Part 4 — FOOTNOTES:

[1] Ben Jonson's notion of grammar, and of its parts, was as follows: "Grammar is the art of true and well-speaking a language: the writing is but an accident.

The Parts of Grammar are

Etymology \ which is / the true notation of words, Syntaxe / \ the right ordering of them.

A word is a part of speech or note, whereby a thing is known or called; and consisteth of one or more letters. A letter is an indivisible part of a syllable, whose prosody, or right sounding, is perceived by the power; the orthography, or right writing, by the form. Prosody, and Orthography, are not parts of grammar, but diffused, like blood and spirits, through the whole."—Jonson's Grammar, Book I.

[2] Horne Tooke eagerly seized upon a part of this absurdity, to prove that Dr. Lowth, from whom Murray derived the idea, was utterly unprepared for what he undertook in the character of a grammarian: "Dr. Lowth, when he undertook to write his Introduction, with the best intention in the world, most assuredly sinned against his better judgment. For he begins most judiciously, thus—'Universal grammar explains the principles which are common to all languages. The grammar of any particular language, applies those common principles to that particular language.' And yet, with this clear truth before his eyes, he boldly proceeds to give a particular grammar; without being himself possessed of one single principle of universal grammar."—Diversions of Purley, Vol. 1, p. 224. If Dr. Lowth discredited his better judgement in attempting to write an English grammar, perhaps Murray, and his weaker copyists, have little honoured theirs, in supposing they were adequate to such a work. But I do not admit, that either Lowth or Murray "begins most judiciously," in speaking of Universal and Particular grammar in the manner above cited. The authors who have started with this fundamental blunder, are strangely numerous. It is found in some of the most dissimilar systems that can be named. Even Oliver B. Peirce, who has a much lower opinion of Murray's ability in grammar than Tooke had of Lowth's, adopts this false notion with all implicitness, though he decks it in language more objectionable, and scorns to acknowledge whence he got it. See his Gram., p. 16. De Suey, in his Principles of General Grammar, says, "All rules of Syntax relate to two things, Agreement and Government."—Foxdick's Tr., p. 108. And again: "None of these rules properly belong to General Grammar, as each language follows, in regard to the rules of Agreement and Government, a course peculiar to itself."—Ibid., p. 109." "It is with Construction [i.e., Arrangement] as with Syntax. It follows no general rule common to all languages."—Ibid. According to these positions, which I do not admit to be strictly true, General or Universal Grammar has no principles of Syntax at all, whatever else it may have which Particular Grammar can assume and apply.

[3] This verb "do" is wrong, because "to be contemned" is passive.

[4] "A very good judge has left us his opinion and determination in this matter; that he 'would take for his rule in speaking, not what might happen to be the faulty caprice of the multitude, but the consent and agreement of learned men.'"—Creighton's Dict., p. 21. The "good judge" here spoken of, is Quintilian; whose words on the point are these: "Necessarium est judicium, constituendumque imprimis, id ipsum quid sit, quod consuetudinem vocemus. * * * In loquendo, non, si quid vitiose multis insederit, pro regula sermonis, amplendum est. * * * Ergo consuetudinem sermonis, vocabo consensum eruditorum sicut vivendi, consenum honorum."—De Inst. Orat., Lib. i. Cap. 6, p. 57.

[5] "The opinion of plenty is amongst the causes of want; and the great quantity of books maketh a show rather of superfluity than lack; which surcharge, nevertheless, is not to be removed by making no more books, but by making more good books, which, as the serpent of Moses, might devour the serpents of the enchanters."—Bacon. In point of style, his lordship is here deficient; and he has also mixed and marred the figure which he uses. But the idea is a good one.

[6] Not, "Oldham, in Hampshire," as the Universal Biographical Dictionary has it; for Oldham is in Lancashire, and the name of Lily's birthplace has sometimes been spelled "Odiam."

[7] There are other Latin grammars now in use in England; but what one is most popular, or whether any regard is still paid to the ancient edict or not, I cannot say. Dr. Adam, in his preface, dated 1793, speaking of Lily, says: "His Grammar was appointed, by an act which is still in force, to be taught in the established schools of England." I have somehow gained the impression, that the act is now totally disregarded.—G. Brown.

[8] For this there is an obvious reason, or apology, in what his biographer states, as "the humble origin of his Grammar;" and it is such a reason as will go to confirm what I allege. This famous compilation was produced at the request of two or three young teachers, who had charge of a small female school in the neighbourhood of the author's residence: and nothing could have been more unexpected to their friend and instructor, than that he, in consequence of this service, should become known the world over, as Murray the Grammarian. "In preparing the work, and consenting to the publicaton, he had no expectation that it would be read, except by the school for which it was designed, and two or three other schools conducted by persons who were also his friends."—Life of L Murray, p. 250.

[9] Grammatici namque auctoritas per se nulla est; quom ex sola doctissimorum oraturum, historicorum, poetarum, et aliorum ideonorum scriptorum observatione, constet ortam esse veram grammaticam. Multa dicenda forent, si grammatistarum ineptias refellere vellem: sed nulla est gloria præterire asellos."—DESPAUTERII Præf. Art. Versif., fol. iii, 1517.

[10] The Latin word for participle is participium, which makes participio in the dative or the ablative case; but the Latin word for partake is participo, and not "participio."—G. BROWN.

[11] This sentence is manifestly bad English: either the singular verb "appears" should be made plural, or the plural noun "investigations" should be made singular.—G. BROWN.

[12] "What! a book have no merit, and yet be called for at the rate of sixty thousand copies a year! What a slander is this upon the public taste! What an insult to the understanding and discrimination of the good people of these United States! According to this reasoning, all the inhabitants of our land must be fools, except one man, and that man is GOOLD BROWN!"—KIRKHAM, in the Knickerbocker, Oct. 1837, p. 361.

