IV. VERSIFICATION (part 2 of 2)

IV. VERSIFICATION (part 2 of 2)

[272] Worcester has also this citation: "The Eclectic Review remarks, 'That a need of this phrase, or an equivalent one, is felt, is sufficiently proved by the extent to which it is used by educated persons and respectable writers.'"--Gram. before Dict., p. xlvi. Sundry phrases, equivalent in sense to this new voice, have long been in use, and are, of course, still needed; something from among them being always, by every accurate writer, still preferred. But this awkward innovation, use it who will, can no more be justified by a plea of "need," than can every other hackneyed solecism extant. Even the Archbishop, if quoted right by Worcester, has descended to "uncouth English," without either necessity or propriety, having thereby only misexpounded a very common Greek word--a "perfect or pluperfect" participle, which means "beaten, struck, or having been beaten"--G. Brown.

[273] Wells has also the following citations, which most probably accord with his own opinions, though the first is rather extravagant: "The propriety of these imperfect passive tenses has been doubted by almost all our grammarians; though I believe but few of them have written many pages without condescending to make use of them. Dr. Beattie says, 'One of the greatest defects of the English tongue, with regard to the verb, seems to be the want of an imperfect passive participle.' And yet he uses the imperfect participle in a passive sense as often as most writers."--Pickbourn's Dissertation on the English Verb.

"Several other expressions of this sort now and then occur, such as the new-fangled and most uncouth solecism, 'is being done,' for the good old English idiomatic expression, 'is doing,'--an absurd periphrasis, driving out a pointed and pithy turn of the English language."--N. A. Review. See Wells's Grammar, 1850, p. 161.

The term, "imperfect passive tenses," seems not a very accurate one; because the present, the perfect, &c., are included. Pickbourn applies it to any passive tenses formed from the simple "imperfect participle;" but the phrase, "passive verbs in the progressive form," would better express the meaning. The term, "compound passive participle," which Wells applies above to "being built," "being printed," and the like, is also both unusual and inaccurate. Most readers would sooner understand by it the form, having been built, having been printed, &c. This author's mode of naming participles is always either very awkward or not distinctive. His scheme makes it necessary to add here, for each of these forms, a third epithet, referring to his main distinction of "imperfect and perfect;" as, "the compound imperfect participle passive," and "the compound perfect participle passive." What is "being builded" or "being printed," but "an imperfect passive participle?" Was this, or something else, the desideratum of Beattie?

[274] Borne usually signifies carried; born signifies brought forth. J. K. Worcester, the lexicographer, speaks of these two participles thus: "[Fist] The participle born is used in the passive form, and borne in the active form, [with reference to birth]; as, 'He was born blind,' John ix.; 'The barren hath borne seven,' I Sam. ii. This distinction between born and borne, though not recognized by grammars, is in accordance with common usage, at least in this country. In many editions of the Bible it is recognized; and in many it is not. It seems to have been more commonly recognized in American, than in English, editions."--Worcester's Universal and Critical Dict., w. Bear. In five, out of seven good American editions of the Bible among my books, the latter text is, "The barren hath born seven;" in two, it is as above, "hath borne." In Johnson's Quarto Dictionary, the perfect participle of bear is given erroneously, "bore, or born;" and that of forbear, which should be forborne, is found, both in his columns and in his preface, "forborn."

[275] According to Murray, Lennie, Bullions, and some others, to use begun for began or run for ran, is improper; but Webster gives run as well as ran for the preterit, and begun may be used in like manner, on the authority of Dryden, Pope, and Parnell.

[276] "And they shall pass through it, hardly bestead, and hungry."--Isaiah, viii, 21.

[277] "Brake [for the preterit of Break] seems now obsolescent."--Dr. Crombie, Etymol. and Syntax, p. 193. Some recent grammarians, however, retain it; among whom are Bullions and M'Culloch. Wells retains it, but marks it as, "Obsolete;" as he does also the preterits bare, clave, drove, gat, slang, spake, span, spat, sware, tare, writ; and the participles hoven, loaden, rid from ride, spitten, stricken, and writ. In this he is not altogether consistent. Forms really obsolete belong not to any modern list of irregular verbs; and even such as are archaic and obsolescent, it is sometimes better to omit. If "loaden," for example, is now out of use, why should "load, unload, and overload," be placed, as they are by this author, among "irregular verbs;" while freight and distract, in spite of fraught and distraught, are reckoned regular? "Rid," for rode or ridden, though admitted by Worcester, appears to me a low vulgarism.

[278] Cleave, to split, is most commonly, if not always, irregular, as above; cleave, to stick, or adhere, is usually considered regular, but clave was formerly used in the preterit, and clove still may be: as, "The men of Judah clave unto their king."--Samuel. "The tongue of the public prosecutor clove to the roof of his mouth."--Boston Atlas, 1855.

[279] Respecting the preterit and the perfect participle of this verb, drink, our grammarians are greatly at variance. Dr. Johnson says, "preter. drank or drunk; part. pass, drunk or drunken." Dr. Webster: "pret. and pp. drank. Old pret. and pp. drunk; pp. drunken." Lowth: "pret. drank; part, drunk or drunken." So Stamford. Webber, and others. Murray has it: "Imperf. drank, Perf. Part, drunk." So Comly, Lennie, Bullions, Blair, Butler. Frost, Felton, Goldsbury, and many others. Churchill cites the text, "Serve me till I have eaten and drunken;" and observes, "Drunken is now used only as an adjective. The impropriety of using the preterimperfect [drank] for the participle of this verb is very common."--New Gram., p. 261. Sanborn gives both forms for the participle, preferring drank to drunk. Kirkham prefers drunk to drank; but contradicts himself in a note, by unconsciously making drunk an adjective: "The men were drunk; i. e. inebriated. The toasts were drank."--Gram., p. 140. Cardell, in his Grammar, gives, "drink, drank, drunk;" but in his story of Jack Halyard, on page 59, he wrote, "had drinked:" and this, according to Fowle's True English Grammar, is not incorrect. The preponderance of authority is yet in favour of saying, "had drunk;" but drank seems to be a word of greater delicacy, and perhaps it is sufficiently authorized. A hundred late writers may be quoted for it, and some that were popular in the days of Johnson. "In the choice of what is fit to be eaten and drank."--Beattie's Moral Science, Vol. 1, p. 51. "Which I had no sooner drank."--Addison, Tattler, No. 131.

"Thy brother's blood the thirsty earth hath drank, Broach'd with the steely point of Clifford's lance."--Shakspeare.

[280] "Holden is not in general use; and is chiefly employed by attorneys."--Crombie, on Etymology and Synt., p. 190. Wells marks this word as, "Obsolescent."--School Gram., p. 103. L. Murray rejected it; but Lowth gave it alone, as a participle, and held only as a preterit.

[281] "I have been found guilty of killing cats I never hurted."--Roderick Random, Vol. i, p. 8.

[282] "They keeped aloof as they passed her bye."--J. Hogg, Pilgrims of the Sun, p. 19.

[283] Lie, to be at rest, is irregular, as above; but lie, to utter falsehood, is regular, as follows: lie, lied, lying, lied.

"Thus said, at least, my mountain guide, Though deep, perchance, the villain lied." --Scott's Lady of the Lake.

[284] Perhaps there is authority sufficient to place the verb rend among those which are redundant.

"Where'er its cloudy veil was rended." --Whittier's Moll Pitcher.

"Mortal, my message is for thee; thy chain to earth is rended; I bear thee to eternity; prepare! thy course is ended." --The Amulet.

"Come as the winds come, when forests are rended." --Sir W. Scott.

"The hunger pangs her sons which rended." --NEW QUARTERLY REVIEW: Examiner, No. 119.

[285] We find now and then an instance in which gainsay is made regular: as, "It can neither be rivalled nor gainsayed."--Chapman's Sermons to Presbyterians, p. 36. Perhaps it would be as well to follow Webster here, in writing rivaled with one l: and the analogy of the simple verb say, in forming this compound irregularly, gainsaid. Usage warrants the latter, however, better than the former.

[286] "Shoe, shoed or shod, shoeing, shoed or shod."--Old Gram., by W. Ward, p. 64; and Fowle's True English Gram., p. 46.

[287] "A. Murray has rejected sung as the Preterite, and L. Murray has rejected sang. Each Preterite, however, rests on good authority. The same observation may be made, respecting sank and sunk. Respecting the preterites which have a or u, as slang, or slung, sank, or sunk, it would be better were the former only to be used, as the Preterite and Participle would thus be discriminated."--Dr. Crombie, on Etymology and Syntax, p. 199. The preterits which this critic thus prefers, are rang, sang, stung, sprang, swang, sank, shrank, slank, stank, swam, and span for spun. In respect to them all, I think he makes an ill choice. According to his own showing, fling, string, and sting, always make the preterit and the participle alike; and this is the obvious tendency of the language, in all these words. I reject slang and span, as derivatives from sling and spin; because, in such a sense, they are obsolete, and the words have other uses. Lindley Murray, in his early editions, rejected sang, sank, slang, swang, shrank, slank, stank, and span; and, at the same time, preferred rang, sprang, and swam, to rung, sprung, and swum. In his later copies, he gave the preference to the u, in all these words; but restored sang and sank, which Crombie names above, still omitting the other six, which did not happen to be mentioned to him.

[288] Sate for the preterit of sit, and sitten for the perfect participle, are, in my opinion, obsolete, or no longer in good use. Yet several recent grammarians prefer sitten to sat; among whom are Crombie, Lennie, Bullions, and M'Culloch. Dr. Crombie says, "Sitten, though formerly in use, is now obsolescent. Laudable attempts, however, have been made to restore it."--On Etymol. and Syntax, p. 199. Lennie says, "Many authors, both here and in America, use sate as the Past time of sit; but this is improper, for it is apt to be confounded with sate to glut. Sitten and spitten are preferable [to sat and spit,] though obsolescent."--Principles of E. Gram., p. 45. Bullions says, "Sitten and spitten are nearly obsolete, though preferable to sat and spit."--Principles of E. Gram., p. 64. M'Culloch gives these verbs in the following form: "Sit, sat, sitten or sat. Spit, spit or spat, spit or spitten."--Manual of E. Gram., p. 65.

[289] "He will find the political hobby which he has bestrided no child's nag."--The Vanguard, a Newspaper.

"Through the pressed nostril, spectacle-bestrid."--Cowper.

"A lank haired hunter strided."--Whittier's Sabbath Scene.

[290] In the age of Pope, writ was frequently used both for the participle and for the preterit of this verb. It is now either obsolete or peculiar to the poets. In prose it seems vulgar: as, "He writ it, at least, published it, in 1670."--Barclay's Works, Vol. i, p. 77.

"He, who, supreme in judgement, as in wit, Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ."--Pope, Ess. on Crit.

Dr. Crombie remarked, more than thirty years ago, that, "Wrote as the Participle [of Write,] is generally disused, and likewise writ."--Treatise on Etym. and Synt., p. 202.

[291] A word is not necessarily ungrammatical by reason of having a rival form that is more common. The regular words, beseeched, blowed, bursted, digged, freezed, bereaved, hanged, meaned, sawed, showed, stringed, weeped, I admit for good English, though we find them all condemned by some critics.

[292] "And the man in whom the evil spirit was, leapt on them."--FRIENDS' BIBLE: Acts, xix, 16. In Scott's Bible, and several others, the word is "leaped." Walker says, "The past time of this verb is generally heard with the diphthong short; and if so, it ought to be spelled leapt, rhyming with kept."--Walker's Pron. Dict., w. Leap. Worcester, who improperly pronounces leaped in two ways, "l~ept or l=ept," misquotes Walker, as saying, "it ought to be spelled lept."--Universal and Critical Dict., w. Leap. In the solemn style, leaped is, of course, two syllables. As for leapedst or leaptest, I know not that either can be found.

[293] Acquit is almost always formed regularly, thus: acquit, acquitted, acquitting, acquitted. But, like quit, it is sometimes found in an irregular form also; which, if it be allowable, will make it redundant: as, "To be acquit from my continual smart."--SPENCER: Johnson's Dict. "The writer holds himself acquit of all charges in this regard."--Judd, on the Revolutionary War, p. 5. "I am glad I am so acquit of this tinder-box."--SHAK.

[294]

"Not know my voice! O, time's extremity! Hast thou so crack'd and splitted my poor tongue?" --SHAK.: Com. of Er.

[295] Whet is made redundant in Webster's American Dictionary, as well as in Wells's Grammar; but I can hardly affirm that the irregular form of it is well authorized.

[296] In S. W. Clark's Practical Grammar, first published in 1847--a work of high pretensions, and prepared expressly "for the education of Teachers"--sixty-three out of the foregoing ninety-five Redundant Verbs, are treated as having no regular or no irregular forms. (1.) The following twenty-nine are omitted by this author, as if they were always regular; belay, bet, betide, blend, bless, curse, dive, dress, geld, lean, leap, learn, mulet, pass, pen, plead, prove, rap, reave, roast, seethe, smell, spoil, stave, stay, wake, wed, whet, wont. (2.) The following thirty-four are given by him as being always irregular; abide, bend, beseech, blow, burst, catch, chide, creep, deal, freeze, grind, hang, knit, lade, lay, mean, pay, shake, sleep, slide, speed, spell, spill, split, string, strive, sweat, sweep, thrive, throw, weave, weep, wet, wind. Thirty-two of the ninety-five are made redundant by him, though not so called in his book.

In Wells's School Grammar, "the 113th Thousand," dated 1850, the deficiencies of the foregoing kinds, if I am right, are about fifty. This author's "List of Irregular Verbs" has forty-four Redundants, to which he assigns a regular form as well as an irregular. He is here about as much nearer right than Clark, as this number surpasses thirty-two, and comes towards ninety-five. The words about which they differ, are--pen, seethe, and whet, of the former number; and catch, deal, hang, knit, spell, spill, sweat, and thrive, of the latter.

[297] In the following example, there is a different phraseology, which seems not so well suited to the sense: "But we must be aware of imagining, that we render style strong and expressive, by a constant and multiplied use of epithets"--Blair's Rhet., p. 287. Here, in stead of "be aware," the author should have said, "beware," or "be ware;" that is, be wary, or cautious; for aware means apprised, or informed, a sense very different from the other.

[298] Dr. Crombie contends that must and ought are used only in the present tense. (See his Treatise, p. 204.) In this he is wrong, especially with regard to the latter word. Lennie, and his copyist Bullions, adopt the same notion; but Murray, and many others, suppose them to "have both a present and [a] past signification."

[299] Dr. Crombie says, "This Verb, as an auxiliary, is inflexible; thus we say, 'he will go;' and 'he wills to go.'"--Treatise on Etym. and Syntax, p. 203. He should have confined his remarks to the familiar style, in which all the auxiliaries, except do, be, and have, are inflexible. For, in the solemn style, we do not say, "Thou will go," but, "Thou wilt go."

[300] "HAD-I-WIST. A proverbial expression, Oh that I had known. Gower."--Chalmers's Dict., also Webster's. In this phrase, which is here needlessly compounded, and not very properly explained, we see wist used as a perfect participle. But the word is obsolete. "Had I wist," is therefore an obsolete phrase, meaning. If I had known, or, "O that I had known."

[301] That is, passive verbs, as well as others, have three participles for each; so that, from one active-transitive root, there come six participles--three active, and three passive. Those numerous grammarians who, like Lindley Murray, make passive verbs a distinct class, for the most part, very properly state the participles of a verb to be "three;" but, to represent the two voices as modifications of one species of verbs, and then say, "The Participles are three," as many recent writers do, is manifestly absurd: because two threes should be six. Thus, for example, Dr. Bullions: "In English [,] the transitive verb has always two voices, the Active and [the] Passive."--Prin. of E. Gram., p. 33. "The Participles are three, [:] the Present, the Perfect, and the Compound Perfect."--Ib., p. 57. Again: "Transitive verbs have two voices, called the Active and the Passive."--Bullions's Analyt. and Pract. Gram., p. 66. "Verbs have three participles--the present, the past, and the perfect; as, loving, loved, having loved, in the active voice: AND being loved, loved, having been loved, in the passive."--Ib., p. 76. Now either not all these are the participles of one verb, or that verb has more than three. Take your choice. Redundant verbs usually have duplicate forms of all the participles except the Imperfect Active; as, lighting, lighted or lit, having lighted or having lit; so again, being lighted or being lit, lighted or lit, having been lighted or having been lit.

[302] The diversity in the application of these names, and in the number or nature of the participles recognized in different grammars, is quite as remarkable as that of the names themselves. To prepare a general synopsis of this discordant teaching, no man will probably think it worth his while. The following are a few examples of it:

1. "How many Participles, are there; There are two, the Active Participle which ends in (ing), as burning, and the Passive Participle which ends in (ed) as, burned."--The British Grammar, p. 140. In this book, the participles of Be are named thus: "ACTIVE. Being. PASSIVE. Been, having been."--Ib., p. 138.

2. "How many Sorts of Participles are there? A. Two; the Active Participle, that ends always in ing; as, loving, and the Passive Participle, that ends always in ed, t, or n; as, loved, taught, slain."--Fisher's Practical New Gram., p. 75.

3. "ACTIVE VOICE. Participles. Present, calling. Past, having called. Future, being about to call. PASSIVE VOICE. Present, being called. Past, having been called. Future, being about to be called."--Ward's Practical Gram., pp. 55 and 59.

4. ACT. "Present, loving; Perfect, loved; Past, having loved."--Lowth's Gram., p. 39. The participles passive are not given by Lowth; but, by inference from his rule for forming "the passive verb," they must be these: "Present, being loved; Perfect, loved, or been loved; Past, having been loved." See Lowth's Gram., p. 44.

5. "ACT. V. Present, Loving. Past, Loved. Perfect, Having loved. PAS. V. Pres. Being loved. Past, Loved. Perf. Having been loved."--Lennie's Gram., pp. 25 and 33; Greene's Analysis, p. 225; Bullions's Analyt. and Pract. Gram., pp. 87 and 95. This is Bullions's revised scheme, and much worse than his former one copied from Murray.

6. ACT. "Present. Loving. Perfect. Loved. Compound Perfect, Having loved." PAS. "Present. Being loved. Perfect or Passive. Loved. Compound Perfect. Having been loved."--L. Murray's late editions, pp. 98 and 99; Hart's Gram., pp. 85 and 88; Bullions's Principles of E. Gram., pp. 47 and 55. No form or name of the first participle passive was adopted by Murray in his early editions.

7. ACT. "Present. Pursuing. Perfect. Pursued. Compound perfect. Having pursued." PAS. "Present and Perfect. Pursued, or being pursued. Compound Perfect. Having been pursued."--Rev. W. Allen's Gram., pp. 88 and 93. Here the first two passive forms, and their names too, are thrown together; the former as equivalents, the latter as coalescents.

8. "TRANSITIVE. Pres. Loving, Perf. Having loved. PASSIVE. Pres. Loved or Being loved, Perf. Having been loved."--Parkhurst's Gram. for Beginners, p. 110. Here the second active form is wanting; and the second passive is confounded with the first.

9. ACT. "Imperfect, Loving [;] Perfect, Having loved [.]" PAS. "Imperfect, Being loved [;] Perfect, Loved, Having been loved."--Wells's School Gram., pp. 99 and 101. Here, too, the second active is not given; the third is called by the name of the second; and the second passive is confounded with the third, as if they were but forms of the same thing.

10. ACT. "Imperfect, (Present,) Loving. Perfect. Having loved. Auxiliary Perfect, Loved." PAS. "Imperfect, (Present,) Being loved. Perfect, Having been loved. Passive, Loved."--N. Butler's Pract. Gram., pp. 84 and 91. Here the common order of most of the participles is very improperly disturbed, and as many are misnamed.

11. ACT. "Present, Loving [;] Perfect, Loved [;] Comp. Perf. Having loved [.]" PAS. "Present, Being loved [;] Perfect, Loved, or been loved [;] Compound Perfect, Having been loved."--Frazee's Improved Gram., 63 and 73. Here the second participle passive has two forms, one of which, "been loved," is not commonly recognized, except as part of some passive verb or preperfect participle.

12. ACT. V. "Imperfect, Seeing. Perfect, Seen. Compound, Having seen." PAS. V. "Preterimperfect, Being seen. Preterperfect, Having been seen."--Churchill's New Gram., p. 102. Here the chief and radical passive participle is lacking, and neither of the compounds is well named.

13. ACT. "Present, Loving, [;] Past, Loved, [;] Com. Past, Having loved." PAS. "Present, Being loved. [;] Past, Loved. [;] Com. Past. [,] Having been loved."--Felton's Analyt. and Pract. Gram., of 1843, pp. 37 and 50.

14. ACT. "Present. [,] Loving. [;] Perfect. [,] Loved. [;] Compound Perfect. [,] Having loved." PAS. "Perfect or Passive. Loved. Compound Perfect. Having been loved."--Bicknell's Gram. Lond., 1790, Part I, pp. 66 and 70; L. Murray's 2d Edition, York, 1796, pp. 72 and 77. Here "Being loved," is not noticed.

15. "Participles. Active Voice. Present. Loving. Past. Loved, or having loved. Participles. Passive Voice. Present. Being loved. Past. Having been loved."--John Burn's Practical Gram., p. 70. Here the chief Passive term, "Loved," is omitted, and two of the active forms are confounded.

16. "Present, loving, Past, loved, Compound, having loved."--S. W. Clark's Practical Gram., of 1848, p. 71. "ACT. VOICE.--Present ... Loving [;] Compound [,] Having loved...... Having been loving."--Ib., p. 81. "PAS. VOICE.--Present..... Loved, or, being loved [;] Compound..... Having been loved."--Ib., p. 83. "The Compound Participle consists of the Participle of a principal verb, added to the word having, or being, or to the two words having been. Examples--Having loved--being loved--having been loved."--Ib., p. 71. Here the second extract is deficient, as may be seen by comparing it with the first; and the fourth is grossly erroneous, as is shown by the third. The participles, too, are misnamed throughout.

The reader may observe that the punctuation of the foregoing examples is very discrepant. I have, in brackets, suggested some corrections, but have not attempted a general adjustment of it.

[303] "The most unexceptionable distinction which grammarians make between the participles, is, that the one points to the continuation of the action, passion, or state denoted by the verb; and the other, to the completion of it. Thus, the present participle signifies imperfect action, or action begun and not ended: as, 'I am writing a letter.' The past participle signifies action perfected, or finished: as, 'I have written a letter.'--'The letter is written.'"--Murray's Grammar, 8vo, p. 65. "The first [participle] expresses a continuation; the other, a completion."--W. Allen's Grammar, 12mo, London, 1813. "The idea which this participle [e.g. 'tearing'] really expresses, is simply that of the continuance of an action in an incomplete or unfinished state. The action may belong to time present, to time past, or to time future. The participle which denotes the completion of an action, as torn, is called the perfect participle; because it represents the action as perfect or finished."--Barnard's Analytic Gram., p. 51. Emmons stealthily copies from my Institutes as many as ten lines in defence of the term 'Imperfect' and yet, in his conjugations, he calls the participle in ing, "Present." This seems inconsistent. See his "Grammatical Instructer," p. 61.

[304] "The ancient termination (from the Anglo-Saxon) was and; as, 'His schynand sword.' Douglas. And sometimes ende; as, 'She, between the deth and life, Swounende lay full ofte.' Gower."--W. Allen's Gram., p. 88. "The present Participle, in Saxon, was formed by ande, ende, or onde; and, by cutting off the final e, it acquired a Substantive signification, and extended the idea to the agent: as, alysende, freeing, and alysend, a redeemer; freonde, loving or friendly, and freond, a lover or a friend."--Booth's Introd. to Dict., p. 75.

[305] William B. Fowle, a modern disciple of Tooke, treats the subject of grammatical time rather more strangely than his master. Thus: "How many times or tenses have verbs? Two, [the] present and [the] past," To this he immediately adds in a note: "We do not believe in a past any more than a future tense of verbs."--The True English Gram., p. 30. So, between these two authors, our verbs will retain no tenses at all. Indeed, by his two tenses, Fowle only meant to recognize the two simple forms of an English verb. For he says, in an other place, "We repeat our conviction that no verb in itself expresses time of any sort."--Ib., p. 69,

[306] "STONE'-BLIND," "STONE'-COLD," and "STONE'-DEAD," are given in Worcester's Dictionary, as compound adjectives; and this is perhaps their best classification; but, if I mistake not, they are usually accented quite as strongly on the latter syllable, as on the former, being spoken rather as two emphatic words. A similar example from Sigourney, "I saw an infant marble cold," is given by Frazee under this Note: "Adjectives sometimes belong to other adjectives; as, 'red hot iron.'"--Improved Gram., p. 141. But Webster himself, from whom this doctrine and the example are borrowed, (see his Rule XIX,) makes "RED'-HOT" but one word in his Dictionary; and Worcester gives it as one word, in a less proper form, even without a hyphen, "RED'HOT."

[307] "OF ENALLAGE.--The construction which may be reduced to this figure in English, chiefly appears when one part of speech, is used with the power and effect of another."--Ward's English Gram., p. 150.

[308] Forsooth is literally a word of affirmation or assent, meaning for truth, but it is now almost always used ironically: as, "In these gentlemen whom the world forsooth calls wise and solid, there is generally either a moroseness that persecutes, or a dullness that tires you."--Home's Art of Thinking, p. 24.

[309] In most instances, however, the words hereof, thereof, and whereof, are placed after nouns, and have nothing to do with any verb. They are therefore not properly adverbs, though all our grammarians and lexicographers call them so. Nor are they adjectives; because they are not used adjectively, but rather in the sense of a pronoun governed by of; or, what is nearly the same thing, in the sense of the possessive or genitive case. Example: "And the fame hereof went abroad."--Matt., ix, 26. That is, "the fame of this miracle;" which last is a better expression, the other being obsolete, or worthy to be so, on account of its irregularity.

[310] Seldom is sometimes compared in this manner, though not frequently; as, "This kind of verse occurs the seldomest, but has a happy effect in diversifying the melody."--Blair's Rhet., p. 385. In former days, this word, as well as its correlative often, was sometimes used adjectively; as, "Thine often infirmities."--1 Tim., v, 23. "I hope God's Book hath not been my seldomest lectures."--Queen Elizabeth, 1585. John Walker has regularly compared the adverb forward: in describing the latter L, he speaks of the tip of the tongue as being "brought a little forwarder to the teeth."--Pron. Dict., Principles, No. 55.

[311] A few instances of the regular inflection of adverbs ending in ly, may be met with in modern compositions, as in the following comparisons: "As melodies will sometimes ring sweetlier in the echo."--The Dial, Vol. i, p. 6. "I remember no poet whose writings would safelier stand the test."--Coleridge's Biog. Lit., Vol. ii, p. 53.

[312] De Sacy, in his Principles of General Grammar, calls the relative pronouns "Conjunctive Adjectives." See Fosdick's Translation, p. 57. He also says, "The words who, which, etc. are not the only words which connect the function of a Conjunction with another design. There are Conjunctive Nouns and Adverbs, as well as Adjectives; and a characteristic of these words is, that we can substitute for them another form of expression in which shall be found the words who, which, etc. Thus, when, where, what, how, as, and many others, are Conjunctive words: [as,] 'I shall finish when I please;' that is, 'I shall finish at the time at which I please.'--'I know not where I am;' i.e. 'I know not the place in which I am.'"--Ib., p. 58. In respect to the conjunctive adverbs, this is well enough, so far as it goes; but the word who appears to me to be a pronoun, and not an adjective; and of his "Conjunctive Nouns," he ought to have given us some examples, if he knew of any.

[313] "Now the Definition of a CONJUNCTION is as follows--a Part of Speech, void of Signification itself, but so formed as to help Signification by making TWO or more significant Sentences to be ONE significant Sentence."--Harris's Hermes, 6th Edition, London, p. 238.

[314] Whether these, or any other conjunctions that come together, ought to ho parsed together, is doubtful. I am not in favour of taking any words together, that can well be parsed separately. Goodenow, who defines a phrase to be "the union of two or more words having the nature and construcion [sic--KTH] of a single word," finds an immense number of these unions, which he cannot, or does not, analyze. As examples of "a conjunctional phrase," he gives "as if and "as though."--Gram., p. 25. But when he comes to speak of ellipsis, he says: "After the conjunctions than, as, but, &c., some words are generally understood; as, 'We have more than [that is which] will suffice;' 'He acted as [he would act] if he were mad.'"--Ib., p. 41. This doctrine is plainly repugnant to the other.

