:  we compare but two persons, and must therefore use the comparative state.”—­Wright’s Philosophical Gram., p. 143.  Rev. Matt.  Harrison, too, insists on it, that the superlative must “have reference to more than two,” and censures Dr. Johnson for not observing the rule.  See Harrison’s English Language, p. 255.