Well may the honest critic expect to be called a slanderer of "the public taste," and an insulter of the nation's "understanding," if both the merit of this vaunted book and the wisdom of its purchasers are to be measured and proved by the author's profits, or the publisher's account of sales! But, possibly, between the intrinsic merit and the market value of some books there may be a difference. Lord Byron, it is said, received from Murray his bookseller, nearly ten dollars a line for the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold, or about as much for every two lines as Milton obtained for the whole of Paradise Lost. Is this the true ratio of the merit of these authors, or of the wisdom of the different ages in which they lived?

[13] Kirkham's real opinion of Murray cannot be known from this passage only. How able is that writer who is chargeable with the greatest want of taste and discernment? "In regard to the application of the final pause in reading blank verse, nothing can betray a greater want of rhetorical taste and philosophical acumen, than the directions of Mr. Murray."—Kirkham's Elocution, p. 145. Kirkham is indeed no judge either of the merits, or of the demerits, of Murray's writings; nor is it probable that this criticism originated with himself. But, since it appears in his name, let him have the credit of it, and of representing the compiler whom he calls "that able writer" and "that eminent philologist," as an untasteful dunce, and a teacher of nonsense: "To say that, unless we 'make every line sensible to the ear,' we mar the melody, and suppress the numbers of the poet, is all nonsense."—Ibid. See Murray's Grammar, on "Poetical Pauses;" 8vo, p. 260; 12mo, 210.

[14] "Now, in these instances, I should be fair game, were it not for the trifling difference, that I happen to present the doctrines and notions of other writers, and NOT my own, as stated by my learned censor."—KIRKHAM, in the Knickerbocker, Oct. 1837, p. 360. If the instructions above cited are not his own, there is not, within the lids of either book, a penny's worth that is. His fruitful copy-rights are void in law: the "learned censor's" pledge shall guaranty this issue.—G. B. 1838.

[15] I am sorry to observe that the gentleman, Phrenologist, as he professes to be, has so little reverence in his crown. He could not read the foregoing suggestion without scoffing at it. Biblical truth is not powerless, though the scornful may refuse its correction.—G. B. 1838.

[16] Every schoolboy is familiar with the following lines, and rightly understands the words "evil" and "good" to be nouns, and not adjectives.

"The evil that men do, lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones."—SHAKSPEARE.

Julius Cæsar, Act 3: Antony's Funeral Oration over Cæsar's Body.

Kirkham has vehemently censured me for omitting the brackets in which he encloses the words that be supposes to be understood in this couplet. But he forgets two important circumstances: First, that I was quoting, not the bard, but the grammatist; Second, that a writer uses brackets, to distinguish his own amendments of what he quotes, and not those of an other man. Hence the marks which he has used, would have been improper for me. Their insertion does not make his reading of the passage good English, and, consequently, does not avert the point of my criticism.

The foregoing Review of Kirkham's Grammar, was published as an extract from my manuscript, by the editors of the Knickerbocker, in their number for June, 1837. Four months afterwards, with friendships changed, they gave, him the "justice" of appearing in their pages, in a long and virulent article against me and my works, representing me, "with emphatic force," as "a knave, a liar, and a pedant." The enmity of that effusion I forgave; because I bore him no personal ill-will, and was not selfish enough to quarrel for my own sake. Its imbecility clearly proved, that in this critique there is nothing with which he could justly find fault. Perceiving that no point of this argument could be broken, he changed the ground, and satisfied himself with despising, upbraiding, and vilifying the writer. Of what use this was, others may judge.

This extraordinary grammarian survived the publication of my criticism about ten years, and, it is charitably hoped, died happily; while I have had, for a period somewhat longer, all the benefits which his earnest "castigation" was fit to confer. It is not perceived, that what was written before these events, should now be altered or suppressed by reason of them. With his pretended "defence," I shall now concern myself no further than simply to deny one remarkable assertion contained in it; which is this—that I, Goold Brown, "at the funeral of Aaron Ely," in 1830, "praised, and highly praised, this self-same Grammar, and declared it to be 'A GOOD WORK!'"—KIRKHAM, in the Knickerbocker, Oct., 1837, p. 362. I treated him always courteously, and, on this solemn occasion, walked with him without disputing on grammar; but, if this statement of his has any reasonable foundation, I know not what it is.—G. B. in 1850.

[17] See Notes to Pope's Dunciad, Book II, verse 140.

[18] A modern namesake of the Doctor's, the Rev. David Blair, has the following conception of the utility of these speculations: "To enable children to comprehend the abstract idea that all the words in a language consist but of nine kinds, it will be found useful to explain how savage tribes WHO having no language, would first invent one, beginning with interjections and nouns, and proceeding from one part of speech to another, as their introduction might successively be called for by necessity or luxury."—Blair's Pract. Gram., Pref., p. vii.

[19] "Interjections, I shewed, or passionate exclamations, were the first elements of speech. Men laboured to communicate their feelings to one another, by those expressive cries and gestures which nature taught them."—Dr. Hugh Blair's Lectures, p. 57.

[20] "It is certain that the verb was invented before the noun, in all the languages of which a tolerable account has been procured, either in ancient or modern times."—Dr. Alex. Murray's History of European Languages, Vol. I, p. 326.

[21] The Greek of this passage, together with a translation not very different from the foregoing, is given as a marginal note, in Harris's Hermes, Book III, Chap. 3d.