[315] Of the construction noticed in this observation, the Rev. Matt. Harrison cites a good example; pronounces it elliptical; and scarcely forbears to condemn it as bad English: "In the following sentence, the relative pronoun is three times omitted:--'Is there a God to swear by, and is there none to believe in, none to trust to?'--Letters and Essays, Anonymous. By, in, and to, as prepositions, stand alone, denuded of the relatives to which they apply. The sentence presents no attractions worthy of imitation. It exhibits a license carried to the extreme point of endurance."--Harrison's English Language, p. 196.

[316] "An ellipsis of from after the adverb off has caused the latter word sometimes to be inserted incorrectly among the prepositions. Ex. 'off (from) his horse.'"--Hart's Gram., p. 96. Off and on are opposites; and, in a sentence like the following, I see no more need of inserting "from" after the former, than to after the latter: "Thou shalt not come down off that bed on which thou art gone up."--2 Kings, i, 16.

[317] "Who consequently reduced the greatest part of the island TO their own power."--Swift, on the English Tongue. "We can say, that one nation reduces another TO subjection. But when dominion or power is used, we always, as [so] far as I know, say, reduce UNDER their power" [or dominion]--Blair's Rhet., p. 229.

[318] "O foy, don't misapprehend me; I don't say so."--DOUBLE DEALER: Kames, El. of Crit., i, 305.

[319] According to Walker and Webster, la is pronounced law; and, if they are right in this, the latter is only a false mode of spelling. But I set down both, because both are found in books, and because I incline to think the former is from the French la, which is pronounced lah. Johnson and Webster make la and lo synonymous; deriving lo from the Saxon la, and la either from lo or from the French la. "Law, how you joke, cousin."--Columbian Orator, p. 178. "Law me! the very ghosts are come now!"--Ibid. "Law, sister Betty! I am glad to see you!"--Ibid.

"La you! If you speak ill of the devil, How he takes it at heart!"--SHAKESPEARE: Joh. Dict., w. La.

[320] The interjection of interrogating, being placed independently, either after a question, or after something which it converts into a question, is usually marked with its own separate eroteme; as, "But this is even so: eh?"--Newspaper. "Is't not drown'd i' the last rain? Ha?"--Shakespeare. "Does Bridget paint still, Pompey? Ha?"--Id. "Suits my complexion--hey, gal? so I think."--Yankee Schoolmaster. Sometimes we see it divided only by a comma, from the preceding question; as, "What dost thou think of this doctrine, Friend Gurth, ha?"--SCOTT'S IVANHOE: Fowler's E. Gram., §29.

[321] Though oh and ah are most commonly used as signs of these depressing passions, it must be confessed that they are sometimes employed by reputable writers, as marks of cheerfulness or exultation; as, "Ah, pleasant proof," &c.--Cowper's Task, p. 179. "Merrily oh! merrily oh!"--Moore's Tyrolese Song. "Cheerily oh! cheerily oh!"--Ib. But even if this usage be supposed to be right, there is still some difference between these words and the interjection O: if there were not, we might dispense with the latter, and substitute one of the former; but this would certainly change the import of many an invocation.

[322] This position is denied by some grammarians. One recent author says, "The object cannot properly be called one of the principal parts of a sentence; as it belongs only to some sentences, and then is dependent on the verb, which it modifies or explains."--Goodenow's Gram., p. 87. This is consistent enough with the notion, that, "An infinitive, with or without a substantive, may be the object of a transitive verb; as, 'I wish to ride;' 'I wish you to ride.'"--Ib., p. 37. Or, with the contrary notion, that, "An infinitive may be the object of a preposition, expressed or understood; as, 'I wish for you to ride.'"--Ibid. But if the object governed by the verb, is always a mere qualifying adjunct, a mere "explanation of the attribute," (Ib., p. 28,) how differs it from an adverb? "Adverbs are words added to verbs, and sometimes to other words, to qualify their meaning."--Ib., p. 23. And if infinitives and other mere adjuncts may be the objects which make verbs transitive, how shall a transitive verb be known? The fact is, that the true object of the transitive verb is one of the principal parts of the sentence, and that the infinitive mood cannot properly be reckoned such an object.

[323] Some writers distinguish sentences as being of three kinds, simple, and complex, and compound; but, in this work, care has not in general been taken to discriminate between complex sentences and compound. A late author states the difference thus: "A sentence containing but one proposition is simple; a sentence containing two propositions, one of which modifies the other, is complex; a sentence containing two propositions which in no way modify each other, is compound."--Greene's Analysis, p. 3. The term compound, as applied to sentences, is not usually so restricted. An other, using the same terms for a very different division, explains them thus: "A Simple Sentence contains but one subject and one attribute; as, 'The sun shines.' A Complex Sentence contains two or more subjects of the same attribute, or two or more attributes of the same subject; as, 'The sun and the stars shine.' 'The sun rises and sets.' 'The sun and the stars rise and set.' A Compound Sentence is composed of two or more simple or complex sentences united; as, 'The sun shines, and the stars twinkle.' 'The sun rises and sets, as the earth revolves.'"--Pinneo's English Teacher, p. 10; Analytical Gram., pp. 128, 142, and 146. This notion of a complex sentence is not more common than Greene's; nor is it yet apparent, that the usual division of sentences into two kinds ought to give place to any tripartite distribution.

[324] The terms clause and member, in grammar, appear to have been generally used as words synonymous; but some authors have thought it convenient to discriminate them, as having different senses. Hiley says, "Those parts of a sentence which are separated by commas, are called clauses; and those separated by semicolons, are called members."--Hiley' s Gram., p. 66. W. Allen too confines the former term to simple members: "A compound sentence is formed by uniting two or more simple sentences; as, Man is mortal, and life is uncertain. Each of these simple sentences is called a clause. When the members of a compound sentence are complex, they are subdivided into clauses; as, Virtue leads to honor, and insures true happiness; but vice degrades the understanding, and is succeeded by infamy."--Allen's Gram., p. 128. By some authors, the terms clause and phrase are often carelessly confounded, each being applied with no sort of regard to its proper import. Thus, where L. Murray and his copyists expound their text about "the pupil's composing frequently," even the minor phrase, "composing frequently," is absurdly called a clause; "an entire clause of a sentence."--See Murray's Gram., p. 179; Alger's, 61; Fisk's, 108; Ingersoll's, 180; Merchant's, 84; R. C. Smith's, 152; Weld's, 2d Ed., 150. The term sentence also is sometimes grossly misapplied. Thus, by R. C. Smith, the phrases "James and William," "Thomas and John," and others similar, are called "sentences."--Smith's New Gram., pp. 9 and 10. So Weld absurdly writes as follows; "A whole sentence is frequently the object of a preposition; as, 'The crime of being a young man.' Being a young man, is the object of the preposition of."--Weld's E. Gram., 2d Edition, p. 42. The phrase, "being a young man," here depends upon "of;" but this preposition governs nothing but the participle "being." The construction of the word "man" is explained below, in Obs. 7th on Rule 6th, of Same Cases.

[325] In the very nature of things, all agreement consists in concurrence, correspondence, conformity, similarity, sameness, equality; but government is direction, control, regulation, restrain, influence, authoritative requisition, with the implication of inequality. That these properties ought to be so far distinguished in grammar, as never to be supposed to co-exist in the same terms and under the same circumstances, must be manifest to every reasoner. Some grammarians who seem to have been not always unaware of this, have nevertheless egregiously forgotten it at times. Thus Nutting, in the following remark, expresses a true doctrine, though he has written it with no great accuracy: "A word in parsing never governs the same word which it qualifies, or with which it agrees."--Practical Gram., p. 108. Yet, in his syntax, in which he pretends to separate agreement from government, he frames his first rule under the better head thus: "The nominative case governs a verb."--Ib. p. 96. Lindsey Murray recognizes no such government as this; but seems to suppose his rule for the agreement of a verb with its nominative to be sufficient for both verb and nominative. He appears, however, not to have known that a word does not agree syntactically with another that governs it; for, in his Exercises, he has given us, apparently from his own pen, the following untrue, but otherwise not very objectionable sentence: "On these occasions, the pronoun is governed by, an consequently agrees with, the preceding word."--Exercises, 8vo, ii, 74. This he corrects thus: On these occasions, the pronoun is governed by the preceding word, and consequently agrees with it."--Key, 8vo, ii, 204. The amendments most needed he overlooks; for the thought is not just, and the two verbs which are here connected with one and the same nominative, are different in form. See the same example, with the same variation of it, in Smith's New Gram., p. 167; and, without the change, in Ingersoll's, p. 233; and Fisk's, 141.

[326] It has been the notion of some grammarians, that the verb governs the nominative before it. This is an old rule, which seems to have been very much forgotten by modern authors; though doubtless it is as true, and as worthy to be perpetuated, as that which supposes the nominative to govern the verb: "Omne verbum personale finiti modi regit ante se expresse vel subaudite ejusdem numeri et personæ nominativum vel aliquid pro nominativo: ut, ego scribo, tu legis, ille auscultat."--DESPAUTERII SYNT. fol. xvi. This Despauter was a laborious author, who, within fifty years after the introduction of printing, complains that he found his task heavy, on account of the immense number of books and opinions which he had to consult: "Necdum tamen huic operi ultimam manum aliter imposui, quam Apelles olim picturis: siquidem aptius exire, quum in multis tum in hac arte est difficillimum, propter librorum legendorum immensitatem, et opinionum innumeram diversitatem."--Ibid., Epist. Apologetica, A. D. 1513. But if, for this reason, the task was heavy then, what is it now!

[327] Nutting's rule certainly implies that articles may relate to pronouns, though he gives no example, nor can he give any that is now good English; but he may, if he pleases, quote some other modern grammatists, who teach the same false doctrine: as, "RULE II. The article refers to its noun (OR PRONOUN) to limit its signification."--R. G. Greene's Grammatical Text-Book, p. 18. Greene's two grammars are used extensively in the state of Maine, but they appear to be little known anywhere else. This author professes to inculcate "the principles established by Lindley Murray." If veracity, on this point, is worth any thing, it is a pity that in both books there are so many points which, like the foregoing parenthesis, belie this profession. He followed here Ingersoll's RULE IV, which is this: "The article refers to a noun OR PRONOUN, expressed or understood, to limit its signification."-- Conversations on E. Gram., p. 185.

[328] It is truly a matter of surprise to find under what titles or heads, many of the rules of syntax have been set, by some of the best scholars that have ever written on grammar. In this respect, the Latin and Greek grammarians are particularly censurable; but it better suits my purpose to give an example or two from one of the ablest of the English. Thus that elegant scholar the Rev. W. Allen: "SYNTAX OF NOUNS. 325. A verb agrees with its nominative case in number and person."--Elements of E. Gram., p. 131. This is in no wise the syntax of Nouns, but rather that of the Verb. Again: "SYNTAX OF VERBS. 405. Active Verbs govern the accusative case; as, I love him. We saw them. God rules the world."--Ib., p. 161. This is not properly the syntax of Verbs, but rather that of Nouns or Pronouns in the accusative or objective case. Any one who has but the least sense of order, must see the propriety of referring the rule to that sort of words to which it is applied in parsing, and not some other. Verbs are never parsed or construed by the latter of these rules nor nouns by the former.

[329] What "the Series of Grammars, English, Latin, and Greek, ON THE SAME PLAN," will ultimately be,--how many treatises for each or any of the languages it will probably contain,--what uniformity will be found in the distribution of their several sorts and sizes,--or what sameness they will have, except that which is bestowed by the binders,--cannot yet be stated with any certainty. It appears now, in 1850, that the scheme has thus far resulted in the production of three remarkably different grammars, for the English part of the series, and two more, a Latin grammar and a Greek, which resemble each other, or any of these, as little. In these works, abound changes and discrepances, sometimes indicating a great unsettlement of "principles" or "plan," and often exciting our wonder at the extraordinary variety of teaching, which has been claimed to be, "as nearly in the same words as the as the genius of the languages would permit!" In what should have been uniform, and easily might have been so, these grammars are rather remarkably diverse! Uniformity in the order, number, or phraseology of the Rules of Syntax, even for our own language, seems scarcely yet to have entered this "SAME PLAN" at all! The "onward progress of English grammar," or, rather, of the author's studies therein, has already, within "fifteen years," greatly varied, from the first model of the "Series," his own idea of a good grammar; and, though such changes bar consistency, a future progress, real or imaginary, may likewise, with as good reason, vary it yet as much more. In the preface to the work of 1840, it is said: "This, though not essentially different from the former, is yet in some respects a new work. It has been almost entirely rewritten." And again: "The Syntax is much fuller than in the former work; and though the rules are not different, they are arranged in a different order." So it is proved, that the model needed remodelling; and that the Syntax, especially, was defective, in matter as well as in order. The suggestions, that "the rules are not different," and the works, "not essentially" so, will sound best to those who shall never compare them. The old code has thirty-four chief, and twenty-two "special rules;" the new has twenty chief, thirty-six "special," and one "general rule." Among all these, we shall scarcely find exact sameness preserved in so many as half a dozen instances. Of the old thirty-four, fourteen only were judged worthy to remain as principal rules; and two of these have no claim at all to such rank, one of them being quite useless. Of the twenty now made chief, five are new to "the Series of Grammars," and three of these exceedingly resemble as many of mine; five are slightly altered, and five greatly, from their predecessors among the old: one is the first half of an old rule; one is an old subordinate rule, altered and elevated; and three are as they were before, their numbers and relative positions excepted!

[330] "The grammatical predicate is a verb."--Butler's Pract. Gram., 1845, p. 135, "The grammatical predicate is a finite verb."--Wells's School Gram., 1850, p. 185. "The grammatical predicate is either a verb alone, or the copula sum [some part of the verb be] with a noun or adjective."--Andrews and Stoddard's Lat. Gram., p. 163. "The predicate consists of two parts,--the verb, or copula, and that which is asserted by it, called the attribute; as 'Snow is white.'"--Greene's Analysis. p. 15. "The grammatical predicate consists of the attribute and copula not modified by other word."--Bullions, Analyt, and Pract. Gram., P. 129. "The logical predicate is the grammatical, with all the words or phrases that modify it." Ib. p. 130. "The Grammatical predicate is the word or words containing the simple affirmation, made respecting the subject."--Bullions, Latin Gram., p. 269. "Every proposition necessarily consists of these three parts: [the subject, the predicate, and the copula;] but then it is not alike needful, that they be all severally expressed in words; because the copula is often included in the term of the predicate; as when we say, he sits, which imports the same as, he is sitting."--Duncan's Logic, p 105. In respect to this Third Method of Analysis. It is questionable, whether a noun or an adjective which follows the verb and forms part of the assertion, is to be included in "the grammatical predicate" or not. Wells says, No: "It would destroy at once all distinction between the grammatical and the logical predicate."--School Gram., p. 185. An other question is, whether the copula (is, was or the like,) which the logicians discriminate, should be included as part of the logical predicate, when it occurs as a distinct word. The prevalent practice of the grammatical analyzers is, so to include it,--a practice which in itself is not very "logical." The distinction of subjects and predicates as "grammatical and logical," is but a recent one. In some grammars, the partition used in logic is copied without change, except perhaps of words: as "There are, in sentences, a subject, a predicate and a copula." JOS. R. CHANDLER, Gram. of 1821, p. 105; Gram. of 1847, p. 116. The logicians, however, and those who copy them, may have been hitherto at fault in recognizing and specifying their "copula." Mulligan forcibly argues that the verb of being is no more entitled to this name than is every other verb. (See his Exposition," §46.) If he is right in this, the "copula" of the logicians (an in my opinion, his own also) is a mere figment of the brain, there being nothing that answers to the definition of the thing or to the true use of the word.

[331] I cite this example from Wells, for the purpose of explaining it without the several errors which that gentleman's "Model" incidentally inculcates. He suggests that and connects, not the two relative clauses, as such, but the two verbs can give and can take; and that the connexion between away and is must be traced through the former, and its object which. These positions, I think, are wrong. He also uses here, as elsewhere, the expressions, "which relates it" and, "which is related by," each in a very unusual, and perhaps an unauthorized, sense. His formule reads thus: "Away modifies can take; can take is CONNECTED with can give by and; WHICH is governed by CAN GIVE, and relates to security; security is the object of finding, which is RELATED BY of to conviction; conviction is the object of with, which RELATES IT to can look; to expresses the relation between whom and can look, and whom relates to Being, which is the subject of is." --Wells's School Gram., 113th Ed., p. 192. Neither this nor the subsequent method has been often called "analysis;" for, in grammar, each user of this term has commonly applied it to some one method only,--the method preferred by himself.

[332] The possessive phrase here should be, "Andrews and Stoddard's," as Wells and others write it. The adding of the apostrophe to the former name is wrong, even by the better half of Butler's own absurd and self-contradictory Rule: to wit, "When two or more nouns in the possessive case are connected by and, the possessive termination should be added to each of them; as, 'These are John's and Eliza's books.' But, if objects are possessed in common by two or more, and the nouns are closely connected without any intervening words, the possessive termination is added to the last noun only; as, 'These are John and Eliza's books.'"--Butler's Practical Gram., p. 163. The sign twice used implies two governing nouns: "John's and Eliza's books." = "John's books and Eliza's;" "Andrews' and Stoddard's Latin Grammar," = "Andrews' (or Andrews's) Latin Grammar and Stoddard's"

[333] In Mulligan's recent "Exposition of the Grammatical Structure of the English Language,"--the work of an able hand,--this kind of "Analysis," being most improperly pronounced "the chief business of the grammarian," is swelled by copious explanation under minute heads, to a volume containing more than three times as much matter as Greene's; but, since school-boys have little relish for long arguments, and prolixity had here already reached to satiety and disgust, it is very doubtful whether the practical utility of this "Improved Method of Teaching Grammar," will be greater in proportion to this increase of bulk.--G. B., 1853.

[334] "I will not take upon me to say, whether we have any Grammar that sufficiently instructs us by rule and example; but I am sure we have none, that in the manner here attempted, teaches us what is right, by showing what is wrong; though this perhaps may prove the more useful and effectual method of Instruction."--Lowth's Gram., Pref., p. viii.

[335] With the possessive case and its governing noun, we use but one article; and sometimes it seems questionable, to which of the two that article properly relates: as, "This is one of the Hebrews' children."--Exodus, ii, 6. The sentence is plainly equivalent to the following, which has two articles: "This is one of the children of the Hebrews." Not because the one article is equivalent to the two, or because it relates to both of the nouns; but because the possessive relation itself makes one of the nouns sufficiently definite. Now, if we change the latter construction back into the former, it is the noun children that drops its article; it is therefore the other to which the remaining article relates. But we sometimes find examples in which the same analogy does not hold. Thus, "a summer's day" means, "a day of summer;" and we should hardly pronounce it equivalent to "the day of a summer." So the questionable phrase, "a three days' journey," means, "a journey of three days;" and, whether the construction be right or wrong, the article a cannot be said to relate to the plural noun. Possibly such a phrase as, "the three years' war," might mean, "the war of three years;" so that the article must relate to the latter noun. But in general it is the latter noun that is rendered definite by the possessive relation: thus the phrase, "man's works" is equivalent to "the works of man," not to "works of the man;" so, "the man's works," is equivalent, not to "the works of man," but to "the works of the man."

[336] Horne Tooke says, "The use of A after the word MANY is a corruption for of; and has no connection whatever with the article A, i. e. one."--Diversions of Purley, Vol. ii, p. 324. With this conjecture of the learned etymologist, I do not concur: it is hardly worth while to state here, what may he urged pro and con.

[337] "Nothing can be more certain than that [in Greek syntax] all words used for the purpose of definition, either stand between the article and the noun, or have their own article prefixed. Yet it may sometimes happen that an apposition [with an article] is parenthetically inserted instead of being affixed."--J. W. DONALDSON: Journal of Philology, No. 2, p. 223.

[338] Churchill rashly condemns this construction, and still more rashly proposes to make the noun singular without repeating the article. See his New Gram., p. 311. But he sometimes happily forgets his own doctrine; as, "In fact, the second and fourth lines here stamp the character of the measure."--Ib., p. 391. O. B. Peirce says, "'Joram's second and third daughters,' must mean, if it means any thing, his second daughters and third daughters; and, 'the first and second verses.' if it means any thing, must represent the first verses and the second verses."-- Peirce's English Gram., p. 263. According to my notion, this interpretation is as false and hypercritical, as is the rule by which the author professes to show what is right. He might have been better employed in explaining some of his own phraseology, such as, "the indefinite-past and present of the declarative mode."--Ib., p. 100. The critic who writes such stuff as this, may well be a misinterpreter of good common English. It is plain, that the two examples which he thus distorts, are neither obscure nor inelegant. But, in an alternative of single things, the article must be repeated, and a plural noun is improper; as, "But they do not receive the Nicene or the Athanasian creeds."--Adam's Religious World, Vol. ii, p. 105. Say, "creed." So in an enumeration; as, "There are three participles: the present, the perfect, and the compound perfect participles"--Ingersoll's Gram., p. 42. Expunge this last word, "participles." Sometimes a sentence is wrong, not as being in itself a solecism, but as being unadapted to the author's thought. Example: "Other tendencies will be noticed in the Etymological and Syntactical part."--Fowler's E. Gram., N. Y., 1850, p. 75. This implies, what appears not to be true, that the author meant to treat Etymology and Syntax together in a single part of his work. Had he put an s to the noun "part," he might have been understood in either of two other ways, but not in this. To make sure of his meaning, therefore, he should have said--"in the Etymological Part and the Syntactical."

[339] Oliver B. Peirce, in his new theory of grammar, not only adopts Ingersoll's error, but adds others to it. He supposes no ellipsis, and declares it grossly improper ever to insert the pronoun. According to him, the following text is wrong: "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord."--Heb., xii, 5. See Peirce's Gram., p. 255. Of this gentleman's book I shall say the less, because its faults are so many and so obvious. Yet this is "The Grammar of the English Language," and claims to be the only work which is worthy to be called an English Grammar. "The first and only Grammar of the English Language!"--Ib., p. 10. In punctuation, it is a very chaos, as one might guess from the following Rule: "A word of the second person, and in the subjective case, must have a semicolon after it; as, John; hear me."--Id., p. 282. Behold his practice! "John, beware."--P. 84. "Children, study."--P. 80. "Henry; study."--P. 249. "Pupil: parse."--P. 211; and many other places. "Be thou, or do thou be writing? Be ye or you, or do ye or you be writing?"--P. 110. According to his Rule, this tense requires six semicolons; but the author points it with two commas and two notes of interrogation!

[340] In Butler's Practical Grammar, first published in 1845, this doctrine is taught as a novelty. His publishers, in their circular letter, speak of it as one of "the peculiar advantages of this grammar over preceding works," and as an important matter, "heretofore altogether omitted by grammarians!" Wells cites Butler in support of his false principle: "A verb in the infinitive is often preceded by a noun or pronoun in the objective, which has no direct dependence on any other word. Examples:--'Columbus ordered a strong fortress of wood and plaster to be erected.'--Irving. 'Its favors here should make us tremble.'-- Young." See Wells's School Gram., p. 147.

[341] "Sometimes indeed the verb hath two regimens, and then the preposition is necessary to one of them; as, 'I address myself to my judges.'"--Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 178. Here the verb address governs the pronoun myself, and is also the antecedent to the preposition to; and the construction would be similar, if the preposition governed the infinitive or a participle: as, "I prepared myself to swim;" or, "I prepared myself for swimming." But, in any of these cases, it is not very accurate to say, "the verb has two regimens;" for the latter term is properly the regimen of the preposition. Cardell, by robbing the prepositions, and supposing ellipses, found two regimens for every verb. W. Allen, on the contrary, (from whom Nixon gathered his doctrine above,) by giving the "accusative" to the infinitive, makes a multitude of our active-transitive verbs "neuter." See Allen's Gram., p. 166. But Nixon absurdly calls the verb "active-transitive," because it governs the infinitive; i. e. as he supposes--and, except when to is not used, erroneously supposes.

[342] A certain new theorist, who very innocently fogs himself and his credulous readers with a deal of impertinent pedantry, after denouncing my doctrine that to before the infinitive is a preposition, appeals to me thus: "Let me ask you, G. B.--is not the infinitive in Latin the same as in the English? Thus, I desire to teach Latin--Ego Cupio docere. I saw Abel come--Ego videbam Abelem venire. The same principle is recognized by the Greek grammars and those of most of the modern languages."--O. B. Peirce's Gram., p. 358. Of this gentleman I know nothing but from what appears in his book--a work of immeasurable and ill-founded vanity--a whimsical, dogmatical, blundering performance. This short sample of his Latin, (with six puerile errors in seven words,) is proof positive that he knows nothing of that language, whatever may be his attainments in Greek, or the other tongues of which he tells. To his question I answer emphatically, NO. In Latin, "One verb governs an other in the infinitive; as, Cupio discere, I desire to learn."--Adam's Gram., p. 181. This government never admits the intervention of a preposition. "I saw Abel come," has no preposition; but the Latin of it is, "Vidi Abelem venientem," and not what is given above; or, according to St. Jerome and others, who wrote, "Abel," without declension, we ought rather to say, "Vidi Abel venientem." If they are right, "Ego videbam Abelem venire," is every word of it wrong!

[343] Priestley cites these examples as authorities, not as false syntax. The errors which I thus quote at secondhand from other grammarians, and mark with double references, are in general such as the first quoters have allowed, and made themselves responsible for; but this is not the case in every instance. Such credit has sometimes, though rarely, been given, where the expression was disapproved.--G. BROWN.

[344] Lindley Murray thought it not impracticable to put two or more nouns in apposition and add the possessive sign to each; nor did he imagine there would often be any positive impropriety in so doing. His words, on this point, are these: "On the other hand, the application of the genitive sign to both or all of the nouns in apposition, would be generally harsh and displeasing, and perhaps in some cases incorrect: as, 'The Emperor's Leopold's; King George's; Charles's the Second's; The parcel was left at Smith's, the bookseller's and stationer's."--Octavo Gram., p. 177. Whether he imagined any of these to be "incorrect" or not, does not appear! Under the next rule, I shall give a short note which will show them all to be so. The author, however, after presenting these uncouth fictions, which show nothing but his own deficiency in grammar, has done the world the favour not to pronounce them very convenient phrases; for he continues the paragraph as follows: "The rules which we have endeavoured to elucidate, will prevent the inconveniences of both these modes of expression; and they appear to be simple, perspicuous, and consistent with the idiom of the language.'--Ib. This undeserved praise of his own rules, he might as well have left to some other hand. They have had the fortune, however, to please sundry critics, and to become the prey of many thieves; but are certainly very deficient in the three qualities here named; and, taken together with their illustrations, they form little else than a tissue of errors, partly his own, and partly copied from Lowth and Priestley.

Dr. Latham, too, and Prof. Child, whose erroneous teaching on this point is still more marvellous, not only inculcate the idea that possessives in form may be in apposition, but seem to suppose that two possessive endings are essential to the relation. Forgetting all such English as we have in the phrases, "John the Baptist's head,"--"For Jacob my servant's sake,"--"Julius Cæsar's Commentaries,"--they invent sham expressions, too awkward ever to have come to their knowledge from any actual use,--such as, "John's the farmer's wife,"--"Oliver's the spy's evidence,"--and then end their section with the general truth, "For words to be in apposition with each other, they must be in the same case."--Elementary Grammar, Revised Edition, p. 152. What sort of scholarship is that in which fictitious examples mislead even their inventors?

[345] In Professor Fowler's recent and copious work, "The English Language in its Elements and Forms," our present Reciprocals are called, not Pronominal Adjectives, but "Pronouns," and are spoken of, in the first instance, thus: "§248. A RECIPROCAL PRONOUN is one that implies the mutual action of different agents. EACH OTHER, and ONE ANOTHER, are our reciprocal forms, which are treated exactly as if they were compound pronouns, taking for their genitives, each other's, one another's. Each other is properly used of two, and one another of more." The definition here given takes for granted what is at least disputable, that "each other," or "one another," is not a phrase, but is merely "one pronoun." But, to none of his three important positions here taken, does the author himself at all adhere. In §451, at Note 3, he teaches thus: "'They love each other.' Here each is in the nominative case in apposition with they, and other is in the objective case. 'They helped one another.' Here one is in apposition with they, and another is in the objective case." Now, by this mode of parsing, the reciprocal terms "are treated," not as "compound pronouns," but as phrases consisting of distinct or separable words: and, as being separate or separable words, whether they be Adjectives or Pronouns, they conform not to his definition above. Out of the sundry instances in which, according to his own showing, he has misapplied one or the other of these phrases, I cite the following: (1.) "The two ideas of Science and Art differ from one another as the understanding differs from the will."--Fowler's Gram., 1850, §180. Say,--"from each other;" or,--"one from the other." (2.) "THOU, THY, THEE, are etymologically related to each other."--Ib., §216. Say,--"to one an other;" because there are "more" than "two." (3.) "Till within some centuries, the Germans, like the French and the English, addressed each other in familiar conversation by the Second Person Singular."--Ib., §221. Say,--"addressed one an other." (4.) "Two sentences are, on the other hand, connected in the way of co-ordination [,] when they are not thus dependent one upon _an_other."--Ib., §332. Say,--"upon each other;" or,--"one upon the other;" because there are but two. (5.) "These two rivers are at a great distance from one _an_other."--Ib., §617. Say,--"from each other;" or,--"one from the other." (6.) "The trees [in the Forest of Bombast] are close, spreading, and twined into each other."--Ib., §617. Say,--"into one an other."

[346] For this quotation, Dr. Campbell gives, in his margin, the following reference: "Introduction, &c., Sentences, Note on the 6th Phrase." But in my edition of Dr. Lowth's Introduction to English Grammar, (a Philadelphia edition of 1799,) I do not find the passage. Perhaps it has been omitted in consequence of Campbell's criticism, of which I here cite but a part.--G. BROWN.

[347] By some grammarians it is presumed to be consistent with the nature of participles to govern the possessive case; and Hiley, if he is to be understood literally, assumes it as an "established principle," that they all do so! "Participles govern nouns and pronouns in the possessive case, and at the same time, if derived from transitive verbs, require the noun or pronoun following to be in the objective case, without the intervention of the preposition of; as 'Much depends on William's observing the rule, and error will be the consequence of his neglecting it;' or, 'Much will depend on the rule's being observed by William, and error will be the consequence of its being neglected.'"--Hiley's Gram., p. 94. These sentences, without doubt, are nearly equivalent to each other in meaning. To make them exactly so, "depends" or "will depend" must be changed in tense, and "its being neglected" must be "its being neglected by him." But who that has looked at the facts in the case, or informed himself on the points here in dispute, will maintain that either the awkward phraseology of the latter example, or the mixed and questionable construction of the former, or the extensive rule under which they are here presented, is among "the established principles and best usages of the English language?"--Ib., p. 1.

[348] What, in Weld's "Abridged Edition," is improperly called a "participial noun," was, in his "original work," still more erroneously termed "a participial clause." This gentleman, who has lately amended his general rule for possessives by wrongfully copying or imitating mine, has also as widely varied his conception of the participial--"object possessed;" but, in my judgement, a change still greater might not be amiss. "The possessive is often governed by a participial clause; as, much will depend on the pupil's composing frequently. Pupil's is governed by the clause, 'composing frequently.' NOTE.--The sign ('s) should be annexed to the word governed by the participial clause following it."--Weld's Gram., 2d Edition, p. 150. Again: "The possessive is often governed by a participial noun; as, Much will depend on the pupil's composing frequently. Pupil's is governed by the participial noun composing. NOTE.--The sign ('s) should be annexed to the word governed by the participial noun following it."--Weld's Gram., Abridged, p. 117. Choosing the possessive case, where, both by analogy and by authority, the objective would be quite as grammatical, if not more so; destroying, as far as possible, all syntactical distinction between the participle and the participial noun, by confounding them purposely, even in name; this author, like Wells, whom he too often imitates, takes no notice of the question here discussed, and seems quite unconscious that participles partly made nouns can produce false syntax. To the foregoing instructions, he subjoins the following comment, as a marginal note: "The participle used as a noun, still retains its verbal properties, and may govern the objective case, or be modified by an adverb or adjunct, like the verb from which it is derived."--Ibid. When one part of speech is said to be used as an other, the learner may be greatly puzzled to understand to which class the given word belongs. If "the participle used as a noun, still retains its verbal properties," it is, manifestly, not a noun, but a participle still; not a participial noun, but a nounal participle, whether the thing be allowable or not. Hence the teachings just cited are inconsistent. Wells says, "Participles are often used in the sense of nouns; as, 'There was again the smacking of whips, the clattering of hoofs, and the glittering of harness.'--IRVING."--School Gram., p. 154. This is not well stated; because these are participial nouns, and not "participles." What Wells calls "participial nouns," differ from these, and are all spurious, all mongrels, all participles rather than nouns. In regard to possessives before participles, no instructions appear to be more defective than those of this gentleman. His sole rule supposes the pupil always to know when and why the possessive is proper, and only instructs him not to form it without the sign! It is this: "When a noun or a pronoun, preceding a participle used as a noun, is properly in the possessive case, the sign of possession should not be omitted."--School Gram., p. 121. All the examples put under this rule, are inappropriate: each will mislead the learner. Those which are called "Correct," are, I think erroneous; and those which are called "False Syntax," the adding of the possessive sign will not amend.

[349] It is remarkable, that Lindley Murray, with all his care in revising his work, did not see the inconsistency of his instructions in relation to phrases of this kind. First he copies Lowth's doctrine, literally and anonymously, from the Doctor's 17th page, thus: "When the thing to which another is said to belong, is expressed by a circumlocution, or by many terms, the sign of the possessive case is commonly added to the last term: as, 'The king of Great Britain's dominions.'"--Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 45. Afterwards he condemns this: "The word in the genitive case is frequently PLACED IMPROPERLY: as, 'This fact appears from Dr. Pearson of Birmingham's experiments.' It should be, 'from the experiments of Dr. Pearson of Birmingham.' "--Ib., p. 175. And again he makes it necessary: "A phrase in which the words are so connected and dependent, as to admit of no pause before the conclusion, necessarily requires the genitive sign at or near the end of the phrase: as, 'Whose prerogative is it? It is the king of Great Britain's;' 'That is the duke of Bridgewater's canal;' " &c.--Ib., p. 276. Is there not contradiction in these instructions?

[350] A late grammarian tells us: "In nouns ending in es and ss, the other s is not added; as, Charles' hat, Goodness' sake."--Wilcox's Gram., p. 11. He should rather have said, "To nouns ending in es or ss, the other s is not added." But his doctrine is worse than his syntax; and, what is remarkable, he himself forgets it in the course of a few minutes, thus: "Decline Charles. Nom. Charles, Poss. Charles's, Obj. Charles."--Ib., p. 12. See the like doctrine in Mulligan's recent work on the "Structure of Language," p. 182.

[351] VAUGELAS was a noted French critic, who died in 1650. In Murray's Grammar, the name is more than once mistaken. On page 359th, of the edition above cited, it is printed "Vangelas"--G. BROWN.

[352] Nixon parses boy, as being "in the possessive case, governed by distress understood;" and girl's, as being "coupled by nor to boy," according to the Rule, "Conjunctions connect the same cases." Thus one word is written wrong; the other, parsed wrong: and so of all his examples above.--G. BROWN.

[353] Wells, whose Grammar, in its first edition, divides verbs into "transitive, intransitive, and passive;" but whose late edition absurdly make all passives transitive; says, in his third edition, "A transitive verb is a verb that has some noun or pronoun for its object;" (p. 78;) adopts, in his syntax, the old dogma, "Transitive verbs govern the objective case;" (3d Ed., p. 154;) and to this rule subjoins a series of remarks, so singularly fit to puzzle or mislead the learner, and withal so successful in winning the approbation of committees and teachers, that it may be worth while to notice most of them here.

"REM. 1.--A sentence or phrase often supplies the place of a noun or pronoun in the objective case; as, 'You see how few of these men have returned.'"--Wells' s School Gram., "Third Thousand," p. 154; late Ed. §215. According to this, must we not suppose verbs to be often transitive, when not made so by the author's definition? And if "see" is here transitive, would not other forms, such as are told, have been told, or are aware, be just as much so, if put in its place?

"REM. 2.--An intransitive verb may be used to govern an objective, when the verb and the noun depending upon it are of kindred signification; as, 'To live a blameless life;'--'To run a race.'"--Ib. Here verbs are absurdly called "intransitive," when, both in fact and by the foregoing definition, they are clearly transitive; or, at least, are, by many teachers, supposed to be so.

"REM. 3.--Idiomatic expressions sometimes occur in which intransitive verbs are followed by objectives depending upon them; as, 'To look the subject fully in the face.'--Channing. 'They laughed him to scorn.'--Matt. 9:24. 'And talked the night away.'--Goldsmith."-- Ib. Here again, verbs evidently made transitive by the construction, are, with strange inconsistency, called "intransitive." By these three remarks together, the distinction between transitives and intransitives must needs be extensively obscured in the mind of the learner.

"REM. 4.--Transitive verbs of asking, giving, teaching, and some others, are often employed to govern two objectives; as, 'Ask him his opinion;'--'This experience taught me a valuable lesson.'--'Spare me yet this bitter cup.'--Hemans. 'I thrice presented him a kingly crown.'--Shakspeare."--Ib. This rule not only jumbles together several different constructions, such as would require different cases in Latin or Greek, but is evidently repugnant to the sense of many of the passages to which it is meant to be applied. Wells thinks, the practice of supplying a preposition, "is, in many cases, arbitrary, and does violence to an important and well established idiom of the language."--Ib. But how can any idiom be violated by a mode of parsing, which merely expounds its true meaning? If the dative case has the meaning of to, and the ablative has the meaning of from, how can they be expounded, in English, but by suggesting the particle, where it is omitted? For example: "Spare me yet [from] this bitter cup."--"Spare [to] me yet this joyous cup." This author says, "The rule for the government of two objectives by a verb, without the aid of a preposition, is adopted by Webster, Murray, Alexander, Frazee, Nutting, Perley, Goldsbury, J. M. Putnam, Hamlin, Flower, Crane, Brace, and many others."--Ib. Yet, if I mistake not, the weight of authority is vastly against it. Such a rule as this, is not extensively approved; and even some of the names here given, are improperly cited. Lindley Murray's remark, "Some of our verbs appear to govern two words in the objective case," is applied only to words in apposition, and wrong even there; Perley's rule is only of "Some verbs of asking and teaching;" and Nutting's note, "It sometimes happens that one transitive verb governs two objective cases," is so very loose, that one can neither deny it, nor tell how much it means.

"REM. 5.--Verbs of asking, giving, teaching, and some others, are often employed in the passive voice to govern a noun or pronoun; as, 'He was asked his opinion.'--Johnson. 'He had been refused shelter.'-- Irving."--Ib., p. 155, §215. Passive governing is not far from absurdity. Here, by way of illustration, we have examples of two sorts; the one elliptical, the other solecistical. The former text appears to mean, "He was asked for, his opinion;"--or, "He was asked to give his opinion: the latter should have been, "Shelter had been refused him;"--i.e., "to him." Of the seven instances cited by the author, five at least are of the latter kind, and therefore to be condemned; and it is to be observed, that when they are corrected, and the right word is made nominative, the passive government, by Wells's own showing, becomes nothing but the ellipsis of a preposition. Having just given a rule, by which all his various examples are assumed to be regular and right, he very inconsistently adds this not: "This form of expression is anomalous, and might, in many cases, be improved. Thus, instead of saying, 'He was offered a seat on the council,' it would be preferable to say 'A seat in the council was offered [to] him.'"--Ib., p. 155, Sec. 215. By admitting here the ellipsis of the preposition to, he evidently refutes the doctrine of his own text, so far as it relates to passive government, and, by implication, the doctrine of his fourth remark also. For the ellipsis of to, before "him," is just as evident in the active expression, "I thrice presented him a kingly crown," as in the passive, "A kingly crown was thrice presented him." It is absurd to deny it in either. Having offset himself, Wells as ingeniously balances his authorities, pro and con; but, the elliptical examples being allowable, he should not have said that I and others "condemn this usage altogether."

"REM. 6.--The passive voice of a verb is sometimes used in connection with a preposition, forming a compound passive verb; as 'He was listened to.'--'Nor is this to be scoffed at.'--'This is a tendency to be guarded against.'--'A bitter persecution was carried on.'--Hallam."-- Ib., p. 155, Sec. 215. The words here called "prepositions," are adverbs. Prepositions they cannot be; because they have no subsequent term. Nor is it either necessary or proper, to call them parts of the verb: "was carried on," is no more a "compound verb," than "was carried off," or "was carried forward," and the like.

"REM. 7.--Idiomatic expressions sometimes occur in which a noun in the objective is preceded by a passive verb, and followed by a preposition used adverbially. EXAMPLES: 'Vocal and instrumental music were made use of.'--Addison. 'The third, fourth, and fifth, were taken possession of at half past eight."--Southey. 'The Pinta was soon lost sight of in the darkness of the night.'--Irving."--Ib., p. 155, Sec. 215. As it is by the manner of their use, that we distinguish prepositions and adverbs, it seems no more proper to speak of "a preposition used adverbially," than of "an adverb used prepositionally." But even if the former phrase is right and the thing conceivable, here is no instance of it; for "of" here modifies no verb, adjective, or adverb. The construction is an unparsable synchysis, a vile snarl, which no grammarian should hesitate to condemn. These examples may each be corrected in several ways: 1. Say--"were used;"--"were taken into possession;"--"was soon lost from sight." 2. Say--"They made use of music, both vocal and instrumental."--"Of the third, the fourth, and the fifth, they took possession at half past eight."--"Of the Pinta they soon list sight," &c. 3. Say--"Use was also made of both vocal and instrumental music."--"Possession of the third, the fourth, and the fifth, was taken at half past eight."--"The Pinta soon disappeared in the darkness of the night." Here again, Wells puzzles his pupil, with a note which half justifies and half condemns the awkward usage in question. See School Gram., 1st Ed., p. 147; 3d Ed., 156; late Ed., Sec. 215.

"REM. 8.--There are some verbs which may be used either transitively or intransitively; as, 'He will return in a week,' 'He will return the book.'"--Ib., p. 147; 156; &c. According to Dr. Johnson, this is true of "most verbs," and Lindley Murray asserts it of "many." There are, I think, but few which may not, in some phraseology or other, be used both ways. Hence the rule, "Transitive verbs govern the objective case," or, as Wells now has it, "Transitive verbs, in the active voice, govern the objective case," (Sec. 215,) rests only upon a distinction which itself creates, between transitives and intransitives; and therefore it amounts to little.

[354] To these examples, Webster adds two others, of a different sort, with a comment, thus: "'Ask him his opinion?' 'You have asked me the news.' Will it be said that the latter phrases are elliptical, for 'ask of him his opinion?' I apprehend this to be a mistake. According to the true idea of the government of a transitive verb, him must be the object in the phrase under consideration, as much as in this, 'Ask him for a guinea;' or in this, 'ask him to go.'"--Ibid, ut supra; Frazee's Gram., p. 152; Fowler's, p. 480. If, for the reason here stated, it is a "mistake" to supply of in the foregoing instances, it does not follow that they are not elliptical. On the contrary, if they are analogous to, "Ask him for a guinea;" or, "Ask him to go;" it is manifest that the construction must be this: "Ask him [for] his opinion;" or, "Ask him [to tell] his opinion." So that the question resolves itself into this: What is the best way of supplying the ellipsis, when two objectives thus occur after ask?--G. BROWN.

[355] These examples Murray borrowed from Webster, who published them, with references, under his 34th Rule. With too little faith in the corrective power of grammar, the Doctor remarks upon the constructions as follows: "This idiom is outrageously anomalous, but perhaps incorrigible."-- Webster's Philos. Gram., p. 180; Imp. G., 128.

[356] This seems to be a reasonable principle of syntax, and yet I find it contradicted, or a principle opposite to it set up, by some modern teachers of note, who venture to justify all those abnormal phrases which I here condemn as errors. Thus Fowler: "Note 5. When a Verb with its Accusative case, is equivalent to a single verb, it may take this accusative after it in the passive voice; as, 'This has been put an end to.'"--Fowler's English Language, 8vo, §552. Now what is this, but an effort to teach bad English by rule?--and by such a rule, too, as is vastly more general than even the great class of terms which it was designed to include? And yet this rule, broad as it is, does not apply at all to the example given! For "put an end," without the important word "to," is not equivalent to stop or terminate. Nor is the example right. One ought rather to say, "This has been ended;" or, "This has been stopped." See the marginal Note to Obs. 5th, above.

[357] Some, however, have conceived the putting of the same case after the verb as before it, to be government; as, "Neuter verbs occasionally govern either the nominative or [the] objective case, after them."--Alexander's Gram., p. 54. "The verb to be, always governs a Nominative, unless it be of the Infinitive Mood."--Buchanan's Gram., p. 94. This latter assertion is, in fact, monstrously untrue, and also solecistical.

[358] Not unfrequently the conjunction as intervenes between these "same cases," as it may also between words in apposition; as, "He then is as the head, and we as the members; he the vine, and we the branches."--Barclay's Works, Vol. ii, p. 189.

[359] "'Whose house is that?' This sentence, before it is parsed, should be transposed; thus, 'Whose is that house?' The same observation applies to every sentence of a similar construction."--Chandler's old Gram., p. 93. This instruction is worse than nonsense; for it teaches the pupil to parse every word in the sentence wrong! The author proceeds to explain Whose, as "qualifying house, understood;" is, as agreeing "with its nominative, house;" that, as "qualifying house;" and house, as "nominative case to the verb, is." Nothing of this is true of the original question. For, in that, Whose is governed by house; house is nominative after is; is agrees with house understood; and that relates to house understood. The meaning is, "Whose house is that house?" or, in the order of a declarative sentence, "That house is whose house?"

[360] 1: In Latin, the accusative case is used after such a verb, because an other word in the same case is understood before it; as, "Facere quæ libet, ID est [hominem] esse regem."--SALLUST. "To do what he pleases, THAT is [for a man] to be a king." If Professor Bullions had understood Latin, or Greek, or English, as well as his commenders imagine, he might have discovered what construction of cases we have in the following instances: "It is an honour [for a man] to be the author of such a work."--Bullions's Eng. Gram., p. 82. "To be surety for a stranger [,] is dangerous."--Ib. "Not to know what happened before you were born, is to be always a child."--Ib. "Nescire quid acciderit antequam natus es, est semper esse puerum."--Ib. "[Greek: Esti tion aischron ...topon, hon hæmen pote kurioi phainesthai proiemenous]." "It is a shame to be seen giving up countries of which we were once masters."--DEMOSTHENES: ib. What support these examples give to this grammarian's new notion of "the objective indefinite" or to his still later seizure of Greene's doctrine of "the predicate-nominative" the learned reader may judge. All the Latin and Greek grammarians suppose an ellipsis, in such instances; but some moderns are careless enough of that, and of the analogy of General Grammar in this case, to have seconded the Doctor in his absurdity. See Farnum's Practical Gram., p. 23; and S. W. Clark's, p. 149.

2. Professor Hart has an indecisive remark on this construction, as follows: "Sometimes a verb in the infinitive mood has a noun after it without any other noun before it; as, 'To be a good man, is not so easy a thing as many people imagine.' Here 'man' may be parsed as used indefinitely after the verb to be. It is not easy to say in what case the noun is in such sentences. The analogy of the Latin would seem to indicate the objective.--Thus, 'Not to know what happened in past years, is to be always a child,' Latin, 'semper esse puerum.' In like manner, in English, we may say, 'Its being me, need make no change in your determination.'"--Hart's English Gram., p. 127.

3. These learned authors thus differ about what certainly admits of no other solution than that which is given in the Observation above. To parse the nouns in question, "as used indefinitely," without case, and to call them "objectives indefinite," without agreement or government, are two methods equally repugnant to reason. The last suggestion of Hart's is also a false argument for a true position. The phrases, "Its being me," and "To be a good man," are far from being constructed "in like manner." The former is manifestly bad English; because its and me are not in the same case. But S. S. Greene would say, "Its being I, is right." For in a similar instance, he has this conclusion: "Hence, in abridging the following proposition, 'I was not aware that it was he,' we should say 'of its being he,' not 'his' nor 'him.'"--Greene's Analysis, 1st Ed., p. 171. When being becomes a noun, no case after it appears to be very proper; but this author, thus "abridging" four syllables into five, produces an anomalous construction which it would be much better to avoid.

[361] Parkhurst and Sanborn, by what they call "A NEW RULE," attempt to determine the doubtful or unknown case which this note censures, and to justify the construction as being well-authorized and hardly avoidable. Their rule is this: "A noun following a neuter or [a] passive participial noun, is in the nominative independent. A noun or pronoun in the possessive case, always precedes the participial noun, either expressed or understood, signifying the same thing as the noun does that follows it." To this new and exceptionable' dogma, Sanborn adds: "This form of expression is one of the most common idioms of the language, and in general composition cannot be well avoided. In confirmation of the statement made, various authorities are subjoined. Two grammarians only, to our knowledge, have remarked OH this phraseology: 'Participles are sometimes preceded by a possessive case and followed by a nominative; as, There is no doubt of his being a great statesman.' B. GREENLEAF. 'We sometimes find a participle that takes the same case after as before it, converted into a verbal noun, and the latter word retained unchanged in connexion with it; as, I have some recollection of his father's being a judge.' GOOLD BROWN."--Sanborn's Analytical Gram., p. 189. On what principle the words statesman and judge can be affirmed to be in the nominative case, I see not; and certainly they are not nominatives "independent" because the word being, after which they stand, is not itself independent. It is true, the phraseology is common enough to be good English: but I dislike it; and if this citation from me, was meant for a confirmation of the reasonless dogmatism preceding, it is not made with fairness, because my opinion of the construction is omitted by the quoter. See Institutes of English Gram., p. 162. In an other late grammar,--a shameful work, because it is in great measure a tissue of petty larcenies from my Institutes, with alterations for the worse,--I find the following absurd "Note," or Rule: "An infinitive or participle is often followed by a substantive explanatory of an indefinite person or thing. The substantive is then in the objective case, and may be called the objective after the infinitive, or participle; [as,] It is an honor to be the author of such a work. His being a great man, did not make him a happy man. By being an obedient child, you will secure the approbation of your parents."--Farnum's Practical Gram., 1st Ed., p. 25. The first of these examples is elliptical; (see Obs. 12th above, and the Marginal Note;) the second is bad English,--or, at' any rate, directly repugnant to the rule for same cases; and the third parsed wrong by the rule: "child" is in the nominative case. See Obs. 7th above.

[362] When the preceding case is not "the verb's nominative" this phrase must of course be omitted; and when the word which is to be corrected, does not literally follow the verb, it may be proper to say, "constructively follows," in lieu of the phrase, "comes after."

[363] The author of this example supposes friend to be in the nominative case, though John's is in the possessive, and both words denote the same person. But this is not only contrary to the general rule for the same cases, but contrary to his own application of one of his rules. Example: "Maria's duty, as a teacher, is, to instruct her pupils." Here, he says, "Teacher is in the possessive case, from its relation to the name Maria, denoting the same object."--Peirce's Gram., p. 211. This explanation, indeed, is scarcely intelligible, on account of its grammatical inaccuracy. He means, however, that, "Teacher is in the possessive case, from its relation to the name Maria's, the two words denoting the same object." No word can be possessive "from its relation to the name Maria," except by standing immediately before it, in the usual manner of possessives; as, "Sterne's Maria."

[364] Dr. Webster, who was ever ready to justify almost any usage for which he could find half a dozen respectable authorities, absurdly supposes, that who may sometimes be rightly preferred to whom, as the object of a preposition. His remark is this: "In the use of who as an interrogative, there is an apparent deviation from regular construction--it being used without distinction of case; as, 'Who do you speak to?' 'Who is she married to?' 'Who is this reserved for?' 'Who was it made by?' This idiom is not merely colloquial: it is found in the writings of our best authors."--Webster's Philosophical Gram., p. 194; his Improved Gram., p. 136. "In this phrase, 'Who do you speak to?' there is a deviation from regular construction; but the practice of thus using who, in certain familiar phrases, seems to be established by the best authors."--Webster's Rudiments of E. Gram., p. 72. Almost any other solecism may be quite as well justified as this. The present work shows, in fact, a great mass of authorities for many of the incongruities which it ventures to rebuke.

[365] Grammarians differ much as to the proper mode of parsing such nouns. Wells says, "This is the case independent by ellipsis."--School Gram., p. 123. But the idea of such a case is a flat absurdity. Ellipsis occurs only where something, not uttered, is implied; and where a preposition is thus wanting, the noun is, of course, its object; and therefore not independent. Webster, with too much contempt for the opinion of "Lowth, followed by the whole tribe of writers on this subject," declares it "a palpable error," to suppose "prepositions to be understood before these expressions;" and, by two new rules, his 22d and 28th, teaches, that, "Names of measure or dimension, followed by an adjective," and "Names of certain portions of time and space, and especially words denoting continuance of time or progression, are used without a governing word."--Philos. Gram., pp. 165 and 172; Imp. Gram., 116 and 122; Rudiments, 65 and 67. But this is no account at all of the construction, or of the case of the noun. As the nominative, or the case which we may use independently, is never a subject of government, the phrase, "without a governing word," implies that the case is objective; and how can this case be known, except by the discovery of some "governing word," of which it is the object? We find, however, many such rules as the following: "Nouns of time, distance, and degree, are put in the objective case without a preposition."--Nutting's Gram., p. 100. "Nouns which denote time, quantity, measure, distance, value, or direction are often put in the objective case without a preposition."--Weld's Gram., p. 153; "Abridged Ed.," 118. "Numes signifying duration, extension, quantity, quality, and valuation, are in the objective case without a governing word."--Frazee's Gram., p. 154. Bullions, too, has a similar rule. To estimate these rules aright, one should observe how often the nouns in question are found with a governing word. Weld, of late, contradicts himself by admitting the ellipsis; and then, inconsistently with his admission, most absurdly denies the frequent use of the preposition with nouns of time, quantity, &c. "Before words of this description, the ellipsis of a preposition is obvious. But it is seldom proper to use the preposition before such words."--Weld's "Abridged Edition," p. 118.

[366] Professor Fowler absurdly says, "Nigh, near, next, like, when followed by the objective case, may be regarded either as Prepositions or as Adjectives, to being understood."--Fowler's E. Gram., 8vo, 1850, §458, Note 7. Now, "to being understood," it is plain that no one of these words can be accounted a preposition, but by supposing the preposition to be complex, and to be partly suppressed. This can be nothing better than an idle whim; and, since the classification of words as parts of speech, is always positive and exclusive, to refer any particular word indecisively to "either" of two classes, is certainly no better teaching, than to say, "I do not know of which sort it is; call it what you please!" With decision prompt enough, but with too little regard to analogy or consistency, Latham and Child say, "The adjective like governs a case, and it is the only adjective that does so."--Elementary Gram., p. 155. In teaching thus, they seem to ignore these facts: that near, nigh, or opposite, might just as well be said to be an adjective governing a case; and that the use of to or unto after like has been common enough to prove the ellipsis. The Bible has many examples; as, "Who is like to thee in Israel?"--1 Samuel, xxvi, 15. "Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first."--Exodus, xxxiv, 1; and Deut., x, 1. But their great inconsistency here is, that they call the case after like "a dative"--a case unknown to their etymology! See Gram. of E. Gram., p. 259. In grammar, a solitary exception or instance can scarcely be a true one.