[22] The Bible does not say positively that there was no diversity of languages before the flood; but, since the life-time of Adam extended fifty-six years into that of Lamech, the father of Noah, and two hundred and forty-three into that of Methuselah, the father of Lamech, with both of whom Noah was contemporary nearly six hundred years, it is scarcely possible that there should have occurred any such diversity, either in Noah's day or before, except from some extraordinary cause. Lord Bacon regarded the multiplication of languages at Babel as a general evil, which had had no parallel but in the curse pronounced after Adam's transgression. When "the language of all the earth" was "confounded," Noah was yet alive, and he is computed to have lived 162 years afterwards; but whether in his day, or at how early a period, "grammar" was thought of, as a remedy for this evil, does not appear. Bacon says, "Concerning speech and words, the consideration of them hath produced the science of grammar. For man still striveth to redintegrate himself in those benedictions, of which, by his fault, he hath been deprived; and as he hath striven against the first general curse by the invention of all other arts, so hath he striven to come forth from the second general curse, which was the confusion of tongues, by the art of grammar; whereof the use in a mother tongue is small, in a foreign tongue more, but most in such foreign tongues as have ceased to be vulgar tongues, and are turned only to learned tongues."—See English Journal of Education, Vol. viii, p. 444.

[23] It should be, "to all living creatures;" for each creature had, probably, but one name.—G. Brown.

[24] Some recent German authors of note suppose language to have sprung up among men of itself, like spontaneous combustion in oiled cotton; and seem to think, that people of strong feelings and acute minds must necessarily or naturally utter their conceptions by words—and even by words both spoken and written. Frederick Von Schlegel, admitting "the spontaneous origin of language generally," and referring speech to its "original source—a deep feeling, and a clear discriminating intelligence," adds: "The oldest system of writing developed itself at the same time, and in the same manner, as the spoken language; not wearing at first the symbolic form, which it subsequently assumed in compliance with the necessities of a less civilized people, but composed of certain signs, which, in accordance with the simplest elements of language, actually conveyed the sentiments of the race of men then existing."—Millington's Translation of Schlegel's Æsthetic Works, p. 455.

[25] "Modern Europe owes a principal share of its enlightened and moral state to the restoration of learning: the advantages which have accrued to history, religion, the philosophy of the mind, and the progress of society; the benefits which have resulted from the models of Greek and Roman taste—in short, all that a knowledge of the progress and attainments of man in past ages can bestow on the present, has reached it through the medium of philology."—Dr. Murray's History of European Languages, Vol. II, p. 335.

[26] "The idea of God is a development from within, and a matter of faith, not an induction from without, and a matter of proof. When Christianity has developed its correlative principles within us, then we find evidences of its truth everywhere; nature is full of them: but we cannot find them before, simply because we have no eye to find them with."—H. N. HUDSON: Democratic Review, May, 1845.

[27] So far as mind, soul, or spirit, is a subject of natural science, (under whatever name,) it may of course be known naturally. To say to what extent theology may be considered a natural science, or how much knowledge of any kind may have been opened to men otherwise than by words, is not now in point. Dr. Campbell says, "Under the general term [physiology] I also comprehend natural theology and psychology, which, in my opinion, have been most unnaturally disjoined by philosophers. Spirit, which here comprises only the Supreme Being and the human soul, is surely as much included under the notion of natural object as a body is, and is knowable to the philosopher purely in the same way, by observation and experience."—Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 66. It is quite unnecessary for the teacher of languages to lead his pupils into any speculations on this subject. It is equally foreign to the history of grammar and to the philosophy of rhetoric.

[28] "Except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air. There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification. Therefore, if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh, a barbarian; and he that speaketh, shall be a barbarian unto me."—1 Cor., xiv. 9, 10, 11. "It is impossible that our knowledge of words should outstrip our knowledge of things. It may, and often doth, come short of it. Words may be remembered as sounds, but [they] cannot be understood as signs, whilst we remain unacquainted with the things signified."—Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 160. "Words can excite only ideas already acquired, and if no previous ideas have been formed, they are mere unmeaning sounds."—Spurzheim on Education, p. 200.

[29] Sheridan the elecutionist makes this distinction: "All that passes in the mind of man, may be reduced to two classes, which I call ideas and emotions. By ideas, I mean all thoughts which rise, and pass in succession in the mind. By emotions, all exertions of the mind in arranging, combining, and separating its ideas; as well as the effects produced on all the mind itself by those ideas; from the more violent agitation of the passions, to the calmer feelings produced by the operation of the intellect and the fancy. In short, thought is the object of the one; internal feeling, of the other. That which serves to express the former, I call the language of ideas; and the latter, the language of emotions. Words are the signs of the one: tones, of the other. Without the use of these two sorts of language, it is impossible to communicate through the ear, all that passes in the mind of man."—Sheridan's Art of Reading; Blair's Lectures, p. 333.

[30] "Language is the great instrument, by which all the faculties of the mind are brought forward, moulded, polished, and exerted."—Sheridan's Elocution, p. xiv.

[31] It should be, "These are."—G. B.

[32] It should be, "They fitly represent."—G. B.

[33] This is badly expressed; for, according to his own deduction, each part has but one sign. It should be, "We express the several parts by as many several signs."—G. Brown.

[34] It would be better English to say, "the instruments and the signs."—G. Brown.

[35] "Good speakers do not pronounce above three syllables in a second of time; and generally only two and a half, taking in the necessary pauses."—Steele's Melody of Speech.

[36] The same idea is also conveyed in the following sentence from Dr. Campbell: "Whatever regards the analysis of the operations of the mind, which is quicker than lightning in all her energies, must in a great measure be abstruse and dark."—Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 289. Yet this philosopher has given it as his opinion, "that we really think by signs as well as speak by them."—Ib., p. 284. To reconcile these two positions with each other, we must suppose that thinking by signs, or words, is a process infinitely more rapid than speech.