[367] The following examples may illustrate these points: "These verbs, and all others like to them, were like TIMAO."--Dr. Murray's Hist. of Europ. Lang., Vol. ii, p. 128. "The old German, and even the modern German, are much liker to the Visigothic than they are to the dialect of the Edda."--Ib., i, 330. "Proximus finem, nighest the end."--Ib., ii, 150. "Let us now come nearer to our own language."--Dr. Blair's Rhet., p. 85. "This looks very like a paradox."--BEATTIE: Murray's Gram., Vol. i, p. 113. "He was near [to] falling."--Ib., p. 116. Murray, who puts near into his list of prepositions, gives this example to show how "prepositions become adverbs!" "There was none ever before like unto it."--Stone, on Masonry, p. 5.

"And earthly power doth then show likest God's, When mercy seasons justice."--Beauties of Shakspeare, p. 45.

[368] Wright's notion of this construction is positively absurd and self-contradictory. In the sentence, "My cane is worth a shilling," he takes the word worth to be a noun "in apposition to the word shilling." And to prove it so, he puts the sentence successively into these four forms: "My cane is worth or value for a shilling;"--"The worth or value of my cane is a shilling;"--"My cane is a shilling's worth;"--"My cane is the worth of a shilling."--Philosophical Gram., p. 150. In all these transmutations, worth is unquestionably a noun; but, in none of them, is it in apposition with the word shilling; and he is quite mistaken in supposing that they "indispensably prove the word in question to be a noun." There are other authors, who, with equal confidence, and equal absurdity, call worth a verb. For example: "A noun, which signifies the price, is put in the objective case, without a preposition; as, 'my book is worth twenty shillings.' Is worth is a neuter verb, and answers to the latin [sic--KTH] verb valet."--Barrett's Gram., p. 138. I do not deny that the phrase "is worth" is a just version of the verb valet; but this equivalence in import, is no proof at all that worth is a verb. Prodest is a Latin verb, which signifies "is profitable to;" but who will thence infer, that profitable to is a verb?

[369] In J. R. Chandler's English Grammar, as published in 1821, the word worth appears in the list of prepositions: but the revised list, in his edition of 1847, does not contain it. In both books, however, it is expressly parsed as a preposition; and, in expounding the sentence, "The book is worth a dollar," the author makes this remark: "Worth has been called an adjective by some, and a noun by others: worth, however, in this sentence expresses a relation by value, and is so far a preposition; and no ellipsis, which may be formed, would change the nature of the word, without giving the sentence a different meaning."--Chandler's Gram., Old Ed., p. 155; New Ed., p. 181.

[370] Cowper here purposely makes Mrs. Gilpin use bad English; but this is no reason why a school-boy may not be taught to correct it. Dr. Priestley supposed that the word we, in the example, "To poor we, thine enmity," &c., was also used by Shakespeare, "in a droll humorous way."--Gram., p. 103. He surely did not know the connexion of the text. It is in "Volumnia's pathetic speech" to her victorious son. See Coriolanus, Act V, Sc. 3.

[371] Dr. Enfield misunderstood this passage; and, in copying it into his Speaker, (a very popular school-book,) he has perverted the text, by changing we to us: as if the meaning were, "Making us fools of nature." But it is plain, that all "fool's of nature!" must be fools of nature's own making, and not persons temporarily frighted out of their wits by a ghost; nor does the meaning of the last two lines comport with any objective construction of this pronoun. See Enfield's Speaker, p. 864.

[372] In Clark's Practical Grammar, of 1848, is found this NOTE: "The Noun should correspond in number with the Adjectives. EXAMPLES--A two feet ruler. A ten feet pole."--P. 165. These examples are wrong: the doctrine is misapplied in both. With this author, a, as well as two or ten, is an adjective of number; and, since these differ in number, what sort of concord or construction do the four words in each of these phrases make? When a numeral and a noun are united to form a compound adjective, we commonly, if not always, use the latter in its primitive or singular form: as, "A twopenny toy,"--"a twofold error,"--"three-coat plastering," say, "a twofoot rule,"--"a tenfoot pole;" which phrases are right; while Clark's are not only unusual, but unanalogical, ungrammatical.

[373] Certain adjectives that differ in number, are sometimes connected disjunctively by or or than, while the noun literally agrees with that which immediately precedes it, and with the other merely by implication or supplement, under the figure which is called zeugma: as, "Two or more nouns joined together by one or more copulative conjunctions."-- Lowth's Gram., p. 75; L. Murray's, 2d Ed., p. 106. "He speaks not to one or a few judges, but to a large assembly."--Blair's Rhet., p. 280. "More than one object at a time."--Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 301. See Obs. 10th on Rule 17th.

[374] Double comparatives and double superlatives, such as, "The more serener spirit,"--"The most straitest sect,"--are noticed by Latham and Child, in their syntax, as expressions which "we occasionally find, even in good writers," and are truly stated to be "pleonastic;" but, forbearing to censure them as errors, these critics seem rather to justify them as pleonasms allowable. Their indecisive remarks are at fault, not only because they are indecisive, but because they are both liable and likely to mislead the learner.--See their Elementary Grammar, p. 155.

[375] The learned William B. Fowle strangely imagines all pronouns to be adjectives, belonging to nouns expressed or understood after them; as, "We kings require them (subjects) to obey us (kings)."--The True English Gram., p. 21. "They grammarians, [i. e.] those grammarians. They is an other spelling of the, and of course means this, that, these, those, as the case may be."--Ibid. According to him, then, "them grammarians," for "those grammarians," is perfectly good English; and so is "they grammarians," though the vulgar do not take care to vary this adjective, "as the case may be." His notion of subjoining a noun to every pronoun, is a fit counterpart to that of some other grammarians, who imagine an ellipsis of a pronoun after almost every noun. Thus: "The personal Relatives, for the most part, are suppressed when the Noun is expressed: as, Man (he) is the Lord of this lower world. Woman (she) is the fairest Part of the Creation. The Palace (it) stands on a Hill. Men and Women (they) are rational Creatures."--British Gram., p. 234; Buchanan's, 131. It would have been worth a great deal to some men, to have known what an Ellipsis is; and the man who shall yet make such knowledge common, ought to be forever honoured in the schools.

[376] "An illegitimate and ungrammatical use of these words, either and neither, has lately been creeping into the language, in the application of these terms to a plurality of objects: as, 'Twenty ruffians broke into the house, but neither of them could be recognized.' 'Here are fifty pens, you will find that either of them will do.'"--MATT. HARRISON, on the English Language, p. 199. "Either and neither, applied to any number more than one of two objects, is a mere solecism, and one of late introduction."--Ib., p. 200. Say, "Either OR neither," &c.--G. B.

[377] Dr. Priestley censures this construction, on the ground, that the word whole is an "attribute of unity," and therefore improperly added to a plural noun. But, in fact, this adjective is not necessarily singular, nor is all necessarily plural. Yet there is a difference between the words: whole is equivalent to all only when the noun is singular; for then only do entireness and totality coincide. A man may say, "the whole thing," when he means, "all the thing;" but he must not call all things, whole things. In the following example, all is put for whole, and taken substantively; but the expression is a quaint one, because the article and preposition seem needless: "Which doth encompass and embrace the all of things."--The Dial, Vol. i, p. 59.

[378] This is not a mere repetition of the last example cited under Note 14th above; but it is Murray's interpretation of the text there quoted. Both forms are faulty, but not in the same way.--G. BROWN.

[379] Some authors erroneously say, "A personal pronoun does not always agree in person with its antecedent; as, 'John said, I will do it.'"--Goodenow's Gram. "When I say, 'Go, and say to those children, you must come in,' you perceive that the noun children is of the third person, but the pronoun you is of the second; yet you stands for children,"--Ingersoll's Gram., p. 54. Here are different speakers, with separate speeches; and these critics are manifestly deceived by the circumstance. It is not to be supposed, that the nouns represented by one speaker's pronouns, are to be found or sought in what an other speaker utters. The pronoun I does not here stand for the noun John which is of the third person; it is John's own word, representing himself as the speaker. The meaning is, "I myself, John, of the first person, will do it." Nor does you stand for children as spoken of by Ingersoll; but for children of the second person, uttered or implied in the address of his messenger: as, "Children, you must come in."

[380] The propriety of this construction is questionable. See Obs. 2d on Rule 14th.

[381] Among the authors who have committed this great fault, are, Alden, W. Allen, D. C. Allen, C. Adams, the author of the British Grammar, Buchanan, Cooper, Cutler, Davis, Dilworth, Felton, Fisher, Fowler, Frazee, Goldsbury, Hallock, Hull, M'Culloch, Morley, Pinneo, J. Putnam, Russell, Sanborn, R. C. Smith, Spencer, Weld, Wells, Webster, and White. "You is plural, whether it refer to only one individual, or to more."--Dr. Crombie, on Etym. and Synt., p. 240. "The word you, even when applied to one person, is plural, and should never he connected with a singular verb."--Alexander's Gram., p. 53; Emmons's, 26. "You is of the Plural Number, even though used as the Name of a single Person."--W. Ward's Gram., p. 88. "Altho' the Second Person Singular in both Times be marked with thou, to distinguish it from the Plural, yet we, out of Complaisance, though we speak but to one particular Person, use the Plural you, and never thou, but when we address ourselves to Almighty God, or when we speak in an emphatical Manner, or make a distinct and particular Application to a Person."--British Gram., p. 126; Buchanan's, 37. "But you, tho' applied to a single Person, requires a Plural Verb, the same as ye; as, you love, not you lovest or loves; you were, not you was or wast."--Buchanan's Gram., p. 37.

[382] "Mr. Murray's 6th Rule is unnecessary."--Lennie's English Gram., p. 81; Bullions's, p. 90. The two rules of which I speak, constitute Murray's Rule VI; Alger's and Bacon's Rule VI; Merchant's Rule IX; Ingersoll's Rule XII; Kirkham's Rules XV and XVI; Jaudon's XXI and XXII; Crombie's X and XI; Nixon's Obs. 86th and 87th: and are found in Lowth's Gram., p. 100; Churchill's, 136; Adam's, 203; W. Allen's, 156; Blair's, 75; and many other books.

[383] This rule, in all its parts, is to be applied chiefly, if not solely, to such relative clauses as are taken in the restrictive sense; for, in the resumptive sense of the relative, who or which may be more proper than that: as, "Abraham solemnly adjures his most faithful servant, whom he despatches to Charran on this matrimonial mission for his son, to discharge his mission with all fidelity."--Milman's Jews, i, 21. See Etymology, Chap. 5th, Obs. 23d, 24th, &c., on the Classes of Pronouns.

[384] Murray imagined this sentence to be bad English. He very strangely mistook the pronoun he for the object of the preposition with; and accordingly condemned the text, under the rule, "Prepositions govern the objective case." So of the following: "It is not I he is engaged with."--Murray's Exercises, R. 17. Better: "It is not I that he is engaged with." Here is no violation of the foregoing rule, or of any other; and both sentences, with even Murray's form of the latter, are quite as good as his proposed substitutes: "It was not with him, that they were so angry."--Murray's Key, p. 51. "It is not with me he is engaged."--Ib. In these fancied corrections, the phrases with him and with me have a very awkward and questionable position: it seems doubtful, whether they depend on was and is, or on angry and engaged.

[385] In their speculations on the personal pronouns, grammarians sometimes contrive, by a sort of abstraction, to reduce all the persons to the third; that is, the author or speaker puts I, not for himself in particular, but for any one who utters the word, and thou, not for his particular hearer or reader, but for any one who is addressed; and, conceiving of these as persons merely spoken of by himself, he puts the verb in the third person, and not in the first or second: as, "I is the speaker, thou [is] the hearer, and he, she, or it, is the person or thing spoken of. All denote qualities of existence, but such qualities as make different impressions on the mind. I is the being of consciousness, thou [is the being] of perception, and he of memory."--Booth's Introd., p. 44. This is such syntax as I should not choose to imitate; nor is it very proper to say, that the three persons in grammar "denote qualities of existence." But, supposing the phraseology to be correct, it is no real exception to the foregoing rule of concord; for I and thou are here made to be pronouns of the third person. So in the following example, which I take to be bad English: "I, or the person who speaks, is the first person; you, is the second; he, she, or it, is the third person singular."--Bartlett's Manual, Part ii, p. 70. Again, in the following; which is perhaps a little better: "The person 'I' is spoken of as acted upon."--Bullions, Prin. of E. Gram., 2d Edition, p. 29. But there is a manifest absurdity in saying, with this learned "Professor of Languages," that the pronouns of the different persons are those persons: as, "I is the first person, and denotes the speaker. Thou is the second, and denotes the person spoken to."--Ib., p. 22.

[386] (1.) Concerning the verb need, Dr. Webster has the following note: "In the use of this verb there is another irregularity, which is peculiar, the verb being without a nominative, expressed or implied. 'Whereof here needs no account.'--Milt., P. L., 4. 235. There is no evidence of the fact, and there needs none. This is an established use of need."--Philos. Gram., p. 178; Improved Gram., 127; Greenleaf's Gram. Simp., p. 38; Fowler's E. Gram., p. 537. "Established use?" To be sure, it is "an established use;" but the learned Doctor's comment is a most unconscionable blunder,--a pedantic violation of a sure principle of Universal Grammar,--a perversion worthy only of the veriest ignoramus. Yet Greenleaf profitably publishes it, with other plagiarisms, for "Grammar Simplified!" Now the verb "needs," like the Latin eget, signifying is necessary, is here not active, but neuter; and has the nominative set after it, as any verb must, when the adverb there or here is before it. The verbs lack and want may have the same construction, and can have no other, when the word there, and not a nominative, precedes them; as, "Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous."--Gen., xviii, 28. There is therefore neither "irregularity," nor any thing "peculiar," in thus placing the verb and its nominative.

(2.) Yet have we other grammarians, who, with astonishing facility, have allowed themselves to be misled, and whose books are now misleading the schools, in regard to this very simple matter. Thus Wells: "The transitive verbs need and want, are sometimes employed in a general sense, without a nominative, expressed or implied. Examples:--'There needed a new dispensation.'--Caleb Cushing. 'There needs no better picture.'--Irving. 'There wanted not patrons to stand up.'--Sparks. 'Nor did there want Cornice, or frieze.'--Milton."--Wells's School Gram., 1st Ed., p. 141: 113th Ed., p. 154. In my edition of Milton, the text is, "Nor did they want Cornice or frieze."--P. L., B. i, l. 715, 716. This reading makes want a "transitive" verb, but the other makes it neuter, with the nominative following it. Again, thus Weld: "A verb in the imperative mode, and the transitive verbs need, want, and require, sometimes appear to be used indefinitely, without a nominative; as, let there be light; There required haste in the business; There needs no argument for proving, &c. There wanted not men who would, &c. The last expressions have an active form with a passive sense, and should perhaps rather be considered elliptical than wanting a nominative; as, haste is required, no argument is needed, &c."--Weld's English Grammar Illustrated, p. 143. Is there anywhere, in print, viler pedantry than this? The only elliptical example, "Let there be light,"--a kind of sentence from which the nominative is usually suppressed,--is here absurdly represented as being full, yet without a subject for its verb; while other examples, which are full, and in which the nominative must follow the verb, because the adverb "there" precedes, are first denied to have nominatives, and then most bunglingly tortured with false ellipses, to prove that they have them!

(3.) The idea of a command wherein no person or thing is commanded, seems to have originated with Webster, by whom it has been taught, since 1807, as follows: "In some cases, the imperative verb is used without a definite nominative."--Philos. Gram., p. 141; Imp. Gram., 86; Rudiments, 69. See the same words in Frazee's Gram., p. 133. Wells has something similar: "A verb in the imperative is sometimes used absolutely, having no direct reference to any particular subject expressed or implied; as, 'And God said, Let there be light.'"--School Gram., p. 141. But, when this command was uttered to the dark waves of primeval chaos, it must have meant, "Do ye let light be there." What else could it mean? There may frequently be difficulty in determining what or who is addressed by the imperative let, but there seems to be more in affirming that it has no subject. Nutting, puzzled with this word, makes the following dubious and unsatisfactory suggestion: "Perhaps it may be, in many cases, equivalent to may; or it may be termed itself an imperative mode impersonal; that is, containing a command or an entreaty addressed to no particular person."--Nutting's Practical Gram., p. 47.

(4.) These several errors, about the "Imperative used Absolutely," with "no subject addressed," as in "Let there be light," and the Indicative "verbs NEED and WANT, employed without a nominative, either expressed or implied," are again carefully reiterated by the learned Professor Fowler, in his great text-book of philology "in its Elements and Forms,"--called, rather extravagantly, an "English Grammar." See, in his edition of 1850, §597, Note 3 and Note 7; also §520, Note 2. Wells's authorities for "Imperatives Absolute," are, "Frazee, Allen and Cornwell, Nutting, Lynde, and Chapin;" and, with reference to "NEED and WANT," he says, "See Webster, Perley, and Ingersoll."--School Gram., 1850, §209.

(5.) But, in obvious absurdity most strangely overlooked by the writer, all these blunderers are outdone by a later one, who says: "Need and dare are sometimes used in a general sense without a nominative: as, 'There needed no prophet to tell us that;' 'There wanted no advocates to secure the voice of the people.' It is better, however, to supply it, as a nominative, than admit an anomala. Sometimes, when intransitive, they have the plural form with a singular noun: as, 'He need not fear;' 'He dare not hurt you.'"--Rev. H. W. Bailey's E. Gram., 1854, p. 128. The last example--"He dare"--is bad English: dare should be dares. "He need not fear," if admitted to be right, is of the potential mood; in which no verb is inflected in the third person. "He," too, is not a "noun;" nor can it ever rightly have a "plural" verb. "To supply it, as a nominative," where the verb is declared to be "without a nominative," and to make "wanted" an example of "dare" are blunders precisely worthy of an author who knows not how to spell anomaly!

[387] This interpretation, and others like it, are given not only by Murray, but by many other grammarians, one of whom at least was earlier than he. See Bicknell's Gram., Part i, p. 123; Ingersoll's, 153; Guy's, 91; Alger's, 73; Merchant's, 100; Picket's, 211; Fisk's, 146; D. Adams's, 81; R. C. Smith's, 182.

[388] The same may be said of Dr. Webster's "nominative sentences;" three fourths of which are nothing but phrases that include a nominative with which the following verb agrees. And who does not know, that to call the adjuncts of any thing "an essential part of it," is a flat absurdity? An adjunct is "something added to another, but not essentially a part of it."--Webster's Dict. But, says the Doctor, "Attributes and other words often make an essential part of the nominative; [as,] 'Our IDEAS of eternity CAN BE nothing but an infinite succession of moments of duration.'--LOCKE. 'A wise SON MAKETH a glad father; but a foolish SON IS the heaviness of his mother.' Abstract the name from its attribute, and the proposition cannot always be true. 'HE that gathereth in summer is a wise son.' Take away the description, 'that gathereth in summer,' and the affirmation ceases to be true, or becomes inapplicable. These sentences or clauses thus constituting the subject of an affirmation, may be termed nominative sentences."--Improved Gram., p. 95. This teaching reminds me of the Doctor's own exclamation: "What strange work has been made with Grammar!"--Ib., p. 94; Philos. Gram., 138. In Nesbit's English Parsing, a book designed mainly for "a Key to Murray's Exercises in Parsing," the following example is thus expounded: "The smooth stream, the serene atmosphere, [and] the mild zephyr, are the proper emblems of a gentle temper, and a peaceful life."--Murray's Exercises, p. 8. "The smooth stream, the serene atmosphere, the mild zephyr, is part of a sentence, which is the nominative case to the verb 'are.' Are is an irregular verb neuter, in the indicative mood, the present tense, the third person plural, and agrees with the aforementioned part of a sentence, as its nominative case."--Introduction to English Parsing, p. 137. On this principle of analysis, all the rules that speak of the nominatives or antecedents connected by conjunctions, may be dispensed with, as useless; and the doctrine, that a verb which has a phrase or sentence for its subject, must be singular, is palpably contradicted, and supposed erroneous!

[389] "No Relative can become a Nominative to a Verb."--Joseph W. Wright's Philosophical Grammar, p. 162. "A personal pronoun becomes a nominative, though a relative does not."--Ib., p. 152. This teacher is criticised by the other as follows: "Wright says that 'Personal pronouns may be in the nominative case,' and that 'relative pronouns can not be. Yet he declines his relatives thus: 'Nominative case, who; possessive, whose; objective, whom!"--Oliver B. Peirce's Grammar, p. 331. This latter author here sees the palpable inconsistency of the former, and accordingly treats who, which, what, whatever, &c., as relative pronouns of the nominative case--or, as he calls them, "connective substitutes in the subjective form;" but when what or whatever precedes its noun, or when as is preferred to who or which, he refers both verbs to the noun itself, and adopts the very principle by which Cobbet and Wright erroneously parse the verbs which belong to the relatives, who, which, and that: as, "Whatever man will adhere to strict principles of honesty, will find his reward in himself."--Peirce's Gram., p. 55. Here Peirce considers whatever to be a mere adjective, and man the subject of will adhere and will find. "Such persons as write grammar, should themselves be grammarians."--Ib., p. 330. Here he declares as to be no pronoun, but "a modifying connective," i.e., conjunction; and supposes persons to be the direct subject of write as well as of should be: as if a conjunction could connect a verb and its nominative!

[390] Dr. Latham, conceiving that, of words in apposition, the first must always be the leading one and control the verb, gives to his example an other form thus: "Your master, I, commands you (not command)."--Ib. But this I take to be bad English. It is the opinion of many grammarians, perhaps of most, that nouns, which are ordinarily of the third person, may be changed in person, by being set in apposition with a pronoun of the first or second. But even if terms so used do not assimilate in person, the first cannot be subjected to the third, as above. It must have the preference, and ought to have the first place. The following study-bred example of the Doctor's, is also awkward and ungrammatical: "I, your master, who commands you to make haste, am in a hurry."--Hand-Book, p. 334.

[391] Professor Fowler says, "One when contrasted with other, sometimes represents plural nouns; as, 'The reason why the one are ordinarily taken for real qualities, and the other for bare powers, seems to be.'--LOCKE.", Fowler's E. Gram., 8vo, 1850, p. 242. This doctrine is, I think, erroneous; and the example, too, is defective. For, if one may be plural, we have no distinctive definition or notion of either number. "One" and "other" are not here to be regarded as the leading words in their clauses; they are mere adjectives, each referring to the collective noun class or species, understood, which should have been expressed after the former. See Etym., Obs. 19, p. 276.

[392] Dr. Priestley says, "It is a rule, I believe, in all grammars, that when a verb comes between two nouns, either of which may be understood as the subject of the affirmation, that it may agree with either of them; but some regard must be had to that which is more naturally the subject of it, as also to that which stands next to the verb; for if no regard be paid to these circumstances, the construction will be harsh: [as,] Minced pies was regarded as a profane and superstitious viand by the sectaries. Hume's Hist. A great cause of the low state of industry were the restraints put upon it. Ib. By this term was understood, such persons as invented, or drew up rules for themselves and the world."--English Gram. with Notes, p. 189. The Doctor evidently supposed all these examples to be bad English, or at least harsh in their construction. And the first two unquestionably are so; while the last, whether right or wrong, has nothing at all to do with his rule: it has but one nominative, and that appears to be part of a definition, and not the true subject of the verb. Nor, indeed, is the first any more relevant; because Hume's "viand" cannot possibly be taken "as the subject of the affirmation." Lindley Murray, who literally copies Priestley's note, (all but the first line and the last,) rejects these two examples, substituting for the former, "His meat was locusts and wild honey," and for the latter, "The wages of sin is death." He very evidently supposes all three of his examples to be good English. In this, according to Churchill, he is at fault in two instances out of the three; and still more so, in regard to the note, or rule, itself. In stead of being "a rule in all grammars," it is (so far as I know) found only in these authors, and such as have implicitly copied it from Murray. Among these last, are Alger, Ingersoll, R. C. Smith, Fisk, and Merchant. Churchill, who cites it only as Murray's, and yet expends two pages of criticism upon it, very justly says: "To make that the nominative case, [or subject of the affirmation,] which happens to stand nearest to the verb, appears to me to be on a par with the blunder pointed out in note 204th;" [that is, of making the verb agree with an objective case which happens to stand nearer to it, than its subject, or nominative.]-- Churchill's New Gram., p. 313.

[393] "If the excellence of Dryden's works was lessened by his indigence, their number was increased."--Dr. Johnson. This is an example of the proper and necessary use of the indicative mood after an if, the matter of the condition being regarded as a fact. But Dr. Webster, who prefers the indicative too often, has the following note upon it: "If Johnson had followed the common grammars, or even his own, which is prefixed to his Dictionary, he would have written were--'If the excellence of Dryden's works were lessened'--Fortunately this great man, led by usage rather than by books, wrote correct English, instead of grammar."-- Philosophical Gram., p. 238. Now this is as absurd, as it is characteristic of the grammar from which it is taken. Each form is right sometimes, and neither can be used for the other, without error.

[394] Taking this allegation in one sense, the reader may see that Kirkham was not altogether wrong here; and that, had he condemned the solecisms adopted by himself and others, about "unity of idea" and "plurality of idea," in stead of condemning the things intended to be spoken of, he might have made a discovery which would have set him wholly right. See a footnote on page 738, under the head of Absurdities.

[395] In his English Reader, (Part II, Chap. 5th, Sec. 7th,) Murray has this line in its proper form, as it here stands in the words of Thomson; but, in his Grammar, he corrupted it, first in his Exercises, and then still more in his Key. Among his examples of "False Syntax" it stands thus:

"What black despair, what horror, fills his mind!" --Exercises, Rule 2.

So the error is propagated in the name of Learning, and this verse goes from grammar to grammar, as one that must have a "plural" verb. See Ingersoll's Gram., p. 242; Smith's New Gram., p. 127; Fisk's Gram., p. 120; Weld's E. Gram., 2d Ed., p. 189; Imp. Ed., p. 196.

[396] S. W. Clark, by reckoning "as" a "preposition," perverts the construction of sentences like this, and inserts a wrong case after the conjunction. See Clark's Practical Grammar, pp. 92 and 178; also this Syntax, Obs. 6 and Obs. 18, on Conjunctions.

[397] Murray gives us the following text for false grammar, under the head of Strength: "And Elias with Moses appeared to them."--Exercises, 8vo, p. 135. This he corrects thus: "And there appeared to them Elias with Moses."--Key, 8vo, p. 266. He omits the comma after Elias, which some copies of the Bible contain, and others do not. Whether he supposed the verb appeared to be singular or plural, I cannot tell; and he did not extend his quotation to the pronoun they, which immediately follows, and in which alone the incongruity lies.

[398] This order of the persons, is not universally maintained in those languages. The words of Mary to her son, "Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing," seem very properly to give the precedence to her husband; and this is their arrangement in St. Luke's Greek, and in the Latin versions, as well as in others.

[399] The hackneyed example, "I and Cicero are well,"--"Ego et Cicero valemus"--which makes such a figure in the grammars, both Latin and English, and yet is ascribed to Cicero himself, deserves a word of explanation. Cicero the orator, having with him his young son Marcus Cicero at Athens, while his beloved daughter Tullia was with her mother in Italy, thus wrote to his wife, Terentia: "Si tu, et Tullia, lux nostra, valetix; ego, et suavissimus Cicero, valemus."--EPIST. AD FAM. Lib. xiv, Ep. v. That is, "If thou, and Tullia, our joy, are well; I, and the sweet lad Cicero, are likewise well." This literal translation is good English, and not to be amended by inversion; for a father is not expected to give precedence to his child. But, when I was a boy, the text and version of Dr. Adam puzzled me not a little; because I could not conceive how Cicero could ever have said, "I and Cicero are well." The garbled citation is now much oftener read than the original. See it in Crombie's Treatise, p. 243; McCulloch's Gram., p. 158; and others.

[400] Two singulars connected by and, when they form a part of such a disjunction, are still equivalent to a plural; and are to be treated as such, in the syntax of the verb. Hence the following construction appears to be inaccurate: "A single consonant or a mute and a liquid before an accented vowel, is joined to that vowel"--Dr. Bullions, Lat. Gram. p. xi.

[401] Murray the schoolmaster has it, "used to govern."--English Gram., p. 64. He puts the verb in a wrong tense. Dr. Bullions has it, "usually governs."--Lat. Gram., p. 202. This is right.--G. B.

[402] The two verbs to sit and to set are in general quite different in their meaning; but the passive verb to be set sometimes comes pretty near to the sense of the former, which is for the most part neuter. Hence, we not only find the Latin word sedeo, to sit, used in the sense of being set, as, "Ingens coena sedet," "A huge supper is set," Juv., 2, 119; but, in the seven texts above, our translators have used is set, was set, &c., with reference to the personal posture of sitting. This, in the opinion of Dr. Lowth and some others, is erroneous. "Set," says the Doctor, "can be no part of the verb to sit. If it belong to the verb to set, the translation in these passages is wrong. For to set, signifies to place, but without any designation of the posture of the person placed; which is a circumstance of importance, expressed by the original."--Lowth's Gram., p. 53; Churchill's, 265. These gentlemen cite three of these seven examples, and refer to the other four; but they do not tell us how they would amend any of them--except that they prefer sitten to sat, vainly endeavouring to restore an old participle which is certainly obsolete. If any critic dislike my version of the last two texts, because I use the present tense for what in the Greek is the first aorist; let him notice that this has been done in both by our translators, and in one by those of the Vulgate. In the preceding example, too, the same aorist is rendered, "am set," and by Beza, "sedeo;" though Montanus and the Vulgate render it literally by "sedi," as I do by sat. See Key to False Syntax, Rule XVII, Note xii.

[403] Nutting, I suppose, did not imagine the Greek article, [Greek: to], the, and the English or Saxon verb do, to be equivalent or kindred words. But there is no knowing what terms conjectural etymology may not contrive to identify, or at least to approximate and ally. The ingenious David Booth, if he does not actually identify do, with [Greek: to], the, has discovered synonymes [sic--KTH] and cognates that are altogether as unapparent to common observers: as, "It and the," says he, "when Gender is not attended to, are synonymous. Each is expressive of Being in general, and when used Verbally, signifies to bring forth, or to add to what we already see. The, it, and, add, at, to, and do, are kindred words. They mark that an addition is made to some collected mass of existence. To, which literally signifies add, (like at and the Latin ad,) is merely a different pronunciation of do. It expresses the junction of an other thing, or circumstance, as appears more evidently from its varied orthography of too."--Introd. to Analyt. Dict., p. 45. Horne Tooke, it seems, could not persuade this author into his notion of the derivation and meaning of the, it, to, or do. But Lindley Murray, and his followers, have been more tractable. They were ready to be led without looking. "To," say they, "comes from Saxon and Gothic words, which signify action, effect, termination, to act, &c."--Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 183; Fisk's, 92. What an admirable explanation is this! and how prettily the great Compiler says on the next leaf: "Etymology, when it is guided by judgment, and [when] proper limits are set to it, certainly merits great attention!"--Ib., p. 135. According to his own express rules for interpreting "a substantive without any article to limit it" and the "relative pronoun with a comma before it," he must have meant, that "to comes from Saxon and Gothic words" of every sort, and that the words of these two languages "signify action, effect, termination, to act, &c." The latter assertion is true enough: but, concerning the former, a man of sense may demur. Nor do I see how it is possible not to despise such etymology, be the interpretation of the words what it may. For, if to means action or to act, then our little infinitive phrase, to be, must mean, action be, or to act be; and what is this, but nonsense?

[404] So, from the following language of three modern authors, one cannot but infer, that they would parse the verb as governed by the preposition; but I do not perceive that they anywhere expressly say so:

(1.) "The Infinitive is the form of the supplemental verb that always has, or admits, the preposition TO before it; as, to move. Its general character is to represent the action in prospect, or to do; or in retrospect, as to have done. As a verb, it signifies to do the action; and as object of the preposition TO, it stands in the place of a noun for the doing of it. The infinitive verb and its prefix to are used much like a preposition and its noun object."--Felch's Comprehensive Gram., p. 62.

(2.) "The action or other signification of a verb may be expressed in its widest and most general sense, without any limitation by a person or agent, but merely as the end or purpose of some other action, state of being, quality, or thing; it is, from this want of limitation, said to be in the Infinitive mode; and is expressed by the verb with the preposition TO before it, to denote this relation of end or purpose; as, 'He came to see me;' 'The man is not fit die;' 'It was not right for him to do thus.'"--Dr. S. Webber's English Gram., p. 35.

(3.) "RULE 3. A verb in the Infinitive Mode, is the object of the preposition TO, expressed or understood."--S. W. Clark's Practical Gram., p. 127.

[405] Rufus Nutting, A. M., a grammarian of some skill, supposes that in all such sentences there was "anciently" an ellipsis, not of the phrase "in order to," but of the preposition for. He says, "Considering this mode as merely a verbal noun, it might be observed, that the infinitive, when it expresses the object, is governed by a transitive verb; and, when it expresses the final cause, is governed by an intransitive verb, OR ANCIENTLY, BY A PREPOSITION UNDERSTOOD. Of the former kind--'he learns to read.' Of the latter--'he reads to learn,' i. e. 'for to learn.'"--Practical Gram., p. 101. If for was anciently understood in examples of this sort, it is understood now, and to a still greater extent; because we do not now insert the word for, as our ancestors sometimes did; and an ellipsis can no otherwise grow obsolete, than by a continual use of what was once occasionally omitted.

[406] (1.) "La préposition, est un mot indéclinable, placé devant les noms, les pronoms, et les verbes, qu'elle régit."--"The preposition is an indeclinable word placed before the nouns, pronouns, and verbs which it governs."--Perrin's Grammar, p. 152.

(2.) "Every verb placed immediately after an other verb, or after a preposition, ought to be put in the infinitive; because it is then the regimen of the verb or preposition which precedes."--See La Grammaire des Grammaires, par Girault Du Vivier, p. 774.

(3.) The American translator of the Elements of General Grammar, by the Baron De Sacy, is naturally led, in giving a version of his author's method of analysis, to parse the English infinitive mood essentially as I do; calling the word to a preposition, and the exponent, or sign, of a relation between the verb which follows it, and some other word which is antecedent to it. Thus, in the phrase, "commanding them to use his power," he says, that "'to' [is the] Exponent of a relation whose Antecedent is 'commanding,' and [whose] Consequent [is] 'use.'"--Fosdick's De Sacy, p. 131. In short, he expounds the word to in this relation, just as he does when it stands before the objective case. For example, in the phrase, "belonging to him alone: 'to,' Exponent of a relation of which the Antecedent is 'belonging,' and the Consequent, 'him alone.'"--Ib., p. 126. My solution, in either case, differs from this in scarcely any thing else than the choice of words to express it.

(4.) It appears that, in sundry dialects of the north of Europe, the preposition at has been preferred for the governing of the infinitive: "The use of at for to, as the sign of the infinitive mode, is Norse, not Saxon. It is the regular prefix in Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, and Feroic. It is also found in the northern dialects of the Old English, and in the particular dialect of Westmoreland at the present day."--Fowler, on the English Language, 8vo, 1850, p. 46.

[407] Here is a literal version, in which two infinitives are governed by the preposition between; and though such a construction is uncommon, I know not why it should be thought less accurate in the one language than in the other. In some exceptive phrases, also, it seems not improper to put the infinitive after some other preposition than to; as, "What can she do besides sing?"--"What has she done, except rock herself?" But such expressions, if allowable, are too unfrequent to be noticed in any general Rule of syntax. In the following example, the word of pretty evidently governs the infinitive: "Intemperance characterizes our discussions, that is calculated to embitter in stead of conciliate."--CINCINNATI HERALD: Liberator, No. 986.

[408] This doctrine has been lately revived in English by William B. Fowle, who quotes Dr. Rees, Beauzée, Harris, Tracy, and Crombie, as his authorities for it. He is right in supposing the English infinitive to be generally governed by the preposition to, but wrong in calling it a noun, or "the name of the verb," except this phrase be used in the sense in which every verb may be the name of itself. It is an error too, to suppose with Beauzée, "that the infinitive never in any language refers to a subject or nominative;" or, as Harris has it, that infinitives "have no reference at all to persons or substances." See Fowle's True English Gram., Part ii, pp. 74 and 75. For though the infinitive verb never agrees with a subject or nominative, like a finite verb, it most commonly has a very obvious reference to something which is the subject of the being, action, or passion, which it expresses; and this reference is one of the chief points of difference between the infinitive and a noun. S. S. Greene, in a recent grammar, absurdly parses infinitives "as nouns," and by the common rules for nouns, though he begins with calling them verbs. Thus: "Our honor is to be maintained. To be maintained, is a regular passive VERB, infinitive mode, present tense, and is used as a NOUN in the relation of predicate; according to Rule II. A noun or pronoun used with the copula to form the predicate, must be in the nominative case."--Greene's Gram., 1848. p. 93. (See the Rule, ib. p. 29.) This author admits, "The 'to' seems, like the preposition, to perform the office of a connective:" but then he ingeniously imagines, "The infinitive differs from the preposition and its object, in that the 'to' is the only preposition used with the verb." And so he concludes, "The two [or more] parts of the infinitive are taken together, and, thus combined, may become a NOUN in any relation."--Ib., 1st Edition, p. 87. S. S. Greene will also have the infinitive to make the verb before it transitive; for he says, "The only form [of phrase] used as the direct object of a transitive verb is the infinitive; as, 'We intend (What?) to leave [town] to-day:' 'They tried (What?) to conceal their fears.'"--Ib., p. 99. One might as well find transitive verbs in these equivalents: "It is our purpose to leave town to-day."--"They endeavoured to conceal their fears." Or in this:--"They blustered to conceal their fears."

[409] It is remarkable that the ingenious J. E. Worcester could discern nothing of the import of this particle before a verb. He expounds it, with very little consistency, thus: "Tò, or To, ad. A particle employed as the usual sign or prefix of the infinitive mood of the verb; and it might, in such use, be deemed a syllable of the verb. It is used merely as a sign of the infinitive, without having any distinct or separate meaning: as, 'He loves to read.'"--Univ. and Crit. Dict. Now is it not plain, that the action expressed by "read" is "that towards which" the affection signified by "loves" is directed? It is only because we can use no other word in lieu of this to, that its meaning is not readily seen. For calling it "a syllable of the verb," there is, I think, no reason or analogy whatever. There is absurdity in calling it even "a part of the verb."

[410] As there is no point of grammar on which our philologists are more at variance, so there seems to be none on which they are more at fault, than in their treatment of the infinitive mood, with its usual sign, or governing particle, to. For the information of the reader, I would gladly cite every explanation not consonant with my own, and show wherein it is objectionable; but so numerous are the forms of error under this head, that such as cannot be classed together, or are not likely to be repeated, must in general be left to run their course, exempt from any criticism of mine. Of these various forms of error, however, I may here add an example or two.

(1.) "What is the meaning of the word to? Ans. To means act. NOTE.--As our verbs and nouns are spelled in the same manner, it was formerly thought best to prefix the word TO, to words when used as verbs. For there is no difference between the NOUN, love; and the VERB, to love; but what is shown by the prefix TO, which signifies act; i. e. to act love."--R. W. Greene's Inductive Exercises in English Grammar, N. Y., 1829, p. 52. Now all this, positive as the words are, is not only fanciful, but false, utterly false. To no more "means act," than from "means act." And if it did, it could not be a sign of the infinitive, or of a verb at all; for, "act love," is imperative, and makes the word "love" a noun; and so, "to act love," (where "love" is also a noun,) must mean "act act love," which is tautological nonsense. Our nouns and verbs are not, in general, spelled alike; nor are the latter, in general, preceded by to; nor could a particle which may govern either, have been specifically intended, at first, to mark their difference. By some, as we have seen, it is argued from the very sign, that the infinitive is always essentially a noun.

(2.) "The infinitive mode is the root or simple form of the verb, used to express an action or state indefinitely; as, to hear, to speak. It is generally distinguished by the sign to. When the particle to is employed in forming the infinitive, it is to be regarded as a part of the verb. In every other case it is a preposition."--Wells's School Grammar, 1st Ed., p. 80. "A Preposition is a word which is used to express the relation of a noun or pronoun depending upon it, to some other word in the sentence."--Ib., pp. 46 and 108. "The passive form of a verb is sometimes used in connection with a preposition, forming a compound passive verb. Examples:--'He was listened to without a murmur.'--A. H. EVERETT. 'Nor is this enterprise to be scoffed at.'--CHANNING."--Ib., p. 146. "A verb in the infinitive usually relates to some noun or pronoun. Thus, in the sentence, 'He desires to improve,' the verb to improve relates to the pronoun he while it is governed by desires."--Ib., p. 150. "'The agent to a verb in the infinitive mode must be in the objective case.'--NUTTING."--Ib., p. 148. These citations from Wells, the last of which he quotes approvingly, by way of authority, are in many respects self-contradictory, and in nearly all respects untrue. How can the infinitive be only "the root or simple form of the verb," and yet consist "generally" of two distinct words, and often of three, four, or five; as, "to hear,"--"to have heard,"--"to be listened to,"--"to have been listened to?" How can to be a "preposition" in the phrase, "He was listened to," and not so at all in "to be listened to?" How does the infinitive "express an action or state indefinitely," if it "usually relates to some noun or pronoun?" Why must its agent "be in the objective case," if "to improve relates to the pronoun he?" Is to "in every other case a preposition," and not such before a verb or a participle? Must every preposition govern some "noun or pronoun?" And yet are there some prepositions which govern nothing, precede nothing? "The door banged to behind him."--BLACKWELL: Prose Edda, §2. What is to here?

(3.) "The preposition TO before a verb is the sign of the Infinitive."--Weld's E. Gram., 2d Ed., p. 74. "The preposition is a part of speech used to connect words, and show their relation."--Ib., p. 42. "The perfect infinitive is formed of the perfect participle and the auxiliary HAVE preceded by the preposition TO."--Ib., p. 96. "The infinitive mode follows a verb, noun, or adjective."--Ib., pp. 75 and 166. "A verb in the Infinitive may follow: 1. Verbs or participles; 2. Nouns or pronouns; 3. Adjectives; 4. As or than; 5. Adverbs; 6. Prepositions; 7. The Infinitive is often used independently; 8. The Infinitive mode is often used in the office of a verbal noun, as the nominative case to the verb, and as the objective case after verbs and prepositions."--Ib., p. 167. These last two counts are absurdly included among what "the Infinitive may follow;" and is it not rather queer, that this mood should be found to "follow" every thing else, and not "the preposition TO," which comes "before" it, and by which it is "preceded?" This author adopts also the following absurd and needless rule: "The Infinitive mode has an objective case before it when [the word] THAT is omitted: as, I believe the sun to be the centre of the solar system; I know him to be a man of veracity."--Ib., p. 167; Abridged Ed., 124. (See Obs. 10th on Rule 2d, above.) "Sun" is here governed by "believe;" and "him," by "know;" and "be," in both instances, by "the preposition TO:" for this particle is not only "the sign of the Infinitive," but its governing word, answering well to the definition of a preposition above cited from Weld.

[411] "The infinitive is sometimes governed by a preposition; as, 'The shipmen were about to flee.'"--Wells's School Gram., 1st Ed., p. 149; 3d Ed., p. 158. Wells has altered this, and for "preposition" put "adverb."--Ed. of 1850, p. 163.

[412] Some grammatists, being predetermined that no preposition shall control the infinitive, avoid the conclusion by absurdly calling FOR, a conjunction; ABOUT, an adverb; and TO--no matter what--but generally, nothing. Thus: "The conjunction FOR, is inelegantly used before verbs in the infinitive mood; as, 'He came for to study Latin.'"--Greenleaf's Gram., p. 38. "The infinitive mood is sometimes governed by conjunctions or adverbs; as, 'An object so high as to be invisible;' 'The army is about to march.'"--Kirkham's Gram., p. 188. This is a note to that extra rule which Kirkham proposes for our use, "if we reject the idea of government, as applied to the verb in this mood!"--Ib.

[413] After the word "fare," Murray put a semicolon, which shows that he misunderstood the mood of the verb "hear." It is not always necessary to repeat the particle to, when two or more infinitives are connected; and this fact is an other good argument against calling the preposition to "a part of the verb." But in this example, and some others here exhibited, the repetition is requisite.--G. B.

[414] "The Infinitive Mood is not confined to a trunk or nominative, and is always preceded by to, expressed or implied."--S. Barrett's Gram., 1854, p. 43.

[415] Lindley Murray, and several of his pretended improvers, say, "The infinitive sometimes follows the word AS: thus, 'An object so high as to be invisible.' The infinitive occasionally follows THAN after a comparison; as, 'He desired nothing more than to know his own imperfections.'"--Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 184; Fisk's, 125; Alger's, 63; Merchant's, 92. See this second example in Weld's Gram., p. 167; Abridg., 124. Merchant, not relishing the latter example, changes it thus: "I wish nothing more, than to know his fate." He puts a comma after more, and probably means, "I wish nothing else than to know his fate." So does Fisk, in the other version: and probably means, "He desired nothing else than to know his own imperfections." But Murray, Alger, and Weld, accord in punctuation, and their meaning seems rather to be, "He desired nothing more heartily than [he desired] to know his own imperfections." And so is this or a similar text interpreted by both Ingersoll and Weld, who suppose this infinitive to be "governed by another verb, understood: as, 'He desired nothing more than to see his friends;' that is, 'than he desired to see,' &c."--Ingersoll's Gram., p. 244; Weld's Abridged, 124. But obvious as is the ambiguity of this fictitious example, in all its forms, not one of these five critics perceived the fault at all. Again, in their remark above cited, Ingersoll, Fisk, and Merchant, put a comma before the preposition "after," and thus make the phrase, "after a comparison," describe the place of the infinitive. But Murray and Alger probably meant that this phrase should denote the place of the conjunction "than." The great "Compiler" seems to me to have misused the phrase "a comparison," for, "an adjective or adverb of the comparative degree;" and the rest, I suppose, have blindly copied him, without thinking or knowing what he ought to have said, or meant to say. Either this, or a worse error, is here apparent. Five learned grammarians severally represent either "than" or "the infinitive," as being AFTER "a comparison;" of which one is the copula, and the other but the beginning of the latter term! Palpable as is the absurdity, no one of the five perceives it! And, besides, no one of them says any thing about the government of this infinitive, except Ingersoll, and he supplies a verb. "Than and as," says Greenleaf, "sometimes appear to govern the infinitive mood; as, 'Nothing makes a man suspect much more, than to know little;' 'An object so high as to be invisible."--Gram. Simp., p. 38. Here is an other fictitious and ambiguous example, in which the phrase, "to know little," is the subject of makes understood. Nixon supposes the infinitive phrase after as to be always the subject of a finite verb understood after it; as, "An object so high as to be invisible is or, implies." See English Parser, p. 100.

[416] Dr. Crombie, after copying the substance of Campbell's second Canon, that, "In doubtful cases analogy should be regarded," remarks: "For the same reason, 'it needs' and 'he dares,' are better than 'he need' and 'he dare.'"--On Etym. and Synt., p. 326. Dr. Campbell's language is somewhat stronger: "In the verbs to dare and to need, many say, in the third person present singular, dare and need, as 'he need not go: he dare not do it.' Others say, dares and needs. As the first usage is exceedingly irregular, hardly any thing less than uniform practice could authorize it."--Philosophy of Rhet., p. 175. Dare for dares I suppose to be wrong; but if need is an auxiliary of the potential mood, to use it without inflection, is neither "irregular," nor at all inconsistent with the foregoing canon. But the former critic notices these verbs a second time, thus: "'He dare not,' 'he need not,' may be justly pronounced solecisms, for 'he dares,' 'he needs.'"--Crombie, on Etym. and Synt., p. 378. He also says, "The verbs bid, dare, need, make, see, hear, feel, let, are not followed by the sign of the infinitive."--Ib., p. 277. And yet he writes thus: "These are truths, of which, I am persuaded, the author, to whom I allude, needs not to be reminded."--Ib., p. 123. So Dr. Bullions declares against need in the singular, by putting down the following example as bad English: "He need not be in so much haste."--Bullions's E. Gram., p. 134. Yet he himself writes thus: "A name more appropriate than the term neuter, need not be desired."--Ib., p. 196. A school-boy may see the inconsistency of this.

[417] Some modern grammarians will have it, that a participle governed by a preposition is a "participial noun;" and yet, when they come to parse an adverb or an objective following, their "noun" becomes a "participle" again, and not a "noun." To allow words thus to dodge from one class to an other, is not only unphilosophical, but ridiculously absurd. Among those who thus treat this construction of the participle, the chief, I think, are Butler, Hurt, Weld, Wells, and S. S. Greene.

[418] Dr. Blair, to whom Murray ought to have acknowledged himself indebted for this sentence, introduced a noun, to which, in his work, this infinitive and these participles refer: thus, "It is disagreeable for the mind to be left pausing on a word which does not, by itself, produce any idea."--Blair's Rhetoric, p. 118. See Obs. 10th and 11th on Rule 14th.

[419] The perfect contrast between from and to, when the former governs the participle and the latter the infinitive, is an other proof that this to is the common preposition to. For example, "These are the four spirits of the heavens, which go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth."--Zech., vi, 5. Now if this were rendered "which go forth to stand," &c., it is plain that these prepositions would express quite opposite relations. Yet, probably from some obscurity in the original, the Greek version has been made to mean, "going forth to stand;" and the Latin, "which go forth, that they may stand;" while the French text conveys nearly the same sense as ours,--"which go forth from the place where they stood."

[420] Cannot, with a verb of avoiding, or with the negative but, is equivalent to must. Such examples may therefore be varied thus: "I cannot but mention:" i.e., "I must mention."--"I cannot help exhorting him to assume courage."--Knox. That is, "I cannot but exhort him."

[421] See the same thing in Kirkham's Gram. p. 189; in Ingersoll's, p. 200; in Smith's New Grammar, p. 162; and in other modifications and mutilations of Murray's work. Kirkham, in an other place, adopts the doctrine, that, "Participles frequently govern nouns and pronouns in the possessive case; as, 'In case of his majesty's dying without issue, &c.; Upon God's having ended all his works, &c.; I remember its being reckoned a great exploit; At my coming in he said, &c."--Kirkham's Gram., p. 181. None of these examples are written according to my notion of elegance, or of accuracy. Better: "In case his Majesty die without issue."--"God having ended all his works."--"I remember it was reckoned a great exploit."--"At my entrance, he said," &c.

[422] We have seen that Priestley's doctrine, as well as Lowth's, is, that when a participle is taken substantively, "it ought not to govern another word;" and, for the same reason, it ought not to have an adverb relating to it. But many of our modern grammarians disregard these principles, and do not restrict their "participial nouns" to the construction of nouns, in either of these respects. For example: Because one may say, "To read superficially, is useless," Barnard supposes it right to say, "Reading superficially is useless." "But the participle," says he, "will also take the adjective; as, 'Superficial reading is useless.'"--Analytic Gram., p. 212. In my opinion, this last construction ought to be preferred; and the second, which is both irregular and unnecessary, rejected. Again, this author says: "We have laid it down as a rule, that the possessive case belongs, like an adjective, to a noun. What shall be said of the following? 'Since the days of Samson, there has been no instance of a man's accomplishing a task so stupendous.' The entire clause following man's, is taken as a noun. 'Of a man's success in a task so stupendous.' would present no difficulty. A part of a sentence, or even a single participle, thus often stands for a noun. 'My going will depend on my father's giving his consent,' or 'on my father's consenting.' A participle thus used as a noun, may be called a PARTICIPIAL NOUN."--Ib., p. 131. I dislike this doctrine also. In the first example, man may well be made the leading word in sense; and, as such, it must be in the objective case; thus: "There has been no instance of a man accomplishing a task so stupendous." It is also proper to say. "My going will depend on my father's consenting," or, "on my father's consent." But an action possessed by the agent, ought not to be transitive. If, therefore, you make this the leading idea, insert of: thus, "There has been no instance of a man's accomplishing of a task so stupendous." "My going will depend on my father's giving of his consent."--"My brother's acquiring [of] the French language will be a useful preparation for his travels."--Barnard's Gram., p. 227. If participial nouns retain the power of participles, why is it wrong to say, "A superficial reading books is useless?" Again, Barnard approves of the question, "What do you think of my horse's running to-day?" and adds, "Between this form of expression and the following, 'What do you think of my horse running to-day?' it is sometimes said, that we should make a distinction; because the former implies that the horse had actually run, and the latter, that it is in contemplation to have him do so. The difference of meaning certainly exists; but it would seem more judicious to treat the latter as an improper mode of speaking. What can be more uncouth than to say, 'What do you think of me going to Niagara?' We should say my going, notwithstanding the ambiguity. We ought, therefore, to introduce something explanatory; as, 'What do you think of the propriety of my going to Niagara?"--Analytic Gram., p. 227. The propriety of a past action is as proper a subject of remark as that of a future one; the explanatory phrase here introduced has therefore nothing to do with Priestley's distinction, or with the alleged ambiguity. Nor does the uncouthness of an objective pronoun with the leading word in sense improperly taken as an adjunct, prove that a participle may properly take to itself a possessive adjunct, and still retain the active nature of a participle.

[423] The following is an example, but it is not very intelligible, nor would it be at all amended, if the pronoun were put in the possessive case: "I sympathize with my sable brethren, when I hear of them being spared even one lash of the cart-whip."--REV. DR. THOMPSON: Garrison, on Colonization, p. 80. And this is an other, in which the possessive pronoun would not be better: "But, if the slaves wish, to return to slavery, let them do so; not an abolitionist will turn out to stop them going back."--Antislavery Reporter, Vol. IV, p. 223. Yet it might be more accurate to say--"to stop them from going back." In the following example from the pen of Priestley, the objective is correctly used with as, where some would be apt to adopt the possessive: "It gives us an idea of him, as being the only person to whom it can be applied."--Priestley's Gram., p. 151. Is not this better English than to say, "of his being the only person?" The following is from the pen of a good scholar: "This made me remember the discourse we had together, at my house, about me drawing constitutions, not as proposals, but as if fixed to the hand."--WILLIAM PENN: Letter to Algernon Sidney, Oct. 13th, 1681. Here, if me is objectionable, my without of would be no less so. It might be better grammar to say, "about my drawing of constitutions."

[424] Sometimes the passive form is adopted, when there is no real need of it, and when perhaps the active would be better, because it is simpler; as, "Those portions of the grammar are worth the trouble of being committed to memory."--Dr. Barrow's Essays, p. 109. Better, perhaps:--"worth the trouble of committing to memory:" or,--"worth the trouble committing them to memory." Again: "What is worth being uttered at all, is worth being spoken in a proper manner."--Kirkham's Elocution, p. 68. Better, perhaps: "What is worth uttering at all, is worth uttering in a proper manner."--G. Brown.

[425] "RULE.--When the participle expresses something of which the noun following is the DOER, it should have the article and preposition; as, 'It was said in the hearing of the witness.' When it expresses something of which the noun following is not the doer, but the OBJECT, both should be omitted; as, 'The court spent some time in hearing the witness.'"--BULLIONS, Prin. of E. Gram., p. 108; Analyt. and Pract. Gram., 181.

[426] This doctrine is far from being true. See Obs. 12th, in this series, above.--G. B.

[427] "Dr. Webster considers the use of then and above as ADNOUNS, [i. e., adjectives,] to be 'well authorized and very convenient;' as, the then ministry; the above remarks."--Felch's Comp. Gram., p. 108. Dr. Webster's remark is in the following words: "Then and above are often used as ATTRIBUTES: [i. e., adjectives; as,] the then ministry; the above remarks; nor would I prescribe this use. It is well authorized and very convenient."--Philos. Gram., p. 245; Improved Gram., p. 176. Of this use of then, Dr. Crombie has expressed a very different opinion: "Here then," says he, "the adverb equivalent to at that time, is solecistically employed as an adjective, agreeing with ministry. This error seems to gain ground; it should therefore be vigilantly opposed, and carefully avoided."--On Etym. and Synt., p. 405.

[428] W. Allen supposes, "An adverb sometimes qualifies a whole sentence: as, Unfortunately for the lovers of antiquity, no remains of Grecian paintings have been preserved."--Elements of Eng. Gram., p. 173. But this example may be resolved thus: "It happens unfortunately for the lovers of antiquity, that no remains of Grecian paintings have been preserved."

[429] This assertion of Churchill's is very far from the truth. I am confident that the latter construction occurs, even among reputable authors, ten times as often as the former can be found in any English books.--G. BROWN.