[37] That generalization or abstraction which gives to similar things a common name, is certainly no laborious exercise of intellect; nor does any mind find difficulty in applying such a name to an individual by means of the article. The general sense and the particular are alike easy to the understanding, and I know not whether it is worth while to inquire which is first in order. Dr. Alexander Murray says, "It must be attentively remembered, that all terms run from a general to a particular sense. The work of abstraction, the ascent from individual feelings to classes of these, was finished before terms were invented. Man was silent till he had formed some ideas to communicate; and association of his perceptions soon led him to think and reason in ordinary matters."—Hist. of European Languages, Vol. I, p. 94. And, in a note upon this passage, he adds: "This is to be understood of primitive or radical terms. By the assertion that man was silent till he had formed ideas to communicate, is not meant, that any of our species were originally destitute of the natural expressions of feeling or thought. All that it implies, is, that man had been subjected, during an uncertain period of time, to the impressions made on his senses by the material world, before he began to express the natural varieties of these by articulated sounds. * * * * * * Though the abstraction which formed such classes, might be greatly aided or supported by the signs; yet it were absurd to suppose that the sign was invented, till the sense demanded it."—Ib., p. 399.

[38] Dr. Alexander Murray too, In accounting for the frequent abbreviation of words, seems to suggest the possibility of giving them the celerity of thought: "Contraction is a change which results from a propensity to make the signs as rapid as the thoughts which they express. Harsh combinations soon suffer contraction. Very long words preserve only the principal, that is, the accented part. If a nation accents its words on the last syllable, the preceding ones will often be short, and liable to contraction. If it follow a contrary practice, the terminations are apt to decay."—History of European Languages, Vol. I, p. 172.

[39] "We cannot form a distinct idea of any moral or intellectual quality, unless we find some trace of it in ourselves."—Beattie's Moral Science, Part Second, Natural Theology, Chap. II, No. 424.

[40] "Aristotle tells us that the world is a copy or transcript of those ideas which are in the mind of the first Being, and that those ideas which are in the mind of man, are a transcript of the world. To this we may add, that words are the transcripts of those ideas which are in the mind of man, and that writing or printing are [is] the transcript of words."—Addison, Spect., No. 166.

[41] Bolingbroke on Retirement and Study, Letters on History, p. 364.

[42] See this passage in "The Economy of Human Life," p. 105—a work feigned to be a compend of Chinese maxims, but now generally understood to have been written or compiled by Robert Dodsley, an eminent and ingenious bookseller in London.

[43] "Those philosophers whose ideas of being and knowledge are derived from body and sensation, have a short method to explain the nature of Truth.—It is a factitious thing, made by every man for himself; which comes and goes, just as it is remembered and forgot; which in the order of things makes its appearance the last of all, being not only subsequent to sensible objects, but even to our sensations of them! According to this hypothesis, there are many truths, which have been, and are no longer; others, that will be, and have not been yet; and multitudes, that possibly may never exist at all. But there are other reasoners, who must surely have had very different notions; those, I mean, who represent Truth not as the last, but as the first of beings; who call it immutable, eternal, omnipresent; attributes that all indicate something more than human."—Harris's Hermes, p. 403.

[44] Of the best method of teaching grammar, I shall discourse in an other chapter. That methods radically different must lend to different results, is no more than every intelligent person will suppose. The formation of just methods of instruction, or true systems of science, is work for those minds which are capable of the most accurate and comprehensive views of the things to be taught. He that is capable of "originating and producing" truth, or true "ideas," if any but the Divine Being is so, has surely no need to be trained into such truth by any factitious scheme of education. In all that he thus originates, he is himself a Novum Organon of knowledge, and capable of teaching others, especially those officious men who would help him with their second-hand authorship, and their paltry catechisms of common-places. I allude here to the fundamental principle of what in some books is called "The Productive System of Instruction," and to those schemes of grammar which are professedly founded on it. We are told that, "The leading principle of this system, is that which its name indicates—that the child should be regarded not as a mere recipient of the ideas of others, but as an agent capable of collecting, and originating, and producing most of the ideas which are necessary for its education, when presented with the objects or the facts from which they may be derived."—Smith's New Gram., Pref., p. 5: Amer. Journal of Education, New Series, Vol. I, No. 6, Art. 1. It ought to be enough for any teacher, or for any writer, if he finds his readers or his pupils ready recipients of the ideas which he aims to convey. What more they know, they can never owe to him, unless they learn it from him against his will; and what they happen to lack, of understanding or believing him, may very possibly be more his fault than theirs.

[45] Lindley Murray, anonymously copying somebody, I know not whom, says: "Words derive their meaning from the consent and practice of those who use them. There is no necessary connexion between words and ideas. The association between the sign and the thing signified, is purely arbitrary."—Octavo Gram., Vol. i, p. 139. The second assertion here made, is very far from being literally true. However arbitrary may be the use or application of words, their connexion with ideas is so necessary, that they cannot be words without it. Signification, as I shall hereafter prove, is a part of the very essence of a word, the most important element of its nature. And Murray himself says, "The understanding and language have a strict connexion."—Ib., Vol. i, p. 356. In this, he changes without amendment the words of Blair: "Logic and rhetoric have here, as in many other cases, a strict connexion."—Blair's Rhet., p. 120.

[46] "The language which is, at present, spoken throughout Great Britain, is neither the ancient primitive speech of the island, nor derived from it; but is altogether of foreign origin. The language of the first inhabitants of our island, beyond doubt, was the Celtic, or Gælic, common to them with Gaul; from which country, it appears, by many circumstances, that Great Britain was peopled. This Celtic tongue, which is said to be very expressive and copious, and is, probably, one of the most ancient languages in the world, obtained once in most of the western regions of Europe. It was the language of Gaul, of Great Britain, of Ireland, and very probably, of Spain also; till, in the course of those revolutions which by means of the conquests, first, of the Romans, and afterwards, of the northern nations, changed the government, speech, and, in a manner, the whole face of Europe, this tongue was gradually obliterated; and now subsists only in the mountains of Wales, in the Highlands of Scotland, and among the wild Irish. For the Irish, the Welsh, and the Erse, are no other than different dialects of the same tongue, the ancient Celtic."—Blair's Rhetoric, Lect. IX, p. 85.

[47] With some writers, the Celtic language is the Welsh; as may be seen by the following extract: "By this he requires an Impossibility, since much the greater Part of Mankind can by no means spare 10 or 11 Years of their Lives in learning those dead Languages, to arrive at a perfect Knowledge of their own. But by this Gentleman's way of Arguing, we ought not only to be Masters of Latin and Greek, but of Spanish, Italian, High- Dutch, Low-Dutch, French, the Old Saxon, Welsh, Runic, Gothic, and Islandic; since much the greater number of Words of common and general Use are derived from those Tongues. Nay, by the same way of Reasoning we may prove, that the Romans and Greeks did not understand their own Tongues, because they were not acquainted with the Welsh, or ancient Celtic, there being above 620 radical Greek Words derived from the Celtic, and of the Latin a much greater Number."—Preface to Brightland's Grammar, p. 5.

[48] The author of this specimen, through a solemn and sublime poem in ten books, generally simplified the preterit verb of the second person singular, by omitting the termination st or est, whenever his measure did not require the additional syllable. But his tuneless editors have, in many instances, taken the rude liberty both to spoil his versification, and to publish under his name what he did not write. They have given him bad prosody, or unutterable harshness of phraseology, for the sake of what they conceived to be grammar. So Kirkham, in copying the foregoing passage, alters it as he will; and alters it differently, when he happens to write some part of it twice: as,

"That morning, thou, that slumberedst not before, Nor slept, great Ocean! laidst thy waves at rest, And hushed thy mighty minstrelsy."—Kirkham's Elocution, p. 203.

Again:

"That morning, thou, that slumberedst not before, Nor sleptst, great Ocean, laidst thy waves at rest, And hush'dst thy mighty minstrelsy."—Kirkham's Elocution, p. 44.

[49] Camenes, the Muses, whom Horace called Camænæ. The former is an English plural from the latter, or from the Latin word camena, a muse or song. These lines are copied from Dr. Johnson's History of the English Language; their orthography is, in some respects, too modern for the age to which they are assigned.

[50] The Saxon characters being known nowadays to but very few readers, I have thought proper to substitute for them, in the latter specimens of this chapter, the Roman; and, as the old use of colons and periods for the smallest pauses, is liable to mislead a common observer, the punctuation too has here been modernized.

[51] Essay on Language, by William S. Cardell, New York, 1825, p. 2. This writer was a great admirer of Horne Tooke, from whom he borrowed many of his notions of grammar, but not this extravagance. Speaking of the words right and just, the latter says, "They are applicable only to man; to whom alone language belongs, and of whose sensations only words are the representatives."—Diversions of Purley, Vol. ii, p. 9.

[52] CARDELL: Both Grammars, p. 4.

[53] "Quoties dicimus, toties de nobis judicatur."—Cicero. "As often as we speak, so often are we judged."

[54] "Nor had he far to seek for the source of our impropriety in the use of words, when he should reflect that the study of our own language, has never been made a part of the education of our youth. Consequently, the use of words is got wholly by chance, according to the company that we keep, or the books that we read." SHERIDAN'S ELOCUTION, Introd., p. viii, dated "July 10, 1762," 2d Amer. Ed.

[55] "To Write and Speak correctly, gives a Grace, and gains a favourable Attention to what one has to say: And since 'tis English, that an English Gentleman will have constant use of, that is the Language he should chiefly Cultivate, and wherein most care should be taken to polish and perfect his Stile. To speak or write better Latin than English, may make a Man be talk'd of, but he would find it more to his purpose to Express himself well in his own Tongue, that he uses every moment, than to have the vain Commendation of others for a very insignificant quality. This I find universally neglected, and no care taken any where to improve Young Men in their own Language, that they may thoroughly understand and be Masters of it. If any one among us have a facility or purity more than ordinary in his Mother Tongue, it is owing to Chance, or his Genius, or any thing, rather than to his Education or any care of his Teacher. To Mind what English his Pupil speaks or writes is below the Dignity of one bred up amongst Greek and Latin, though he have but little of them himself. These are the learned Languages fit only for learned Men to meddle with and teach: English is the Language of the illiterate Vulgar."—Locke, on Education, p. 339; Fourth Ed., London, 1699.

[56] A late author, in apologizing for his choice in publishing a grammar without forms of praxis, (that is, without any provision for a stated application of its principles by the learner,) describes the whole business of Parsing as a "dry and uninteresting recapitulation of the disposal of a few parts of speech, and their often times told positions and influence;" urges "the unimportance of parsing, generally;" and represents it to be only "a finical and ostentatious parade of practical pedantry."—Wright's Philosophical Gram., pp. 224 and 226. It would be no great mistake to imagine, that this gentleman's system of grammar, applied in any way to practice, could not fail to come under this unflattering description; but, to entertain this notion of parsing in general, is as great an error, as that which some writers have adopted on the other hand, of making this exercise their sole process of inculcation, and supposing it may profitably supersede both the usual arrangement of the principles of grammar and the practice of explaining them by definitions. It is asserted in Parkhurst's "English Grammar for Beginners, on the Inductive Method of Instruction," that, "to teach the child a definition at the outset, is beginning at the wrong end;" that, "with respect to all that goes under the name of etymology in grammar, it is learned chiefly by practice in parsing, and scarcely at all by the aid of definitions."— Preface, pp. 5 and 6.

[57] Hesitation in speech may arise from very different causes. If we do not consider this, our efforts to remove it may make it worse. In most instances, however, it may be overcome by proper treatment, "Stammering," says a late author, "is occasioned by an over-effort to articulate; for when the mind of the speaker is so occupied with his subject as not to allow him to reflect upon his defect, he will talk without difficulty. All stammerers can sing, owing to the continuous sound, and the slight manner in which the consonants are touched in singing; so a drunken man can run, though he cannot walk or stand still."—Gardiner's Music of Nature, p. 30.