[430] Should not the Doctor have said, "are there more," since "more than one" must needs be plural? See Obs. 10th on Rule 17th.

[431] This degree of truth is impossible, and therefore not justly supposable. We have also a late American grammarian who gives a similar interpretation: "'Though never so justly deserving of it.' Comber. Never is here an emphatic adverb; as if it were said, so justly as was never. Though well authorized, it is disapproved by most grammarians of the present day; and the word ever is used instead of never."--Felch's Comp. Gram., p. 107. The text here cited is not necessarily bad English as it stands; but, if the commenter has not mistaken its meaning, as well as its construction, it ought certainly to be, "Though everso justly deserving of it."--"So justly as was never," is a positive degree that is not imaginable; and what is this but an absurdity?

[432] Since this remark was written, I have read an other grammar, (that of the "Rev. Charles Adams,") in which the author sets down among "the more frequent improprieties committed, in conversation, 'Ary one' for either, and 'nary one' for neither."--Adams's System of Gram., p. 116. Eli Gilbert too betrays the same ignorance. Among his "Improper Pronunciations" he puts down "Nary" and "Ary" and for "Corrections" of them, gives "neither" and "either."--Gilbert's Catechetical Gram., p. 128. But these latter terms, either and neither, are applicable only to one of two things, and cannot be used where many are spoken of; as,

"Stealing her soul with many vows of faith, And ne'er a true one."--Shakspeare.

What sense would there be in expounding this to mean, "And neither a true one?" So some men both write and interpret their mother tongue erroneously through ignorance. But these authors condemn the errors which they here falsely suppose to be common. What is yet more strange, no less a critic than Prof. William C. Fowler, has lately exhibited, without disapprobation, one of these literary blunders, with sundry localisms, (often descending to slang,) which, he says, are mentioned by "Mr. Bartlett, in his valuable dictionary [Dictionary] of Americanisms." The brief example, which may doubtless be understood to speak for both phrases and both authors, is this: "ARY = either."--Fowler's E. Gram., 8vo, N. Y., 1850, p. 92.

[433] The conjunction that, at the head of a sentence or clause, enables us to assume the whole preposition as one thing; as, "All arguments whatever are directed to prove one or other of these three things: that something is true; that it is morally right or fit; or that it is profitable and good."--Blair's Rhet., p. 318. Here each that may be parsed as connecting its own clause to the first clause in the sentence; or, to the word things with which the three clauses are in a sort of apposition. If we conceive it to have no such connecting power, we must make this too an exception.

[434] "Note. Then and than are distinct Particles, but use hath made the using of then for than after a Comparative Degree at least passable. See Butler's Eng. Gram. Index."--Walker's Eng. Particles, Tenth Ed., 1691, p. 333.

[435] "When the relative who follows the preposition than, it must be used as in the accusative case."--Bucke's Gram., p. 93. Dr. Priestley seems to have imagined the word than to be always a preposition; for he contends against the common doctrine and practice respecting the case after it: "It is, likewise, said, that the nominative case ought to follow the preposition than; because the verb to be is understood after it; As, You are taller than he, and not taller than him; because at full length, it would be, You are taller than he is; but since it is allowed, that the oblique case should follow prepositions; and since the comparative degree of an adjective, and the particle than have, certainly, between them, the force of a preposition, expressing the relation of one word to another, they ought to require the oblique case of the pronoun following."--Priestley's Gram., p. 105. If than were a preposition, this reasoning would certainly be right; but the Doctor begs the question, by assuming that it is a preposition. William Ward, an other noted grammarian of the same age, supposes that, "ME sapientior es, may be translated, Thou art wiser THAN ME." He also, in the same place, avers, that, "The best English Writers have considered than as a Sign of an oblique Case; as, 'She suffers more THAN ME.' Swift, i.e. more than I suffer.

'Thou art a Girl as much brighter THAN HER, As he was a Poet sublimer THAN ME.' Prior.

i.e. Thou art a Girl as much brighter than she was, as he was a Poet sublimer than I am."--Ward's Practical Gram., p. 112. These examples of the objective case after than, were justly regarded by Lowth as bad English. The construction, however, has a modern advocate in S. W. Clark, who will have the conjunctions as, but, save, saving, and than, as well as the adjectives like, unlike, near, next, nigh, and opposite, to be prepositions. "After a Comparative the Preposition than is commonly used. Example--Grammar is more interesting than all my other studies."--Clark's Practical Gram., p. 178. "As, like, than, &c., indicate a relation of comparison. Example 'Thou hast been wiser all the while than me.' Southey's Letters."--Ib., p. 96. Here correct usage undoubtedly requires I, and not me. Such at least is my opinion.

[436] In respect to the case, the phrase than who is similar to than he, than they, &c., as has been observed by many grammarians; but, since than is a conjunction, and who or whom is a relative, it is doubtful whether it can be strictly proper to set two such connectives together, be the case of the latter which it may. See Note 5th, in the present chapter, below.

[437] After else or other, the preposition besides is sometimes used; and, when it recalls an idea previously suggested, it appears to be as good as than, or better: as, "Other words, besides the preceding, may begin with capitals."--Murray's Gram., Vol. i. p. 285. Or perhaps this preposition may be proper, whenever else or other denotes what is additional to the object of contrast, and not exclusive of it; as, "When we speak of any other quantity besides bare numbers."--Tooke's Diversions, Vol. i, p. 215. "Because he had no other father besides God."--Milton, on Christianity, p. 109. Though we sometimes express an addition by more than, the following example appears to me to be bad English, and its interpretation still worse: "'The secret was communicated to more men than him.' That is, (when the ellipsis is duly supplied,) 'The secret was communicated to more persons than to him.'"--Murray's Key, 12mo, p. 61; his Octavo Gram., p. 215; Ingersoll's Gram., 252. Say rather,--"to other men besides him." Nor, again, does the following construction appear to be right: "Now shew me another Popish rhymester but he."--DENNIS: Notes to the Dunciad, B. ii, l. 268. Say rather, "Now show me an other popish rhymester besides him." Or thus: "Now show me any popish rhymester except him." This too is questionable: "Now pain must here be intended to signify something else besides warning."--Wayland's Moral Science, p. 121. If "warning" was here intended to be included with "something else," the expression is right; if not, besides should be than. Again: "There is seldom any other cardinal in Poland but him."--Life of Charles XII. Here "but him" should be either "besides him," or "than he;" for but never rightly governs the objective case, nor is it proper after other. "Many more examples, besides the foregoing, might have been adduced."--Nesbit's English Parsing, p. xv. Here, in fact, no comparison is expressed; and therefore it is questionable, whether the word "more" is allowably used. Like else and other, when construed with besides, it signifies additional; and, as this idea is implied in besides, any one of these adjectives going before is really pleonastic. In the sense above noticed, the word beside is sometimes written in stead of besides, though not very often; as, "There are other things which pass in the mind of man, beside ideas."--Sheridan's Elocution, p. 136.

[438] A few of the examples under this head might be corrected equally well by some preceding note of a more specific character; for a general note against the improper omission of prepositions, of course includes those principles of grammar by which any particular prepositions are to be inserted. So the examples of error which were given in the tenth chapter of Etymology, might nearly all of them have been placed under the first note in this tenth chapter of Syntax. But it was thought best to illustrate every part of this volume, by some examples of false grammar, out of the infinite number and variety with which our literature abounds.

[439] "The Rev. Joab Goldsmith Cooper, A. M.," was the author of two English grammars, as well as of what he called "A New and Improved Latin Grammar," with "An Edition of the Works of Virgil, &c.," all published in Philadelphia. His first grammar, dated 1828, is entitled, "An Abridgment of Murray's English Grammar, and Exercises." But it is no more an abridgement of Murray's work, than of mine; he having chosen to steal from the text of my Institutes, or supply matter of his own, about as often as to copy Murray. His second is the Latin Grammar. His third, which is entitled, "A Plain and Practical English Grammar," and dated 1831, is a book very different from the first, but equally inaccurate and worthless. In this book, the syntax of interjections stands thus: "RULE 21. The interjections O, oh and ah are followed by the objective case of a noun or pronoun, as: 'O me! ah me! oh me!' In the second person, they are a mark or sign of an address, made to a person or thing, as: O thou persecutor! Oh, ye hypocrites! O virtue, how amiable thou art!"--Page 157. The inaccuracy of all this can scarcely be exceeded.

[440] "Oh is used to express the emotion of pain, sorrow, or surprise. O is used to express wishing, exclamation, or a direct address to a person."--Lennie's Gram., 12th Ed., p. 110. Of this distinction our grammarians in general seem to have no conception; and, in fact, it is so often disregarded by other authors, that the propriety of it may be disputed. Since O and oh are pronounced alike, or very nearly so, if there is no difference in their application, they are only different modes of writing the same word, and one or the other of them is useless. If there is a real difference, as I suppose there is, it ought to be better observed; and O me! and oh ye! which I believe are found only in grammars, should be regarded as bad English. Both O and oh, as well as ah, were used in Latin by Terence, who was reckoned an elegant writer; and his manner of applying them favours this distinction: and so do our own dictionaries, though Johnson and Walker do not draw it clearly, for oh is as much an "exclamation" as O. In the works of Virgil, Ovid, and Horace, we find O or o used frequently, but nowhere oh. Yet this is no evidence of their sameness, or of the uselessness of the latter; but rather of their difference, and of the impropriety of confounding them. O, oh, ho, and ah, are French words as well as English. Boyer, in his Quarto Dictionary, confounds them all; translating "O!" only by "Oh!" "OH! ou HO!" by "Ho! Oh!" and "AH!" by "Oh! alas! well-a-day! ough! A! ah! hah! ho!" He would have done better to have made each one explain itself; and especially, not to have set down "ough!" and "A!" as English words which correspond to the French ah!

[441] This silence is sufficiently accounted for by Murray's; of whose work, most of the authors who have any such rule, are either piddling modifiers or servile copyists. And Murray's silence on these matters, is in part attributable to the fact, that when he wrote his remark, his system of grammar denied that nouns have any first person, or any objective case. Of course he supposed that all nouns that were uttered after interjections, whether they were of the second person or of the third, were in the nominative case; for he gave to nouns two cases only, the nominative and the possessive. And when he afterwards admitted the objective case of nouns, he did not alter his remark, but left all his pupils ignorant of the case of any noun that is used in exclamation or invocation. In his doctrine of two cases, he followed Dr. Ash: from whom also he copied the rule which I am criticising: "The Interjections, O, Oh, and Ah, require the accusative case of a pronoun in the first Person: as, O me, Oh me, Ah me: But the Nominative in the second: as, O thou, O ye."--Ash's Gram., p. 60. Or perhaps he had Bicknell's book, which was later: "The interjections O, oh, and ah, require the accusative case of a pronoun in the first person after them; as, O, me! Oh, me! Ah, me! But the nominative case in the second person; as, O, thou that rulest! O, ye rulers of this land!"--The Grammatical Wreath, Part I, p. 105.

[442] See 2 Sam., xix, 4; also xviii, 33. Peirce has many times misquoted this text, or some part of it; and, what is remarkable, he nowhere agrees either with himself or with the Bible! "O! Absalom! my son!"--Gram., p. 283. "O Absalom! my son, my son! would to God I had died for thee."--Ib., p. 304. Pinneo also misquotes and perverts a part of it, thus: "Oh, Absalom! my son"--Primary Gram., Revised Ed., p. 57.

[443] Of this example, Professor Bullions says, "This will be allowed to be a correct English sentence, complete in itself, and requiring nothing to be supplied. The phrase, 'being an expert dancer,' is the subject of the verb 'does entitle;' but the word 'dancer' in that phrase is neither the subject of any verb, nor is governed by any word in the sentence."--Eng. Gram., p. 52. It is because this word cannot have any regular construction after the participle when the possessive case precedes, that I deny his first proposition, and declare the sentence not "to be correct English." But the Professor at length reasons himself into the notion, that this indeterminate "predicate," as he erroneously calls it, "is properly in the objective case, and in parsing, may correctly be called the objective indefinite;" of which case, he says, "The following are also examples: 'He had the honour of being a director for life.' 'By being a diligent student, he soon acquired eminence in his profession.'"--Ib., p. 83. But "director" and "student" are here manifestly in the nominative case: each agreeing with the pronoun he, which denotes the same person. In the latter sentence, there is a very obvious transposition of the first five words.

[444] Faulty as this example is, Dr. Blair says of it: "Nothing can be more elegant, or more finely turned, than this sentence. It is neat, clear, and musical. We could hardly alter one word, or disarrange one member, without spoiling it. Few sentences are to be found, more finished, or more happy."--Lecture XX, p. 201. See the six corrections suggested in my Key, and judge whether or not they spoil the sentence.--G. B.

[445] This Note, as well as all the others, will by-and-by be amply illustrated by citations from authors of sufficient repute to give it some value as a grammatical principle: but one cannot hope such language as is, in reality, incorrigibly bad, will always appear so to the generality of readers. Tastes, habits, principles, judgements, differ; and, where confidence is gained, many utterances are well received, that are neither well considered nor well understood. When a professed critic utters what is incorrect beyond amendment, the fault is the more noteworthy, as his professions are louder, or his standing is more eminent. In a recent preface, deliberately composed for a very comprehensive work on "English Grammar," and designed to allure both young and old to "a thorough and extensive acquaintance with their mother tongue,"--in the studied preface of a learned writer, who has aimed "to furnish not only a text-book for the higher institutions, but also a reference-book for teachers, which may give breadth and exactness to their views,"--I find a paragraph of which the following is a part: "Unless men, at least occasionally, bestow their attention upon the science and the laws of the language, they are in some danger, amid the excitements of professional life, of losing the delicacy of their taste and giving sanction to vulgarisms, or to what is worse. On this point, listen to the recent declarations of two leading men in the Senate of the United States, both of whom understand the use of the English language in its power: 'In truth, I must say that, in my opinion, the vernacular tongue of the country has become greatly vitiated, depraved, and corrupted by the style of our Congressional debates.' And the other, in courteous response remarked, 'There is such a thing as an English and a parliamentary vocabulary, and I have never heard a worse, when circumstances called it out, on this side [of] Billingsgate!'"--Fowler's E. Gram., 8vo. 1850, Pref., p. iv.

Now of these "two leading men," the former was Daniel Webster, who, in a senatorial speech, in the spring of 1850, made such a remark concerning the style of oratory used in Congress. But who replied, or what idea the "courteous response," as here given, can be said to convey, I do not know. The language seems to me both unintelligible and solecistical; and, therefore, but a fair sample of the Incorrigible. Some intelligent persons, whom I have asked to interpret it, think, as Webster had accused our Congress of corrupting the English language, the respondent meant to accuse the British Parliament of doing the same thing in a greater degree,--of descending yet lower into the vileness of slang. But this is hardly a probable conjecture. Webster might be right in acknowledging a very depraving abuse of the tongue in the two Houses of Congress; but could it be "courteous," or proper, for the answerer to jump the Atlantic, and pounce upon the English Lords and Commons, as a set of worse corrupters?

The gentleman begins with saying, "There is such a thing"--as if he meant to describe some one thing; and proceeds with saying, "as an English and a parliamentary vocabulary," in which phrase, by repeating the article, he speaks of two "things"--two vocabularies; then goes on, "and I have never heard a worse!" A worse what? Does he mean "a worse vocabulary?" If so, what sense has "vocabulary?" And, again, "a worse" than what? Where and what is this "thing" which is so bad that the leading Senator has "never heard a worse?" Is it some "vocabulary" both "English and parliamentary?" If so, whose? If not, what else is it? Lest the wisdom of this oraculous "declaration" be lost to the public through the defects of its syntax,--and lest more than one rhetorical critic seem hereby "in some danger" of "giving sanction to" nonsense,--it may be well for Professor Fowler, in his next edition, to present some elucidation of this short but remarkable passage, which he values so highly!

An other example, in several respects still more remarkable,--a shorter one, into which an equally successful professor of grammar has condensed a much greater number and variety of faults,--is seen in the following citation: "The verb is so called, because it means word; and as there can be no sentence without it, it is called, emphatically, the word."--Pinneo's Analytical Gram., p. 14. This sentence, in which, perhaps, most readers will discover no error, has in fact faults of so many different kinds, that a critic must pause to determine under which of more than half a dozen different heads of false syntax it might most fitly be presented for correction or criticism. (1.) It might be set down under my Note 5th to Rule 10th; for, in one or two instances out of the three, if not in all, the pronoun "it" gives not the same idea as its antecedent. The faults coming under this head might be obviated by three changes, made thus: "The verb is so called, because verb means word; and, as there can be no sentence without a verb, this part of speech is called, emphatically, the word." Cobbett wisely says, "Never put an it upon paper without thinking well of what you are about."--E. Gram., ¶ 196. But (2.) the erroneous text, and this partial correction of it too, might be put under my Critical Note 5th, among Falsities; for, in either form, each member affirms what is manifestly untrue. The term "word" has many meanings; but no usage ever makes it, "emphatically" or otherwise, a name for one of the classes called "parts of speech;" nor is there nowadays any current usage in which "verb means word." (3.) This text might be put under Critical Note 6th, among Absurdities; for whoever will read it, as in fairness he should, taking the pronoun "it" in the exact sense of its antecedent "the verb," will see that the import of each part is absurd--the whole, a two-fold absurdity. (4.) It might be put under Critical Note 7th, among Self-Contradictions; for, to teach at once that "the verb is so called," and "is called, emphatically," otherwise,--namely, "the word,"--is, to contradict one's self. (5.) It might be set down under Critical Note 9th, among examples of Words Needless; for the author's question is, "Why is the verb so called?" and this may be much better answered in fewer words, thus: "THE VERB is so called, because in French it is called le verbe and in Latin, verbum, which means word." (6.) It might be put under Critical Note 10th, as an example of Improper Omissions; for it may be greatly bettered by the addition of some words, thus: "The verb is so called, because [in French] it [is called le verbe, and in Latin, verbum, which] means word: as there can be no sentence without a verb, this [most important part of speech] is called, emphatically, [the verb,--q.d.,] the word." (7.) It might be put under Critical Note 11th, among Literary Blunders; for there is at least one blunder in each of its members. (8.) It might be set down under Critical Note 13th, as an example of Awkwardness; for it is but clumsy work, to teach grammar after this sort. (9.) It might be given under Critical Note 16th, as a sample of the Incorrigible; for it is scarcely possible to eliminate all its defects and retain its essentials.

These instances may suffice to show, that even gross errors of grammar may lurk where they are least to be expected, in the didactic phraseology of professed masters of style or oratory, and may abound where common readers or the generality of hearers will discover nothing amiss.

[446] As a mere assertion, this example is here sufficiently corrected; but, as a definition, (for which the author probably intended it,) it is deficient; and consequently, in that sense, is still inaccurate. I would also observe that most of the subsequent examples under the present head, contain other errors than that for which they are here introduced; and, of some of them, the faults are, in my opinion, very many: for example, the several definitions of an adverb, cited below. Lindley Murray's definition of this part of speech is not inserted among these, because I had elsewhere criticised that. So too of his faulty definition of a conjunction. See the Introduction, Chap. X. paragraphs 26 and 28. See also Corrections in the Key, under Note 10th to Rule 1st.

[447] In his explanation of Ellipsis, Lindley Murray continually calls it "the ellipsis," and speaks of it as something that is "used,"--"made use of,"--"applied,"--"contained in" the examples; which expressions, referring, as they there do, to the mere absence of something, appear to me solecistical. The notion too, which this author and others have entertained of the figure itself, is in many respects erroneous; and nearly all their examples for its illustration are either questionable as to such an application, or obviously inappropriate. The absence of what is needless or unsuggested, is no ellipsis, though some grave men have not discerned this obvious fact. The nine solecisms here quoted concerning "the ellipsis," are all found in many other grammars. See Fisk's E. Gram., p. 144; Guy's, 91; Ingersoll's, 153; J. M. Putnam's, 137; R. C. Smith's, 180; Weld's, 190.

[448] Some of these examples do, in fact, contain more than two errors; for mistakes in punctuation, or in the use of capitals, are not here reckoned. This remark may also he applicable to some of the other lessons. The reader may likewise perceive, that where two, three, or more improprieties occur in one sentence, some one or more of them may happen to be such, as he can, if he choose, correct by some rule or note belonging to a previous chapter. Great labour has been bestowed on the selection and arrangement of these syntactical exercises; but to give to so great a variety of literary faults, a distribution perfectly distinct, and perfectly adapted to all the heads assumed in this digest, is a work not only of great labour, but of great difficulty. I have come as near to these two points of perfection in the arrangement, as I well could.--G. BROWN.

[449] In Murray's sixth chapter of Punctuation, from which this example, and eleven others that follow it, are taken, there is scarcely a single sentence that does not contain many errors; and yet the whole is literally copied in Ingersoll's Grammar, p. 293; in Fisk's, p. 159; in Abel Flint's, 116; and probably in some others. I have not always been careful to subjoin the great number of references which might be given for blunders selected from this hackneyed literature of the schools. For corrections, or improvements, see the Key.

[450] This example, or L. Murray's miserable modification of it, traced through the grammars of Alden, Alger, Bullions, Comly, Cooper, Flint, Hiley, Ingersoll, Jaudon, Merchant, Russell, Smith, and others, will be found to have a dozen different forms--all of them no less faulty than the original--all of them obscure, untrue, inconsistent, and almost incorrigible. It is plain, that "a comma," or one comma, cannot divide more than two "simple members;" and these, surely, cannot be connected by more than one relative, or by more than one "comparative;" if it be allowable to call than, as, or so, by this questionable name. Of the multitude of errors into which these pretended critics have so blindly fallen, I shall have space and time to point out only a very small part: this text, too justly, may be taken as a pretty fair sample of their scholarship!

[451] The "idea" which is here spoken of, Dr. Blair discovers in a passage of Addison's Spectator. It is, in fact, as here "brought out" by the critic, a bald and downright absurdity. Dr. Campbell has criticised, under the name of marvellous nonsense, a different display of the same "idea," cited from De Piles's Principles of Painting. The passage ends thus: "In this sense it may be asserted, that in Rubens' pieces, Art is above Nature, and Nature only a copy of that great master's works." Of this the critic says: "When the expression is stript of the absurd meaning, there remains nothing but balderdash."--Philosophy of Rhet., p, 278.

[452] All his rules for the comma, Fisk appears to have taken unjustly from Greenleaf. It is a double shame, for a grammarian to steal what is so badly written!--G. BROWN.

[453] Bad definitions may have other faults than to include or exclude what they should not, but this is their great and peculiar vice. For example: "Person is that property of nouns and pronouns which distinguishes the speaker, the person or thing addressed, and the person or thing spoken of."--Wells's School Gram., 1st Ed., p. 51; 113th Ed., p. 57. See nearly the same words, in Weld's English Gram., p. 67; and in his Abridgement, p. 49. The three persons of verbs are all improperly excluded from this definition; which absurdly takes "person" to be one property that has all the effect of all the persons; so that each person, in its turn, since each cannot have all this effect, is seen to be excluded also: that is, it is not such a property as is described! Again: "An intransitive verb is a verb which does not have a noun or pronoun for its object."--Wells, 1st Ed., p. 76. According to Dr. Johnson, "does not have," is not a scholarly phrase; but the adoption of a puerile expression is a trifling fault, compared with that of including here all passive verbs, and some transitives, which the author meant to exclude; to say nothing of the inconsistency of excluding here the two classes of verbs which he absurdly calls "intransitive," though he finds them "followed by objectives depending upon them!"--Id., p. 145. Weld imitates these errors too, on pp. 70 and 153.

[454] S. R. Hall thinks it necessary to recognize "four distinctions" of "the distinction occasioned by sex." In general, the other authors here quoted, suppose that we have only "three distinctions" of "the distinction of sex." And, as no philosopher has yet discovered more than two sexes, some have thence stoutly argued, that it is absurd to speak of more than two genders. Lily makes it out, that in Latin there are seven: yet, with no great consistency, he will have a gender to be a or the distinction of sex. "GENUS est sexus discretio. Et sunt genera numero septem."--Lilii Gram., p. 10. That is, "GENDER is the distinction of sex. And the genders are seven in number." Ruddiman says, "GENUS est, discrimen nominis secundum sexum, vel ejus in structurâ grammaticâ imitatio. Genera nominum sunt tria."--Ruddimanni Gram., p. 4. That is, "GENDER is the diversity of the noun according to sex, or [it is] the imitation of it in grammatical structure. The genders of nouns are three." These old definitions are no better than the newer ones cited above. All of them are miserable failures, full of faults and absurdities. Both the nature and the cause of their defects are in some degree explained near the close of the tenth chapter of my Introduction. Their most prominent errors are these: 1. They all assume, that gender, taken as one thing, is in fact two, three, or more, genders, 2. Nearly all of them seem to say or imply, that words differ from one an other in sex, like animals. 3. Many of them expressly confine gender, or the genders, to nouns only. 4. Many of them confessedly exclude the neuter gender, though their authors afterwards admit this gender. 5. That of Dr. Webster supposes, that words differing in gender never have the same "termination." The absurdity of this may be shown by a multitude of examples: as, man and woman, male and female, father and mother, brother and sister. This is better, but still not free from some other faults which I have mentioned. For the correction of all this great batch of errors, I shall simply substitute in the Key one short definition, which appears to me to be exempt from each of these inaccuracies.

[455] Walker states this differently, and even repeats his remark, thus: "But y preceded by a vowel is never changed: as coy, coyly, gay, gayly."--Walker's Rhyming Dict., p.x. "Y preceded by a vowel is never changed, as boy, boys, I cloy, he cloys, etc."--Ib., p viii. Walker's twelve "Orthographical Aphorisms," which Murray and others republish as their "Rules for Spelling," and which in stead of amending they merely corrupt, happened through some carelessness to contain two which should have been condensed into one. For "words ending with y preceded by a consonant," he has not only the absurd rule or assertion above recited, but an other which is better, with an exception or remark under each, respecting "y preceded by a vowel." The grammarians follow him in his errors, and add to their number: hence the repetition, or similarity, in the absurdities here quoted. By the term "verbal nouns," Walker meant nouns denoting agents, as carrier from carry; but Kirkham understood him to mean "participial nouns," as the carrying. Or rather, he so mistook "that able philologist" Murray; for he probably knew nothing of Walker in the matter; and accordingly changed the word "verbal" to "participial;" thus teaching, through all his hundred editions, except a few of the first, that participial nouns from verbs ending in y preceded by a consonant, are formed by merely "changing the y into i." But he seems to have known, that this is not the way to form the participle; though he did not know, that "coyless" is not a proper English word.

[456] The idea of plurality is not "plurality of idea," any more than the idea of wickedness, or the idea of absurdity, is absurdity or wickedness of idea; yet, behold, how our grammarians copy the blunder, which Lowth (perhaps) first fell into, of putting the one phrase for the other! Even Professor Fowler, (as well as Murray, Kirkham, and others,) talks of having regard "to unity or plurality of idea!"--Fowler's E. Gram., 8vo. 1850, §513,--G. BROWN.

[457] In the Doctor's "New Edition, Revised and Corrected," the text stands thus: "The Present participle of THE ACTIVE VOICE has an active signification; as, James is building the house. In many of these, however, it has," &c. Here the first sentence is but an idle truism; and the phrase, "In many of these," for lack of an antecedent to these, is utter nonsense. What is in "the active voice," ought of course to be active in "signification;" but, in this author's present scheme of the verb, we find "the active voice," in direct violation of his own definition of it, ascribed not only to verbs and participles either neuter or intransitive, but also, as it would seem by this passage, to "many" that are passive!--G. BROWN.

[458] One objection to these passage is, that they are examples of the very construction which they describe as a fault. The first and second sentences ought to have been separated only by a semicolon. This would have made them "members" of one and the same sentence. Can it be supported that one "thought" is sufficient for two periods, or for what one chooses to point as such, but not for two members of the same period?--G. BROWN.

[459] (1.) "Accent is the tone with which one speaks. For, in speaking, the voice of every man is sometimes more grave in the sound, and at other times more acute or shrill."--Beattie's Moral Science, p. 25. "Accent is the tone of the voice with which a syllable is pronounced."--Dr. Adam's Latin and English Gram., p. 266.

(2.) "Accent in a peculiar stress of the voice on some syllable in a word to distinguish it from the others."--Gould's Adam's Lat. Gram., p. 243.

(3.) "The tone by which one syllable is distinguished from another is the accent; which is a greater stress and elevation of voice on that particular syllable."--Bicknell's Eng. Gram., Part II, p. 111.

(4.) "Quantity is the Length or Shortness of Syllables; and the Proportion, generally speaking, betwixt a long and [a] short Syllable, is two to one; as in Music, two Quavers to one Crotchet.--Accent is the rising and falling of the Voice, above or under its usual Tone, but an Art of which we have little Use, and know less, in the English Tongue; nor are we like to improve our Knowledge in this Particular, unless the Art of Delivery or Utterance were a little more study'd."--Brightland's Gram., p. 156.

(5.) "ACCENT, s. m. (inflexion de la voix.) Accent, tone, pronunciation."--Nouveau Dictionnaire Universel, 4to, Tome Premier, sous le mot Accent.

"ACCENT, subst. (tone or inflection of the voice.) Accent, ton ou inflexion de voix."--Same Work, Garner's New Universal Dictionary, 4to, under the word Accent.

(6.) "The word accent is derived from the Latin language and signifies the tone of the voice."--Parker and Fox's English Gram., Part III, p. 32.

(7.) "The unity of the word consists in the tone or accent, which binds together the two parts of the composition."--Fowler's E. Gram., §360.

(8.) "The accent of the ancients is the opprobrium of modern criticism. Nothing can show more evidently the fallibility of the human faculties, than the total ignorance we are in at present of the nature of the Latin and Greek accent."--Walker's Principles, No. 486; Dict., p. 53.

(9.) "It is not surprising, that the accent and quantity of the ancients should be so obscure and mysterious, when two such learned men of our own nation as Mr. Foster and Dr. Gaily, differ about the very existence of quantity in our own language."--Walker's Observations on Accent, &c.; Key, p. 311.

(10.) "What these accents are has puzzled the learned so much that they seem neither to understand each other nor themselves."--Walker's Octavo Dict., w. Barytone.

(11.) "The ancients designated the pitch of vocal sounds by the term accent; making three kinds of accents, the acute (é), the grave (è), and the circumflex (ê), which signified severally the rise, the fall, and the turn of the voice, or union of acute and grave on the same syllable."--Sargent's Standard Speaker, p. 18.

[460] "Interrogatio, Græcè Erotema, Accentum quoque transfert; ut, Ter. Siccine ais Parmenó? Voss. Susenbr."--Prat's Latin Grammar, 8vo, Part II, p. 190.

[461] In regard to the admission of a comma before the verb, by the foregoing exception, neither the practice of authors nor the doctrine of punctuators is entirely uniform; but, where a considerable pause is, and must be, made in the reading, I judge it not only allowable, but necessary, to mark it in writing. In W. Day's "Punctuation Reduced to a System," a work of no inconsiderable merit, this principle is disallowed; and even when the adjunct of the nominative is a relative clause, which, by Rule 2d below and its first exception, requires a comma after it but none before it, this author excludes both, putting no comma before the principal verb. The following is an example: "But it frequently happens, that punctuation is not made a prominent exercise in schools; and the brief manner in which the subject is there dismissed has proved insufficient to impress upon the minds of youth a due sense of its importance."--Day's Punctuation, p. 32. A pupil of mine would here have put a comma after the word dismissed. So, in the following examples, after sake, and after dispenses: "The vanity that would accept power for its own sake is the pettiest of human passions."--Ib., p. 75. "The generous delight of beholding the happiness he dispenses is the highest enjoyment of man."--Ib., p, 100.

[462] When several nominatives are connected, some authors and printers put the comma only where the conjunction is omitted. W. Day separates them all, one from an other; but after the last, when this is singular before a plural verb, he inserts no point. Example: "Imagination is one of the principal ingredients which enter into the complex idea of genius; but judgment, memory, understanding, enthusiasm, and sensibility are also included."--Day's Punctuation, p. 52. If the points are to be put where the pauses naturally occur, here should be a comma after sensibility; and, if I mistake not, it would be more consonant with current usage to set one there. John Wilson, however, in a later work, which is for the most part a very good one, prefers the doctrine of Day, as in the following instance: "Reputation, virtue, and happiness depend greatly on the choice of companions."--Wilson's Treatise on Punctuation, p. 30.

[463] Some printers, and likewise some authors, suppose a series of words to require the comma, only where the conjunction is suppressed. This is certainly a great error. It gives us such punctuation as comports neither with the sense of three or more words in the same construction, nor with the pauses which they require in reading. "John, James and Thomas are here," is a sentence which plainly tells John that James and Thomas are here; and which, if read according to this pointing, cannot possibly have any other meaning. Yet this is the way in which the rules of Cooper, Felton, Frost, Webster, and perhaps others, teach us to point it, when we mean to tell somebody else that all three are here! In his pretended "Abridgment of Murray's English Grammar," (a work abounding in small thefts from Brown's Institutes,) Cooper has the following example: "John, James or Joseph intends to accompany me."--Page 120. Here, John being addressed, the punctuation is right; but, to make this noun a nominative to the verb, a comma must be put after each of the others. In Cooper's "Plain and Practical Grammar," the passage is found in this form: "John, James, or Joseph intends to accompany us."--Page 132. This pointing is doubly wrong; because it is adapted to neither sense. If the three nouns have the same construction, the principal pause will be immediately before the verb; and surely a comma is as much required by that pause, as by the second. See the Note on Rule 3d, above.

[464] In punctuation, the grammar here cited is unaccountably defective. This is the more strange, because many of its errors are mere perversions of what was accurately pointed by an other hand. On the page above referred to, Dr. Bullions, in copying from Lennie's syntactical exercises a dozen consecutive lines, has omitted nine needful commas, which Lennie had been careful to insert!

[465] Needless abbreviations, like most that occur in this example, are in bad taste, and ought to be avoided. The great faultiness of this text as a model for learners, compels me to vary the words considerably in suggesting the correction. See the Key.--G. B.

[466] "To be, or not to be?--that's the question."--Hallock's Gram., p. 220. "To be, or not to be, that is the question."--Singer's Shak., ii. 488. "To be, or not to be; that is the Question."--Ward's Gram., p 160. "To be, or not to be, that is the Question."--Brightland's Gram., p 209. "To be, or not to be?"--Mandeville's Course of Reading, p. 141. "To be or not to be! That is the question."--Pinneo's Gram., p. 176. "To be--or not to be--that is the question--"--Burgh's Speaker, p. 179.

[467] In the works of some of our older poets, the apostrophe is sometimes irregularly inserted, and perhaps needlessly, to mark a prosodial synsæresis, or synalepha, where no letter is cut off or left out; as,

"Retire, or taste thy folly', and learn by proof, Hell-born, not to contend with spir'its of Heaven." --Milton, P. L., ii, 686.

In the following example, it seems to denote nothing more than the open or long sound of the preceding vowel e:

"That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour, Even till a lethe'd dulness." --Singer's Shakspeare, Vol. ii, p. 280.

[468] The breve is properly a mark of short quantity, only when it is set over an unaccented syllable or an unemphatic monosyllable, as it often is in the scanning of verses. In the examples above, it marks the close or short power of the vowels; but, under the accent, even this power may become part of a long syllable; as it does in the word rav´en, where the syllable rav, having twice the length of that which follows, must be reckoned long. In poetry, r=av-en and r=a-ven are both trochees, the former syllable in each being long, and the latter short.

[469] 1. The signs of long and short sounds, and especially of the former, have been singularly slow in acquiring appropriate names--or any appellatives suited to their nature, or such as could obtain the sanction of general use. The name breve, from the French brève, (which latter word came, doubtless, originally from the neuter of the Latin adjective brevis, short,) is now pretty generally applied to the one; and the Greek term macron, long, (also originally a neuter adjective,) is perhaps as common as any name for the other. But these are not quite so well adapted to each other, and to the things named, as are the substitutes added above.

2. These signs are explained in our grammars under various names, and often very unfit ones, to say the least; and, in many instances, their use is, in some way, awkwardly stated, without any attempt to name them, or more than one, if either. The Rev. T. Smith names them "Long (=), and Short (~)."--Smith's Murray, p. 72. Churchill calls them "The long = and the short ~."--New Gram., p. 170. Gould calls them "a horizontal line" and "a curved line."--Gould's Adam's Gram., p. 3. Coar says, "Quantity is distinguished by the characters of - long, and ~ short."--Eng. Gram., p. 197. But, in speaking of the signs, he calls them, "A long syllable =," and "A short syllable ~."--Gram., pp. 222 and 228. S. S. Greene calls them "the long sound," and "the breve or short sound."--Gram., p. 257. W. Allen says, "The long-syllable mark, (=) and the breve, or short-syllable mark, (~) denote the quantity of words poetically employed."--Gram., p. 215. Some call them "the Long Accent," and "the Short Accent;" as does Guy's Gram., p. 95. This naming seems to confound accent with quantity. By some, the Macron is improperly called "a Dash;" as by Lennie, p. 137; by Bullions, p. 157; by Hiley, p. 123; by Butler, p. 215. Some call it "a small dash;" as does Well's, p. 183; so Hiley, p. 117. By some it is absurdly named "Hyphen;" as by Buchanan, p. 162; by Alden, p. 165; by Chandler, 183; by Parker and Fox, iii, 36; by Jaudon, 193. Sanborn calls it "the hyphen, or macron."--Analyt. Gr., p. 279. Many, who name it not, introduce it to their readers by a "this =," or "thus ~;" as do Alger, Blair, Dr. Adam, Comly, Cooper, Ingersoll, L. Murray, Sanders, Wright, and others!

[470] "As soon as language proceeds, from mere articulation, to coherency, and connection, accent becomes the guide of the voice. It is founded upon an obscure perception of symmetry, and proportion, between the different sounds that are uttered."--Noehden's Grammar of the German Language, p. 66.

[471] According to Johnson, Walker, Webster, Worcester, and perhaps all other lexicographers, Quantity, in grammar, is--"The measure of time in pronouncing a syllable." And, to this main idea, are conformed, so far as I know, all the different definitions ever given of it by grammarians and critics, except that which appeared in Asa Humphrey's English Prosody, published in 1847. In this work--the most elaborate and the most comprehensive, though not the most accurate or consistent treatise we have on the subject--Time and Quantity are explained separately, as being "two distinct things;" and the latter is supposed not to have regard to duration, but solely to the amount of sound given to each syllable.

This is not only a fanciful distinction, but a radical innovation--and one which, in any view, has little to recommend it. The author's explanations of both time and quantity--of their characteristics, differences, and subdivisions--of their relations to each other, to poetic numbers, to emphasis and cadence, or to accent and non-accent--as well as his derivation and history of "these technical terms, time and quantity"--are hardly just or clear enough to be satisfactory. According to his theory, "Poetic numbers are composed of long and short syllables alternately;" (page 5;) but the difference or proportion between the times of these classes of syllables he holds to be indeterminable, "because their lengths are various." He began with destroying the proper distinction of quantity, or time, as being either long or short, by the useless recognition of an indefinite number of "intermediate lengths;" saying of our syllables at large, "some are LONG, some SHORT, and some are of INTERMEDIATE LENGTHS; as, mat, not, con, &c. are short sounds; mate, note, cone, and grave are long. Some of our diphthongal sounds are LONGER STILL; as, voice, noise, sound, bound, &c. OTHERS are seen to be of INTERMEDIATE lengths."--Humphrey's Prosody, p. 4.

On a scheme like this, it must evidently be impossible to determine, with any certainty, either what syllables are long and what short, or what is the difference or ratio between any two of the innumerable "lengths" of that time, or quantity, which is long, short, variously intermediate, or longer still, and again variously intermediate! No marvel then that the ingenious author scans some lines in a manner peculiar to himself.

[472] It was the doctrine of Sheridan, and perhaps of our old lexicographers in general, that no English word can have more than one full accent; but, in some modern dictionaries, as Bolles's, and Worcester's, many words are marked as if they had two; and a few are given by Bolles's as having three. Sheridan erroneously affirmed, that "every word has an accent," even "all monosyllables, the particles alone excepted."--Lecture on Elocution, pp. 61 and 71. And again, yet more erroneously: "The essence of English words consisting in accent, as that of syllables in articulation; we know that there are as many syllables as we hear articulate sounds, and as many words as we hear accents."-- Ib., p. 70. Yet he had said before, in the same lecture: "The longer polysyllables, have frequently two accents, but one is so much stronger than the other, as to shew that it is but one word; and the inferior accent is always less forcible, than any accent that is the single one in a word."--Ib., p. 31. Wells defines accent as if it might lie on many syllables of a word; but, in his examples, he places it on no more than one: "Accent is the stress which is laid on one or more syllables of a word, in pronunciation; as, re_ver_berate, under_take_."--Wells's School Gram., p. 185. According to this loose definition, he might as well have accented at least one other syllable in each of these examples; for there seems, certainly, to be some little stress on ate and un. For sundry other definitions of accent, see Chap. IV, Section 2d, of Versification; and the marginal note referring to Obs. 1st on Prosody.

[473] According to Dr. Rush, Emphasis is--"a stress of voice on one or more words of a sentence, distinguishing them by intensity or peculiarity of meaning."--Philosophy of the Voice, p. 282. Again, he defines thus: "Accent is the fixed but inexpressive distinction of syllables by quantity and stress: alike both in place and nature, whether the words are pronounced singly from the columns of a vocabulary, or connectedly in the series of discourse. Emphasis may be defined to be the expressive but occasional distinction of a syllable, and consequently of the whole word, by one or more of the specific modes of time, quality, force, or pitch."--Ibid.

[474] 1. This doctrine, though true in its main intent, and especially applicable to the poetic quantity of monosyllables, (the class of words most frequently used in English poetry,) is, perhaps, rather too strongly stated by Murray; because it agrees not with other statements of his, concerning the power of accent over quantity; and because the effect of accent, as a "regulator of quantity," may, on the whole, be as great as that of emphasis. Sheridan contradicts himself yet more pointedly on this subject; and his discrepancies may have been the efficients of Murray's. "The quantity of our syllables is perpetually varying with the sense, and is for the most part regulated by EMPHASIS."--Sheridan's Rhetorical Gram., p. 65. Again: "It is by the ACCENT chiefly that the quantity of our syllables is regulated."--Sheridan's Lectures on Elocution, p. 57. See Chap. IV, Sec. 2d, Obs. 1; and marginal note on Obs. 8.

2. Some writers erroneously confound emphasis with accent; especially those who make accent, and not quantity, the foundation of verse. Contrary to common usage, and to his own definition of accent, Wells takes it upon him to say, "The term accent is also applied, in poetry, to the stress laid on monosyllabic words; as,

'Content is wealth, the riches of the mind.'--Dryden." --Wells's School Grammar, p. 185.

It does not appear that stress laid on monosyllables is any more fitly termed accent, when it occurs in the reading of poetry, than when in the utterance of prose. Churchill, who makes no such distinction, thinks accent essential alike to emphasis and to the quantity of a long vowel, and yet, as regards monosyllables, dependent on them both! His words are these: "Monosyllables are sometimes accented, sometimes not. This depends chiefly on their being more or less emphatic; and on the vowel sound being long or short. We cannot give emphasis to any word, or it's [its] proper duration to a long vowel, without accenting it."--Churchill's New Gram., p. 182.

[475] Not only are these inflections denoted occasionally by the accentual marks, but they are sometimes expressly identified with accents, being called by that name. This practice, however, is plainly objectionable. It confounds things known to be different,--mere stress with elevation or depression,--and may lead to the supposition, that to accent a syllable, is to inflect the voice upon it. Such indeed has been the guess of many concerning the nature of Greek and Latin accents, but of the English accent, the common idea is, that it is only a greater force distinguishing some one syllable of a word from the rest. Walker, however, in the strange account he gives in his Key, of "what we mean by the accent and quantity of our own language," charges this current opinion with error, dissenting from Sheridan and Nares, who held it; and, having asserted, that, "in speaking, the voice is continually sliding upwards or downwards," proceeds to contradict himself thus: "As high and low, loud and soft, forcible and feeble, are comparative terms, words of one syllable pronounced alone, and without relation to other words or syllables, cannot be said to have any ACCENT. The only distinction to which such words are liable, is an elevation or depression of voice, when we compare the beginning with the end of the word or syllable. Thus a monosyllable, considered singly, rises from a lower to a higher tone in the question Nó? which may therefore be called the acute ACCENT: and falls from a higher to a lower tone upon the same word in the answer Nò, which may therefore be called the grave [ACCENT]."--Walker's Key, p. 316. Thus he tells of different accents on "a monosyllable," which, by his own showing, "cannot be said to have any accent"! and others read and copy the text with as little suspicion of its inconsistency! See Worcester's Universal and Critical Dictionary, p. 934.

[476] In Humphrey's English Prosody, cadence is taken for the reverse of accent, and is obviously identified or confounded with short quantity, or what the author inclines to call "small quantity." He defines it as follows: "Cadence is the reverse or counterpart to accent; a falling or depression of voice on syllables unaccented: and by which the sound is shortened and depressed."--P. 3. This is not exactly what is generally understood by the word cadence. Lord Kames also contrasts cadence with accent; but, by the latter term, he seems to have meant something different from our ordinary accent. "Sometimes to humour the sense," says he, "and sometimes the melody, a particular syllable is sounded in a higher tone; and this is termed accenting a syllable, or gracing it with an accent. Opposed to the accent, is the cadence, which I have not mentioned as one of the requisites of verse, because it is entirely regulated by the sense, and hath no peculiar relation to verse."--Elements of Criticism, Vol. ii, p. 78.

[477] The Latin term, (made plural to agree with verba, words,) is subaudita, underheard--the perfect participle of subaudio, to underhear. Hence the noun, subauditio, subaudition, the recognition of ellipses.

[478] "Thus, in the Proverbs of all Languages, many Words are usually left to be supplied from the trite obvious Nature of what they express; as, out of Sight out of Mind; the more the merrier, &c."--W. Ward's Pract. Gram., p. 147.

[479] Lindley Murray and some others say, "As the ellipsis occurs in almost every sentence in the English language, numerous examples of it might be given."--Murray's Gram., p. 220; Weld's, 292; Fisk's, 147. They could, without doubt, have exhibited many true specimens of Ellipsis; but most of those which they have given, are only fanciful and false ones; and their notion of the frequency of the figure, is monstrously hyperbolical.

[480] Who besides Webster has called syllepsis "substitution," I do not know. Substitution and conception are terms of quite different import, and many authors have explained syllepsis by the latter word. Dr. Webster gives to "SUBSTITUTION" two meanings, thus: "1. The act of putting one person or thing in the place of another to supply [his or] its place.--2. In grammar, syllepsis, or the use of one word for another."--American Dict., 8vo. This explanation seems to me inaccurate; because it confounds both substitution and syllepsis with enallage. It has signs of carelessness throughout; the former sentence being both tautological and ungrammatical.--G. B.

[481] Between Tropes and Figures, some writers attempt a full distinction; but this, if practicable, is of little use. According to Holmes, "TROPES affect only single Words; but FIGURES, whole Sentences."--Rhetoric, B. i, p. 28. "The CHIEF TROPES in Language," says this author, "are seven; a Metaphor, an Allegory, a Metonymy, a Synecdoche, an Irony, an Hyperbole, and a Catachresis."--Ib., p. 30. The term Figure or Figures is more comprehensive than Trope or Tropes; I have therefore not thought it expedient to make much use of the latter, in either the singular or the plural form. Holmes's seven tropes are all of them defined in the main text of this section, except Catachresis, which is commonly explained to be "an abuse of a trope." According to this sense, it seems in general to differ but little from impropriety. At best, a Catachresis is a forced expression, though sometimes, perhaps, to be indulged where there is great excitement. It is a sort of figure by which a word is used in a sense different from, yet connected with, or analogous to, its own; as,

"And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, as heaven's cherubim Hors'd upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind."--Shak., Macbeth, Act i, Sc. 7.

[482] Holmes, in his Art of Rhetoric, writes this word "Paraleipsis" retaining the Greek orthography. So does Fowler in his recent "English Grammar," §646. Webster, Adam, and some others, write it "Paralepsis." I write it as above on the authority of Littleton, Ainsworth, and some others; and this is according to the analogy of the kindred word ellipsis, which we never write either ellepsis, or, as the Greek, elleipsis.

[483] To this principle there seems to be now and then an exception, as when a weak dissyllable begins a foot in an anapestic line, as in the following examples:--

"I think--let me see--yes, it is, I declare, As long ago now as that Buckingham there."--Leigh Hunt.

"And Thomson, though best in his indolent fits, Either slept himself weary, or blasted his wits."--Id.

Here, if we reckon the feet in question to be anapests, we have dissyllables with both parts short. But some, accenting "ago" on the latter syllable, and "Either" on the former, will call "ago now" a bacchy, and "Either slept" an amphimac: because they make them such by their manner of reading.--G. B.

[484] "Edgar A. Poe, the author, died at Baltimore on Sunday" [the 7th].--Daily Evening Traveller, Boston Oct. 9, 1849. This was eight or ten months after the writing of these observations.--G. B.

[485] "Versification is the art of arranging words into lines of correspondent length, so as to produce harmony by the regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity"--Brown's Institutes of E. Gram., p. 235.

[486] This appears to be an error; for, according to Dilworth, and other arithmeticians, "a unit is a number;" and so is it expounded by Johnson, Walker, Webster, and Worcester. See, in the Introduction, a note at the foot of p. 117. Mulligan, however, contends still, that one is no number; and that, "to talk of the singular number is absurd--a contradiction in terms;"--because, "in common discourse," a "number" is "always a plurality, except"--when it is "number one!"--See Grammatical Structure of the E. Language, §33. Some prosodists have taught the absurdity, that two feet are necessary to constitute a metre, and have accordingly applied the terms, monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, and hexameter,--or so many of them as they could so misapply,--in a sense very different from the usual acceptation. The proper principle is, that, "One foot constitutes a metre."--Dr. P. Wilson's Greek Prosody, p. 53. And verses are to be denominated Monometer, Dimeter, Trimeter, &c., according to "THE NUMBER OF FEET."--See ib. p. 6. But Worcester's Universal and Critical Dictionary has the following not very consistent explanations: "MONOMETER, n. One metre. Beck. DIMETER, n. A poetic measure of four feet; a series of two meters. Beck. TRIMETER, a. Consisting of three poetical measures, forming an iambic of six feet. Tyrwhitt. TETRAMETER, n. A Latin or Greek verse consisting of four feet; a series of four metres. TETRAMETER, a. Having four metrical feet. Tyrwhitt. PENTAMETER, n. A Greek or Latin verse of five feet; a series of five metres. PENTAMETER, a. Having five metrical feet. Warton. HEXAMETER, n. A verse or line of poetry, having six feet, either dactyls or spondees; the heroic, and most important, verse among the Greeks and Romans;--a rhythmical series of six metres. HEXAMETER, a. Having six metrical feet. Dr. Warton." According to these definitions, Dimeter has as many feet as Tetrameter; and Trimeter has as many as Hexameter!

[487] It is common, at any rate, for prosodists to speak of "the movement of the voice," as do Sheridan, Murray, Humphrey, and Everett; but Kames, in treating of the Beauty of Language from Resemblance, says "There is no resemblance of sound to motion, nor of sound to sentiment."--Elements of Criticism, Vol. ii, p. 63. This usage, however, is admitted by the critic, had cited to show how, "causes that have no resemblance may produce resembling effects."--Ib. 64. "By a number of syllables in succession, an emotion is sometimes raised extremely similar to that raised by successive motion: which may be evident even to those who are defective in taste, from the following fact, that the term movement in all languages is equally applied to both."--Ib. ii. 66.

[488] "From what has been said of accent and quantity in our own language, we may conclude them to be essentially distinct and perfectly separable: nor is it to be doubted that they were equally separable in the learned languages."--Walkers's Observations on Gr. and Lat. Accent and Quantity, §20; Key, p. 326. In the speculative essay here cited, Walker meant by accent the rising or the falling inflection,--an upward or a downward slide of the voice: and by quantity, nothing but the open or close sound of some vowel; as of "the a in scatter" and in "skater," the initial syllables of which words be supposed to differ in quantity as much as any two syllables can!--Ib., §24; Key, p. 331. With these views of the things, it is perhaps the less to be wondered at, that Walker, who appears to have been a candid and courteous writer, charges "that excellent scholar Mr. Forster--with a total ignorance of the accent and quantity of his own language," (Ib., Note on §8; Key, p. 317;) and, in regard to accent, ancient or modern, elsewhere confesses his own ignorance, and that of every body else, to be as "total." See marginal note on Obs. 4th below.

[489] (1.) "We shall now take a view of sounds when united into syllables. Here a beautiful variation of quantity presents itself as the next object of our attention. The knowledge of long and short syllables, is the most excellent and most neglected quality in the whole art of pronunciation.

The disputes of our modern writers on this subject, have arisen chiefly from an absurd notion that has long prevailed; viz. that there is no difference between the accent and the quantity, in the English language; that the accented syllables are always long, and the unaccented always short.

An absurdity so glaring, does not need refutation. Pronounce any one line from Milton, and the ear will determine whether or not the accent and quantity always coincide. Very seldom they do."--HERRIES: Bicknell's Gram., Part ii, p. 108.

(2.) "Some of our Moderns (especially Mr. Bishe, in his Art of Poetry) and lately Mr. Mattaire, in what he calls, The English Grammar, erroneously use Accent for Quantity, one signifying the Length or Shortness of a Syllable, the other the raising or falling of the Voice in Discourse."--Brightland's Gram., London, 1746, p. 156.

(3.) "Tempus cum accentu a nonnullis malè confunditur; quasi idem sit acui et produci. Cum brevis autem syllaba acuitur, elevatur quidem vox in eà proferendà, sed tempus non augetur. Sic in voce hominibus acuitur mi; at ni quæ sequitur, æquam in efferendo moram postulat."--Lily's Gram., p. 125. Version: "By some persons, time is improperly confounded with accent; as if to acute and to lengthen were the same. But when a short syllable is acuted, the voice indeed is raised in pronouncing it, but the time is not increased. Thus, in the word hominibus, mi as the acute accent; but ni, which follows, demands equal slowness in the pronunciation." To English ears, this can hardly seem a correct representation; for, in pronouncing hominibus, it is not mi, but min, that we accent; and this syllable is manifestly as much longer than the rest, as it is louder.

[490] (1.) "Syllables, with respect to their quantity, are either long, short, or common."--Gould's Adam's Lat. Gram., p. 243. "Some syllables are common; that is, sometimes long, and sometimes short."--Adam's Lat. and Eng. Gram., p. 252. Common is here put for variable, or not permanently settled in respect to quantity: in this sense, from which no third species ought to be inferred, our language is, perhaps, more extensively "common" than any other.

(2.) "Most of our Monosyllables either take this Stress or not, according as they are more or less emphatical; and therefore English Words of one Syllable may be considered as common; i.e. either as long or short in certain Situations. These Situations are chiefly determined by the Pause, or Cesure, of the Verse, and this Pause by the Sense. And as the English abounds in Monosyllables, there is probably no Language in which the Quantity of Syllables is more regulated by the Sense than in English."--W. Ward's Gram., Ed. of 1765, p. 156.

(3.) Bicknell's theory of quantity, for which he refers to Herries, is this: "The English quantity is divided into long, short, and common. The longest species of syllables are those that end in a vowel, and are under the accent; as, mo in har_mo_nious, sole in con_sole_, &c. When a monosyllable, which is unemphatic, ends in a vowel, it is always short; but when the emphasis is placed upon it, it is always long. Short syllables are such as end in any of the six mutes; as cu_t_, sto_p_, ra_p_i_d_, ru_g_ge_d_, lo_ck_. In all such syllables the sound cannot be lengthened: they are necessarily and invariably short. If another consonant intervenes between the vowel and mute, as re_nd_, so_ft_, fla_sk_, the syllable is rendered somewhat longer. The other species of syllables called common, are such as terminate in a half-vowel or aspirate. For instance, in the words ru_n_, swi_m_, cru_sh_, pu_rl_, the concluding sound can be continued or shortened, as we please. This scheme of quantity," it is added, "is founded on fact and experience."--Bicknell's Gram., Part ii, p. 109. But is it not a fact, that such words as cuttest, stopping, rapid, rugged, are trochees, in verse? and is not unlock an iambus? And what becomes of syllables that end with vowels or liquids and are not accented?