"To think rightly, is of knowledge; to speak fluently, is of nature; To read with profit, is of care; but to write aptly, is of practice." Book of Thoughts, p. 140.

[58] "There is nothing more becoming [to] a Gentleman, or more useful in all the occurrences of life, than to be able, on any occasion, to speak well, and to the purpose."—Locke, on Education, §171. "But yet, I think I may ask my reader, whether he doth not know a great many, who live upon their estates, and so, with the name, should have the qualities of Gentlemen, who cannot so much as tell a story as they should; much less speak clearly and persuasively in any business. This I think not to be so much their fault, as the fault of their education.—They have been taught Rhetoric, but yet never taught how to express themselves handsomely with their tongues or pens in the language they are always to use; as if the names of the figures that embellish the discourses of those who understood the art of speaking, were the very art and skill of speaking well. This, as all other things of practice, is to be learned, not by a few, or a great many rules given; but by EXERCISE and APPLICATION according to GOOD RULES, or rather PATTERNS, till habits are got, and a facility of doing it well."—Ib., §189. The forms of parsing and correcting which the following work supplies, are "patterns," for the performance of these practical "exercises;" and such patterns as ought to be implicitly followed, by every one who means to be a ready and correct speaker on these subjects.

[59] The principal claimants of "the Inductive Method" of Grammar, are Richard W. Green, Roswell C. Smith, John L. Parkhurst, Dyor H. Sanborn, Bradford Frazee, and, Solomon Barrett, Jr.; a set of writers, differing indeed in their qualifications, but in general not a little deficient in what constitutes an accurate grammarian.

[60] William C. Woodbridge edited the Journal, and probably wrote the article, from which the author of "English Grammar on the Productive System" took his "Preface."

[61] Many other grammars, later than Murray's, have been published, some in England, some in America, and some in both countries; and among these there are, I think, a few in which a little improvement has been made, in the methods prescribed for the exercises of parsing and correcting. In most, however, nothing of the kind has been attempted. And, of the formularies which have been given, the best that I have seen, are still miserably defective, and worthy of all the censure that is expressed in the paragraph above; while others, that appear in works not entirely destitute of merit, are absolutely much worse than Murray's, and worthy to condemn to a speedy oblivion the books in which they are printed. In lieu of forms of expression, clear, orderly, accurate, and full; such as a young parser might profitably imitate; such as an experienced one would be sure to approve; what have we? A chaos of half-formed sentences, for the ignorant pupil to flounder in; an infinite abyss of blunders, which a world of criticism could not fully expose! See, for example, the seven pages of parsing, in the neat little book entitled, "A Practical Grammar of the English Language, by the Rev. David Blair: Seventh Edition: London, 1815:" pp. 49 to 57. I cannot consent to quote more than one short paragraph of the miserable jumble which these pages contain. Yet the author is evidently a man of learning, and capable of writing well on some subjects, if not on this. "Bless the Lord, O my soul!" Form: "Bless, a verb, (repeat 97); active (repeat 99); active voice (102); infinitive mood (107); third person, soul being the nominative (118); present tense (111); conjugate the verb after the pattern (129); its object is Lord (99)."—Blair's Gram., p. 50. Of the paragraphs referred to, I must take some notice: "107. The imperative mood commands or orders or intreats."—Ib., p. 19. "118. The second person is always the pronoun thou or you in the singular, and ye or you in the plural."—Ib., p. 21. "111. The imperative mood has no distinction of tense: and the infinitive has no distinction of persons."—Ib., p. 20. Now the author should have said: "Bless is a redundant active-transitive verb, from bless, blessed or blest, blessing, blessed or blest; found in the imperative mood, present tense, second person, and singular number:" and, if he meant to parse the word syntactically, he should have added: "and agrees with its nominative thou understood; according to the rule which says, 'Every finite verb must agree with its subject or nominative, in person and number.' Because the meaning is—Bless thou the Lord." This is the whole story. But, in the form above, several things are false; many, superfluous; some, deficient; several, misplaced; nothing, right. Not much better are the models furnished by Kirkham, Smith, Lennie, Bullions, and other late authors.

[62] Of Dr. Bullions's forms of parsing, as exhibited in his English Grammar, which is a modification of Lennie's Grammar, it is difficult to say, whether they are most remarkable for their deficiencies, their redundancies, or their contrariety to other teachings of the same author or authors. Both Lennie and Bullions adopt the rule, that, "An ellipsis is not allowable when it would obscure the sentence, weaken its force, or be attended with an impropriety."—L., p. 91; B., p. 130. And the latter strengthens this doctrine with several additional observations, the first of which reads thus: "In general, no word should be omitted that is necessary to the full and correct construction, or even harmony of a sentence."—Bullions, E. Gr., 130. Now the parsing above alluded to, has been thought particularly commendable for its brevity—a quality certainly desirable, so far as it consists with the end of parsing, or with the more needful properties of a good style, clearness, accuracy, ease, and elegance. But, if the foregoing rule and observation are true, the models furnished by these writers are not commendably brief, but miserably defective. Their brevity is, in fact, such as renders them all bad English; and not only so, it makes them obviously inadequate to their purpose, as bringing into use but a part of the principles which the learner had studied. It consists only in the omission of what ought to have been inserted. For example, this short line, "I lean upon the Lord," is parsed by both of these gentlemen thus: "I, the first personal pronoun, masculine, or feminine, singular, the nominative—lean, a verb, neuter, first person singular, present, indicative—upon, a preposition—the, an article, the definite—Lord, a noun, masculine, singular, the objective, (governed by upon.)"—Lennie's Principles of English Gram., p. 51; Bullions's, 74. This is a little sample of their etymological parsing, in which exercise they generally omit not only all the definitions or "reasons" of the various terms applied, but also all the following particulars: first, the verb is, and certain definitives and connectives, which are "necessary to the full and correct construction" of their sentences; secondly, the distinction of nouns as proper or common; thirdly, the person of nouns, first, second, or third; fourthly, the words, number, gender, and case, which are necessary to the sense and construction of certain words used; fifthly, the distinction of adjectives as belonging to different classes; sixthly, the division of verbs as being regular or irregular, redundant or defective; seventhly, sometimes, (Lennie excepted,) the division of verbs as active, passive, or neuter; eighthly, the words mood and tense, which Bullions, on page 131, pronounces "quite unnecessary," and inserts in his own formule on page 132; ninthly, the distinction of adverbs as expressing time, place, degree, or manner; tenthly, the distinction of conjunctions as copulative or disjunctive; lastly, the distinction of interjections as indicating different emotions. All these things does their completest specimen of etymological parsing lack, while it is grossly encumbered with parentheses of syntax, which "must be omitted till the pupil get the rules of syntax."—Lennie, p. 51. It is also vitiated with several absurdities, contradictions, and improper changes of expression: as, "His, the third personal pronoun;" (B., p. 23;)—"me, the first personal pronoun;" (Id., 74;)—"A, The indefinite article;" (Id., 73;)—"a, an article, the indefinite;" (Id., 74;)—"When the verb is passive, parse thus: 'A verb active, in the passive voice, regular, irregular,' &c."—Bullions, p. 131. In stead of teaching sufficiently, as elements of etymological parsing, the definitions which belong to this exercise, and then dismissing them for the principles of syntax, Dr. Bullions encumbers his method of syntactical parsing with such a series of etymological questions and answers as cannot but make it one of the slowest, longest, and most tiresome ever invented. He thinks that the pupil, after parsing any word syntactically, "should be requested to assign a reason for every thing contained in his statement!"—Principles of E. Grammar, p. 131. And the teacher is to ask questions as numerous as the reasons! Such is the parsing of a text-book which has been pronounced "superior to any other, for use in our common schools"—"a complete grammar of the language, and available for every purpose for which Mr. Brown's can possibly be used."—Ralph K. Finch's Report, p, 12.

[63] There are many other critics, besides Murray and Alger, who seem not to have observed the import of after and before in connexion with the tenses. Dr. Bullions, on page 139th of his English Grammar, copied the foregoing example from Lennie, who took it from Murray. Even Richard Hiley, and William Harvey Wells, grammarians of more than ordinary tact, have been obviously misled by the false criticism above cited. One of Hiley's Rules of Syntax, with its illustration, stands thus: "In the use of the different tenses, we must particularly observe to use that tense which clearly and properly conveys the sense intended; thus, instead of saying, 'After I visited Europe, I returned to America;' we should say, 'After I had visited Europe, I returned to America."—Hiley's Gram., p. 90. Upon this he thought it needful to comment thus: "'After I visited Europe, I returned to America;' this sentence is incorrect; visited ought to be had visited, because the action implied by the verb visited WAS COMPLETED before the other past action returned."—Ib., p. 91. See nearly the same thing in Wells's School Grammar, 1st Edition, p. 151; but his later editions are wisely altered. Since "visited and was completed" are of the same tense, the argument from the latter, if it proves any thing, proves the former to be right, and the proposed change needless, or perhaps worse than needless. "I visited Europe before I returned to America," or, "I visited Europe, and afterwards returned to America," is good English, and not to be improved by any change of tense; yet here too we see the visiting "was completed before" the return, or HAD BEEN COMPLETED at the time of the return. I say, "The Pluperfect Tense is that which expresses what had taken place at some past time mentioned: as, 'I had seen him, when I met you.'" Murray says, "The Pluperfect Tense represents a thing not only as past, but also as prior to some other point of time specified in the sentence: as, I had finished my letter before he arrived." Hiley says, "The Past-Perfect expresses an action or event which was past before some other past action or event mentioned in the sentence, and to which it refers; as, I had finished my lessons before he came." With this, Wells appears to concur, his example being similar. It seems to me, that these last two definitions, and their example too, are bad; because by the help of before or after, "the past before the past" may be clearly expressed by the simple past tense: as, "I finished my letter before he arrived."—"I finished my lessons before he came." "He arrived soon after I finished the letter."—"Soon after it was completed, he came in."

[64] Samuel Kirkham, whose grammar is briefly described in the third chapter of this introduction, boldly lays the blame of all his philological faults, upon our noble language itself; and even conceives, that a well-written and faultless grammar cannot be a good one, because it will not accord with that reasonless jumble which he takes every existing language to be! How diligently he laboured to perfect his work, and with what zeal for truth and accuracy, may be guessed from the following citation: "The truth is, after all which can be done to render the definitions and rules of grammar comprehensive and accurate, they will still be found, when critically examined by men of learning and science, more or less exceptionable. These exceptions and imperfections are the unavoidable consequence of the imperfections of the language. Language as well as every thing else of human invention, will always be imperfect. Consequently, a perfect system of grammatical principles, would not suit it. A perfect grammar will not be produced, until some perfect being writes it for a perfect language; and a perfect language will not be constructed, until some super-human agency is employed in its production. All grammatical principles and systems which are not perfect are exceptionable."—Kirkham's Grammar, p. 66. The unplausible sophistry of these strange remarks, and the palliation they afford to the multitudinous defects of the book which contains them, may be left, without further comment, to the judgement of the reader.

[65] The phrase complex ideas, or compound ideas, has been used for the notions which we have of things consisting of different parts, or having various properties, so as to embrace some sort of plurality: thus our ideas of all bodies and classes of things are said to be complex or compound. Simple ideas are those in which the mind discovers no parts or plurality: such are the ideas of heat, cold, blueness, redness, pleasure, pain, volition, &c. But some writers have contended, that the composition of ideas is a fiction; and that all the complexity, in any case, consists only in the use of a general term in lieu of many particular ones. Locke is on one side of this debate, Horne Tooke, on the other.