[491] I do not say the mere absence of stress is never called accent; for it is, plainly, the doctrine of some authors that the English accent differs not at all in its nature from the accent of the ancient Greeks or Romans, which was distinguished as being of three sorts, acute, grave, inflex; that "the stronger breathing, or higher sound," which distinguishes one syllable of a word from or above the rest, is the acute accent only; that "the softer breathing, or lower sound," which belongs to an unacuted (or unaccented) syllable, is the grave accent; and that a combination of these two sounds, or "breathings," upon one syllable, constitutes the inflex or circumflex accent. Such, I think, is the teaching of Rev. William Barnes; who further says, "English verse is constructed upon sundry orders of acute and grave accents and matchings of rhymes, while the poetic language of the Romans and Greeks is formed upon rules of the sundry clusterings of long and short syllables."--Philological Grammar, p. 263. This scheme is not wholly consistent, because the author explains accent or accents as being applicable only to "words of two or more syllables;" and it is plain, that the accent which includes the three sorts above, must needs be "some other thing than what we call accent," if this includes only the acute.

[492] Sheridan used the same comparison, "To illustrate the difference between the accent of the ancients and that of ours" [our tongue]. Our accent he supposed, with Nares and others, to have "no reference to inflections of the voice."--See Art of Reading, p. 75; Lectures on Elocution, p. 56; Walker's Key, p. 313.

[493] (1.) It may in some measure account for these remarkable omissions, to observe that Walker, in his lexicography, followed Johnson in almost every thing but pronunciation. On this latter subject, his own authority is perhaps as great as that of any single author. And here I am led to introduce a remark or two touching the accent and quantity with which he was chiefly concerned; though the suggestions may have no immediate connexion with the error of confounding these properties.

(2.) Walker, in his theory, regarded the inflections of the voice as pertaining to accent, and as affording a satisfactory solution of the difficulties in which this subject has been involved; but, as an English orthoëpist, he treats of accent in no other sense, than as stress laid on a particular syllable of a word--a sense implying contrast, and necessarily dividing all syllables into accented and unaccented, except monosyllables. Having acknowledged our "total ignorance of the nature of the Latin and Greek accent," he adds: "The accent of the English language, which is constantly sounding in our ears, and every moment open to investigation, seems as much a mystery as that accent which is removed almost two thousand years from our view. Obscurity, perplexity, and confusion, run through every treatise on the subject, and nothing could be so hopeless as an attempt to explain it, did not a circumstance present itself, which at once accounts for the confusion, and affords a clew to lead us out of it. Not one writer on accent has given such a definition of the voice as acquaints us with its essential properties. * * * But let us once divide the voice into its rising and falling inflections, the obscurity vanishes, and accent becomes as intelligible as any other part of language. * * * On the present occasion it will be sufficient to observe, that the stress we call accent is as well understood as is necessary for the pronunciation of single words, which is the object of this treatise."--Walker's Dict., p. 53, Princip. 486, 487, 488.

(3.) Afterwards, on introducing quantity, as an orthoëpical topic, he has the following remark: "In treating this part of pronunciation, it will not be necessary to enter into the nature of that quantity which constitutes poetry; the quantity here considered will be that which relates to words taken singly; and this is nothing more than the length or shortness of the vowels, either as they stand alone, or as they are differently combined with the vowels or consonants." Ib., p. 62, Princip. 529. Here is suggested a distinction which has not been so well observed by grammarians and prosodists, or even by Walker himself, as it ought to have been. So long as the practice continues of denominating certain mere vowel sounds the long and the short, it will be very necessary to notice that these are not the same as the syllabic quantities, long and short, which constitute English verse.

[494] (1.) In the Latin and Greek languages, this is not commonly supposed to be the case; but, on the contrary, the quantity of syllables is professedly adjusted by its own rules independently of what we call accent; and, in our English pronunciation of these languages, the accentuation of all long words is regulated by the quantity of the last syllable but one. Walker, in the introduction to his Key, speaks of "The English pronunciation of Greek and Latin [as] injurious to quantity." And no one can deny, that we often accent what are called short syllables, and perhaps oftener leave unaccented such as are called long; but, after all, were the quantity of Latin and Greek syllables always judged of by their actual time, and not with reference to the vowel sounds called long and short, these our violations of the old quantities would be found much fewer than some suppose they are.

(2.) Dr. Adam's view of the accents, acute and grave, appears to be peculiar; and of a nature which may perhaps come nearer to an actual identity with the quantities, long and short, than any other. He says,

"1. The acute or sharp accent raises the voice in pronunciation, and is thus marked [´]; prófero, prófer. [The English word is written, not thus, but with two Effs, proffer.--G. B.]

"2. The grave or base accent depresses the voice, or keeps it in its natural tone; and is thus marked [`]; as, doctè. [Fist] This accent properly belongs to all syllables which have no other.

"The accents are hardly ever marked in English books, except in dictionaries, grammars, spelling-books, or the like, where the acute accent only is used. The accents are likewise seldom marked in Latin books, unless for the sake of distinction; as in these adverbs, aliquò, continuò, doctè, unà, &c."--Adam's Latin and English Grammar, p. 266.

(3.) As stress naturally lengthens the syllables on which it falls, if we suppose the grave accent to be the opposite of this, and to belong to all syllables which have no peculiar stress,--are not enforced, not acuted, not circumflected, not emphasized; then shall we truly have an accent with which our short quantity may fairly coincide. But I have said, "the mere absence of stress, which produces short quantity, we do not call accent;" and it may be observed, that the learned improver of Dr. Adam's Grammar, B. A. Gould, has totally rejected all that his predecessor taught concerning accent, and has given an entirely different definition of the thing. See marginal notes on page 771, above. Dr. Johnson also cites from Holder a very different explanation of it, as follows: "Accent, as in the Greek names and usage, seems to have regarded the tune of the voice; the acute accent, raising the voice in some certain syllables, to a higher, (i.e. more acute) pitch or tone; and the grave, depressing it lower; [Fist] and both having some emphasis, i.e. more vigorous pronunciation. HOLDER."--Johnson's Quarto Dict., w. Accent.

[495] (1.) "Amongst them [the ancients,] we know that accents were marked by certain inflexions [inflections] of the voice like musical notes; and the grammarians to this day, with great formality inform their pupils, that the acute accent, is the raising [of] the voice on a certain syllable; the grave, a depression of it; and the circumflex, a raising and depression both, in one and the same syllable. This jargon they constantly preserve, though they have no sort of ideas annexed to these words; for if they are asked to shew how this is to be done, they cannot tell, and their practice always belies their precept."--Sheridan's Lectures on Eloc., p. 54.

(2.) "It is by the accent chiefly that the quantity of our syllables is regulated; but not according to the mistaken rule laid down by all who have written on the subject, that the accent always makes the syllable long; than which there cannot be any thing more false."--Ib., p. 57.

(3.) "And here I cannot help taking notice of a circumstance, which shews in the strongest light, the amazing deficiency of those, who have hitherto employed their labours on that subject, [accent, or pronunciation,] in point of knowledge of the true genius and constitution of our tongue. Several of the compilers of dictionaries, vocabularies, and spelling books, have undertaken to mark the accents of our words; but so little acquainted were they with the nature of our accent, that they thought it necessary only to mark the syllable on which the stress is to be laid, without marking the particular letter of the syllable to which the accent belongs."--Ib., p. 59.

(4.) "The mind thus taking a bias under the prejudice of false rules, never arrives at a knowledge of the true nature of quantity; and accordingly we find that all attempts hitherto to settle the prosody of our language, have been vain and fruitless."--Sheridan's Rhetorical Gram., p. 52.

[496] In the following extract, this matter is stated somewhat differently: "The quantity depends upon the seat of the accent, whether it be on the vowel or [on the] consonant; if on the vowel, the syllable is necessarily long: as it makes the vowel long; if on the consonant, it may be either long or short, according to the nature of the consonant, or the time taken up in dwelling upon it."--Sheridan's Lectures on Eloc., p. 57. This last clause shows the "distinction" to be a very weak one.--G. BROWN.

[497] "If the consonant be in its nature a short one, the syllable is necessarily short. If it be a long one, that is, one whose sound is capable of being lengthened, it may be long or short at the will of the speaker. By a short consonant I mean one whose sound cannot be continued after a vowel, such as c or k p t, as ac, ap, at--whilst that of long consonants can, as, el em en er ev, &c."--Sheridan's Lectures on Elocution, p. 58. Sheridan here forgets that "bor'row" is one of his examples of short quantity.

Murray admits that "accent on a semi-vowel" may make the syllable long; and his semivowels are these: "f, l, m, n, r, v, s, z, x, and c and g soft." See his Octavo Gram., p. 240 and p. 8.

[498] On account of the different uses made of the breve, the macron, and the accents, one grammarian has proposed a new mode of marking poetic quantities. Something of the kind might be useful; but there seems to be a reversal of order in this scheme, the macrotone being here made light, and the stenotone dark and heavy. "Long and short syllables have sometimes been designated by the same marks which are used for accent, tones, and the quality of the vowels; but it will be better[,] to prevent confusion[,] to use different marks. This mark º may represent a long syllable, and this · a short syllable; as,

· · ° · · ° · · ° · ° 'At the close of the day when the hamlet is still.'" --Perley's Gram., p. 73. [no · over 'let', sic--KTH]

[499] Dr. Adam's Gram., p. 267; B. A. Gould's, 257. The Latin word cæsura signifies "a cutting, or division." This name is sometimes Anglicized, and written "Cesure." See Brightland's Gram., p. 161; or Worcester's Dict., w. Cesure.

[500] "As to the long quantity arising from the succession of two consonants, which the ancients are uniform in asserting, if it did not mean that the preceding vowel was to lengthen its sound, as we should do by pronouncing the a in scatter as we do in skater, (one who skates,) I have no conception of what it meant; for if it meant that only the time of the syllable was prolonged, the vowel retaining the same sound, I must confess as ut er [sic--KTH] an inability of comprehending this source of quantity in the Greek and Latin as in English."--Walker on Gr. and L. Accent, §24; Key, p. 331. This distinguished author seems unwilling to admit, that the consonants occupy time in their utterance, or that other vowel sounds than those which name the vowels, can be protracted and become long; but these are truths, nevertheless; and, since every letter adds something to the syllable in which it is uttered, it is by consequence a "source of quantity," whether the syllable be long or short.

[501] Murray has here a marginal note, as follows: "Movement and measure are thus distinguished. Movement expresses the progressive order of sounds, whether from strong to weak, from long to short, or vice versa. Measure signifies the proportion of time, both in sounds and pauses."--Octavo Gram., p. 259. This distinction is neither usual nor accurate; though Humphrey adopts it, with slight variations. Without some species of measure,--Iambic, Trochaic, Anapestic, Dactylic, or some other,--there can be no regular movement, no "progressive order of sounds." Measure is therefore too essential to movement to be in contrast with it. And the movement "from strong to weak, from long to short," is but one and the same, a trochaic movement; its reverse, the movement, "vice versa," from weak to strong, or from short to long, is, of course, that of iambic measure. But Murray's doctrine is, that strong and long, weak and short, may be separated; that strong may be short, and weak be long; so that the movement from weak to strong may be from long to short, and vice versa: as if a trochaic movement might arise from iambic measure, and an iambic movement from trochaic feet! This absurdity comes of attempting to regulate the movement of verse by accent, and not by quantity, while it is admitted that quantity, and not accent, forms the measure, which "signifies the proportion of time." The idea that pauses belong to measure, is an other radical error of the foregoing note. There are more pauses in poetry than in prose, but none of them are properly "parts" of either. Humphrey says truly, "Feet are the constituent parts of verse."--English Prosody, p. 8. But L. Murray says, "Feet and pauses are the constituent parts of verse."--Octavo Gram., p. 252. Here Sheridan gave bias. Intending to treat of verse, and "the pauses peculiarly belonging to it," the "Cæsural" pause and the "Final," the rhetorician had improperly said, "The constituent parts of verse are, feet, and pauses."--Sheridan's Rhetorical Gram., p. 64.

[502] "But as many Ways as Quantities may be varied by Composition and Transposition, so many different Feet have the Greek Poets contriv'd, and that under distinct Names, from two to six Syllables, to the Number of 124. But it is the Opinion of some Learned Men in this Way, that Poetic Numbers may be sufficiently explain'd by those of two or three Syllables, into which the rest are to be resolv'd."--Brightland's Grammar, 7th Ed., p. 161.

[503] "THE BELLS OF ST. PETERSBURGH."

"Those ev'ning bells, those ev'ning bells, How many a tale their music tells!"--Moore's Melodies, p. 263.

This couplet, like all the rest of the piece from which it is taken, is iambic verse, and to be divided into feet thus:--

"Those ev' | -ning bells, | those ev' | -ning bells, How man | -y a tale | their mu | -sic tells!"

[504] Lord Kames, too, speaking of "English Heroic verse," says: "Every line consists of ten syllables, five short and five long; from which [rule] there are but two exceptions, both of them rare."--Elements of Criticism, Vol. ii, p. 89.

[505] "The Latin is a far more stately tongue than our own. It is essentially spondaic; the English is as essentially dactylic. The long syllable is the spirit of the Roman (and Greek) verse; the short syllable is the essence of ours."--Poe's Notes upon English Verse; Pioneer, Vol. i, p. 110. "We must search for spondaic words, which, in English, are rare indeed."--Ib., p. 111.

[506] "There is a rule, in Latin prosody, that a vowel before two consonants is long. We moderns have not only no such rule, but profess inability to comprehend its rationale."--Poe's Notes: Pioneer, p. 112.

[507] The opponents of capital punishment will hardly take this for a fair version of the sixth commandment.--G. B.

[508] These versicles, except the two which are Italicized, are not iambic. The others are partly trochaic; and, according to many of our prosodists, wholly so; but it is questionable whether they are not as properly amphimacric, or Cretic.

[509] See exercises in Punctuation, on page 786, of this work.--G. B.

[510] The Seventieth Psalm is the same as the last five verses of the Fortieth, except a few unimportant differences of words or points.

[511] It is obvious, that these two lines may easily be reduced to an agreeable stanza, by simply dividing each after the fourth foot--G. B.

[512] In Sanborn's Analytical Grammar, on page 279th, this couplet is ascribed to "Pope;" but I have sought in vain for this quotation, or any example of similar verse, in the works of that poet. The lines, one or both of them, appear, without reference, in L. Murray's Grammar, Second Edition, 1796, p. 176, and in subsequent editions; in W. Allen's, p. 225; Bullions's, 178; N. Butler's, 192; Chandler's New, 196; Clark's, 201; Churchill's, 187; Cooper's Practical, 185; Davis's, 137; Farnum's, 106; Felton's, 142; Frazee's, 184; Frost's, 164; S. S. Greene's, 250; Hallock's, 244; Hart's, 187; Hiley's, 127; Humphrey's Prosody, 17; Parker and Fox's Gram., Part iii, p. 60; Weld's, 211; Ditto Abridged, 138; Wells's, 200; Fowler's, 658; and doubtless in many other such books.

[513] "Owen succeeded his father Griffin in the principality of North Wales, A. D. 1120. This battle was fought near forty years afterwards. North Wales is called, in the fourth line, 'Gwyneth;' and 'Lochlin,' in the fourteenth, is Denmark."--Gray. Some say "Lochlin," in the Annals of Ulster, means Norway.--G. B.

[514] "The red dragon is the device of Cadwallader, which all his descendants bore on their banners."--Gray.

[515] This passage, or some part of it, is given as a trochaic example, in many different systems of prosody. Everett ascribes it entire to "John Chalkhill;" and Nutting, more than twenty years before, had attached the name of "Chalkhill" to a part of it. But the six lines "of three syllables," Dr. Johnson, in his Grammar, credits to "Walton's Angler;" and Bicknell, too, ascribes the same to "Walton." The readings also have become various. Johnson, Bicknell, Burn, Churchill, and Nutting, have "Here" for "Where" in the fifth line above; and Bicknell and Burn have "Stop" in the eighth line, where the rest read "Stops." Nutting has, for the ninth line, "Others' joys," and not, "Other joys," as have the rest.--G. B.

[516] OBS.--Of this, and of every other example which requires no amendment, let the learner simply say, after reading the passage, "This sentence is correct as it stands."--G. BROWN.

[517] OBSERVATION.--In the Bible, the word LORD, whenever it stands for the Hebrew name JEHOVAH, not only commences with a full capital, but has small or half capitals for the other letters; and I have thought proper to print both words in that manner here. In correcting the last example, I follow Dr. Scott's Bible, except in the word "God," which he writes with a small g. Several other copies have "first" and "last" with small initials, which I think not so correct; and some distinguish the word "hosts" with a capital, which seems to be needless. The sentence here has eleven capitals: in the Latin Vulgate, it has but six, and one of them is for the last word, "Deus," God.--G. B.

[518] OBS.--This construction I dislike. Without hyphens, it is improper; and with them it is not to be commended. See Syntax, Obs 24th on Rule IV.--G. B.

[519] On the page here referred to, the author of the Gazetteer has written "Charles city," &c. Analogy requires that the words be compounded, because they constitute three names which are applied to counties, and not to cities.

[520] OBS.--The following words, as names of towns, come under Rule 6th, and are commonly found correctly compounded in the books of Scotch geography and statistics; "Strathaven, Stonehaven, Strathdon, Glenluce, Greenlaw, Coldstream, Lochwinnoch, Lochcarron, Loehmaber, Prestonpans, Prestonkirk, Peterhead, Queensferry, Newmills," and many more like them.

[521] Section OBS.--This name, in both the Vulgate and the Septuagint, is Pharao Nechao, with two capitals and no hyphen. Walker gives the two words separately in his Key, and spells the latter Necho, and not Nechoh. See the same orthography in Jer., xlvi, 2. In our common Bibles, many such names are needlessly, if not improperly, compounded; sometimes with one capital, and sometimes with two. The proper manner of writing Scripture names, is too little regarded even by good men and biblical critics.

[522] "[Marcus] Terentius Varro, vir Romanorum eruditissimus."--QUINTILIAN. Lib. x, Cap. 1, p. 577.

[523] NOTE.--By this amendment, we remove a multitude of errors, but the passage is still very faulty. What Murray here calls "phrases," are properly sentences; and, in his second clause, he deserts the terms of the first to bring in "my," "our," and also "&c.," which seem to be out of place there.--G. BROWN.

[524] An other is a phrase of two words, which ought to be written separately. The transferring of the n to the latter word, is a gross vulgarism. Separate the words, and it will be avoided.

[525] Mys-ter-y, according to Scott and Cobb; mys-te-ry, according to Walker and Worcester.

[526] Kirkham borrowed this doctrine of "Tonics, Subtonics, and Atonies," from Rush: and dressed it up in his own worse bombast. See Obs. 13 and 14, on the Powers of the Letters.--GB.

[527] There is, in most English dictionaries, a contracted form of this phrase, written prithee, or I prithee; but Dr. Johnson censures it as "a familiar corruption, which some writers have injudiciously used;" and, as the abbreviation amounted to nothing but the slurring of one vowel sound into an other, it has now, I think, very deservedly become obsolete.--G. BROWN.

[528] This is the doctrine of Murray, and his hundred copyists; but it is by no means generally true. It is true of adverbs, only when they are connected by conjunctions; and seldom applies to two words, unless the conjunction which may be said to connect them, be suppressed and understood.--G. BROWN.

[529] Example: "Imperfect articulation comes not so much from bad organs, as from the abuse of good ones."--Porter's Analysis. Here ones represents organs, and prevents unpleasant repetition.--G. BROWN.

[530] From the force of habit, or to prevent the possibility of a false pronunciation, these ocular contractions are still sometimes carefully made in printing poetry; but they are not very important, and some modern authors, or their printers, disregard them altogether. In correcting short poetical examples, I shall in general take no particular pains to distinguish them from prose. All needful contractions however will be preserved, and sometimes also a capital letter, to show where the author commenced a line.

[531] The word "imperfect" is not really necessary here; for the declaration is true of any phrase, as this name is commonly applied.--G. BROWN.

[532] A part of speech is a sort of words, and not one word only. We cannot say, that every pronoun, or every verb, is a part of speech, because the parts of speech are only ten. But every pronoun, verb, or other word, is a word; and, if we will refer to this genus, there is no difficulty in defining all the parts of speech in the singular, with an or a: as, "A pronoun is a word put for a noun." Murray and others say, "An Adverb is a part of speech," &c., "A Conjunction is a part of speech," &c., which is the same as to say, "One adverb is a sort of words," &c. This is a palpable absurdity.--G. BROWN.

[533] The propriety of this conjunction, "nor," is somewhat questionable: the reading in both the Vulgate and the Septuagint is--"they, and their wives, and their sons, and their daughters."

[534] All our lexicographers, and all accurate authors, spell this word with an o; but the gentleman who has furnished us with the last set of new terms for the science of grammar, writes it with an e, and applies it to the verb and the participle. With him, every verb or participle is an "asserter;" except when he forgets his creed, as he did in writing the preceding example about certain "verbs." As he changes the names of all the parts of speech, and denounces the entire technology of grammar, perhaps his innovation would have been sufficiently broad, had he for THE VERB, the most important class of all, adopted some name which he knew how to spell.--G. B.

[535] It would be better to omit the word "forth," or else to say--"whom I brought forth from the land of Egypt." The phrase, "forth out of," is neither a very common nor a very terse one.--G. BROWN.

[536] This doctrine, that participles divide and specify time, I have elsewhere shown to be erroneous.--G. BROWN.

[537] Perhaps it would be as well or better, in correcting these two examples, to say, "There are a generation." But the article a, as well as the literal form of the noun, is a sign of unity; and a complete uniformity of numbers is not here practicable.

[538] Though the pronoun thou is not much used in common discourse, it is as proper for the grammarian to consider and show, what form of the verb belongs to it when it is so used, as it is for him to determine what form is adapted to any other pronoun, when a difference of style affects the question.

[539] "Forgavest," as the reading is in our common Bible, appears to be wrong; because the relative that and its antecedent God are of the third person, and not of the second.

[540] All the corrections under this head are directly contrary to the teaching of William S. Cardell. Oliver B. Peirce, and perhaps some other such writers on grammar; and some of them are contrary also to Murray's late editions. But I am confident that these authors teach erroneously; that their use of indicative forms for mere suppositions that are contrary to the facts, is positively ungrammatical; and that the potential imperfect is less elegant, in such instances, than the simple subjunctive, which they reject or distort.

[541] This is what Smith must have meant by the inaccurate phrase, "those in the first." For his first example is, "He went to school;" which contains only the one pronoun "He."--See Smith's New Gram., p. 19.

[542] According to modern usage, has would here be better than is,--though is fallen is still allowable.--G. BROWN.

[543] From this opinion, I dissent. See Obs. 1st on the Degrees of Comparison, and Obs. 4th on Regular Comparison, in the Etymology of this work, at pp. 279 and 285.--G. BROWN.

[544] "The country looks beautiful;'" that is, appears beautiful--is beautiful. This is right, and therefore the use which Bucke makes of it, may be fairly reversed. But the example was ill chosen; and I incline to think, it may also be right to say, "The country looks beautifully;" for the quality expressed by beautiful, is nothing else than the manner in which the thing shows to the eye. See Obs. 11th on Rule 9th.--G. BROWN.

[545] Many examples and authorities may be cited in favour of these corrections; as, "He acted independently of foreign assistance."-- Murray's Key, Gram., Vol. ii, p. 222. "Independently of any necessary relation."--Murray's Gram., Vol. i. p. 275. "Independently of this peculiar mode of construction."--Blair's Rhet., p. 473. "Independent of the will of the people."--Webster's Essays, p. 13. "Independent one of an other."--Barclay's Works, i, 84. "The infinitive is often independent of the rest of the sentence."--Lennie's Gram., p. 85. "Some sentences are independent of each other."--Murray's Gram., i, 277. "As if it were independent of it"--Priestley's Gram., p. 186. "Independent of appearance and show."--Blair's Rhet., p. 13.

[546] The preposition of which Jefferson uses before about, appears to me to be useless. It does not govern the noun diameter, and is therefore no substitute for the in which I suppose to be wanting; and, as the preposition about seems to be sufficient between is and feet, I omit the of. So in other instances below.--G. BROWN.

[547] Murray, Jamieson, and others, have this definition with the article "a," and the comma, but without the hyphen: "APOSTROPHE is a turning off from the regular course," &c. See errors under Note 4th to Rule 20th.

[548] This sentence may be written correctly in a dozen different ways, with precisely the same meaning, and very nearly the same words. I have here made the noun gold the object of the verb took, which in the original appears to govern the noun treasure, or money, understood. The noun amount might as well be made its object, by a suppression of the preposition to. And again, for "pounds' weight," we may say, "pounds in weight." The words will also admit of many other positions.--G. BROWN.

[549] See a different reading of this example, cited as the first item of false syntax under Rule 16th above, and there corrected differently. The words "both of," which make the difference, were probably added by L. Murray in some of his revisals; and yet it does not appear that this popular critic ever got the sentence right.--G. BROWN.

[550] "If such maxims, and such practices prevail, what has become of national liberty?"--Hume's History. Vol. vi, p. 254; Priestley's Gram., p. 128.

[551] According to my notion, but is never a preposition; but there are some who think otherwise.--G. BROWN.

[552] "Cùm vestieris te coccino, cùm ornata fueris monili aureo, et pinxeris stibio oculos tuos, frustra componêris."--Vulgate. "[Greek: Eàn peribálæ[i] kókkinon, kaì kosm'æsæ[i] kósmw[i] chrys~w[i]· eàn egchrísæ[i] stíbi toùs ophthalmoús sou eìs mátaion wraïsmós sou.]"--Septuagint. "Quoique tu te revêtes de pourpre, que tu te pares d'ornemens d'or, et que tu te peignes les yeux avec du fard, tu t'embellis en vain."--French Bible.

[553] The word "any" is here omitted, not merely because it is unnecessary, but because "every any other piece,"--with which a score of our grammarians have pleased themselves,--is not good English. The impropriety might perhaps be avoided, though less elegantly, by repeating the preposition, and saying,--"or of any other piece of writing."--G. BROWN.

[554] This correction, as well as the others which relate to what Murray says of the several forms of ellipsis, doubtless conveys the sense which he intended to express; but, as an assertion, it is by no means true of all the examples which he subjoins, neither indeed are the rest. But that is a fault of his which I cannot correct.--G. BROWN.

[555] The article may be repeated in examples like these, without producing impropriety; but then it will alter the construction of the adjectives, and render the expression more formal and emphatic, by suggesting a repetition of the noun.--G. BROWN.

[556] "The whole number of verbs in the English language, regular and irregular, simple and compounded, taken together, is about 4300."--Lowth's Gram., p. 59; Murray's, 12mo, p. 98; 8vo, p. 109; et al.

[557] In Singer's Shakspeare, Vol. ii, p. 495, this sentence is expressed and pointed thus: "O, shame! where is thy blush?"--Hamlet, Act III, Sc. 4. This is as if the speaker meant, "O! it is a shame! where is thy blush?" Such is not the sense above; for there "Shame" is the person addressed.

[558] If, in each of these sentences, the colon were substituted for the latter semicolon, the curves might well be spared. Lowth has a similar passage, which (bating a needful variation of guillemets) he pointed thus: "as ----, as; expressing a comparison of equality; 'as white as snow:' as ----, so; expressing a comparison sometimes of equality; 'as the stars, so shall thy seed be;' that is, equal in number: but" &c.--Lowth's Gram., p. 109. Murray, who broke this passage into paragraphs, retained at first these semicolons, but afterwards changed them all to colons. Of later grammarians, some retain the former colon in each sentence; some, the latter; and some, neither. Hiley points thus: "As requires as, expressing equality; as, 'He is as good as she.'"--Hiley's E. Gram., p. 107.

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