[66] Dilworth appears to have had a true idea of the thing, but he does not express it as a definition; "Q. Is an Unit of one, a Number? A. An Unit is a number, because it may properly answer the question how many!"—Schoolmaster's Assistant, p. 2. A number in arithmetic, and a number in grammar, are totally different things. The plural number, as men or horses, does not tell how many; nor does the word singular mean one, as the author of a recent grammar says it does. The plural number is one number, but it is not the singular. "The Productive System" teaches thus: "What does the word singular mean? It means one."—Smith's New Gram., p. 7.

[67] It is truly astonishing that so great a majority of our grammarians could have been so blindly misled, as they have been, in this matter; and the more so, because a very good definition of a Letter was both published and republished, about the time at which Lowth's first appeared: viz., "What is a letter? A Letter is the Sign, Mark, or Character of a simple or uncompounded Sound. Are Letters Sounds? No. Letters are only the Signs or Symbols of Sounds, not the Sounds themselves."—The British Grammar, p. 3. See the very same words on the second page of Buchanan's "English Syntax," a work which was published as early as 1767.

[68] In Murray's octavo Grammar, this word is the in the first chapter, and their in the second; in the duodecimo, it is their in both places.

[69] "The definitions and the rules throughout the Grammar, are expressed with neatness and perspicuity. They are as short and comprehensive as the nature of the subject would admit: and they are well adapted both to the understanding and the memory of young persons."—Life of L. Murray, p. 245. "It may truly be said that the language in every part of the work, is simple, correct, and perspicuous."—Ib., p. 246.

[70] For this definition, see Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 40; Duodecimo, 41; Smaller Gram., 18; Alger's, 18; Bacon's, 15; Frost's, 8, Ingersoll's, 17; A Teacher's, 8; Maltby's, 14; T. H. Miller's, 20; Pond's, 18; S. Putnam's, 15; Russell's, 11; Merchant's Murray, 25; and Worcester's Univ. and Crit. Dictionary. Many other grammarians have attempted to define number; with what success a few examples will show: (1.) "Number is the distinction of one from many."—W. Allen's Gram., p. 40; Merchant's School Gram., 28; Greenleaf's, 22; Nutting's, 17; Picket's, 19; D. Adams's, 31. (2.) "Number is the distinction of one from more."—Fisher's Gram., 51; Alden's, 7. (3.) "Number is the distinction of one from several or many."—Coar's Gram., p. 24. (4.) "Number is the distinction of one from more than one."—Sanborn's Gram., p. 24; J. Flint's, 27; Wells's, 52. (5.) "Number is the distinction of one from more than one, or many."—Grant's Latin Gram., p. 7. (6.) "What is number? Number is the Distinction of one, from two, or many."—British Gram., p. 89; Buchanan's, 16. (7.) "You inquire, 'What is number?' Merely this: the distinction of one from two, or many. Greek substantives have three numbers."—Bucke's Classical Gram., p. 38. All these authors say, that, in English, "there are two numbers, the singular and the plural." According to their explanations, then, we have two "distinctions of one from two, several, more, or many;" and the Greeks, by adding a dual number, have three! Which, then, of the two or three modifications or forms, do they mean, when they say, "Number is the distinction" &c.? Or, if none of them, what else is meant? All these definitions had their origin in an old Latin one, which, although it is somewhat better, makes doubtful logic in its application: "NUMERUS est, unius et multorum distinctio. Numeri igitur sunt duo; Singularis et Pluralis."— Ruddiman's Gram., p. 21. This means: (8.) "Number is a distinction of one and many. The numbers therefore are two; the Singular and the Plural." But we have yet other examples: as, (9.) "Number is the distinction of objects, as one or more."—Kirkham's Gram., p. 39. "The distinction of objects as one," is very much like "the consideration of an object as more than one." (10.) "Number distinguishes objects as one or more."—Cooper's Murray, p. 21; Practical Gram., p. 18. That is, number makes the plural to be either plural or singular for distinction's sake! (11.) "Number is the distinction of nouns with regard to the objects signified, as one or more."—Fisk's Murray, p. 19. Here, too, number has "regard" to the same confusion: while, by a gross error, its "distinction" is confined to "nouns" only! (12.) "Number is that property of a noun by which it expresses one or more than one."—Bullions's E. Gram., p. 12; Analyt. Gram., 25. Here again number is improperly limited to "a noun;" and is said to be one sign of two, or either of two, incompatible ideas! (13.) "Number shows how many are meant, whether one or more."—Smith's new Gram., p. 45. This is not a definition, but a false assertion, in which Smith again confounds arithmetic with grammar! Wheat and oats are of different numbers; but neither of these numbers "means a sum that may be counted," or really "shows how many are meant." So of "Man in general, Horses in general, &c."—Brightland's Gram., p. 77. (14.) "Number is the difference in a noun or pronoun, to denote either a single thing or more than one."—Davenport's Gram., p. 14. This excludes the numbers of a verb, and makes the singular and the plural to be essentially one thing. (15.) "Number is a modification of nouns and verbs, &c. according as the thing spoken of is represented, as, one or more, with regard to number."—Burn's Gram., p. 32. This also has many faults, which I leave to the discernment of the reader. (16.) "What is number? Number shows the distinction of one from many."—Wilcox's Gram., p. 6. This is no answer to the question asked; besides, it is obviously worse than the first form, which has "is," for "shows." (17.) "What is Number? It is the representation of objects with respect to singleness, or plurality." —O. B. Peirce's Gram., p. 34. If there are two numbers, they are neither of them properly described in this definition, or in any of the preceding ones. There is a gross misconception, in taking each or either of them to be an alternate representation of two incompatible ideas. And this sort of error is far from being confined to the present subject; it runs through a vast number of the various definitions contained in our grammars. (18.) "Number is the inflection of a noun, to indicate one object or more than one. Or, Number is the expression of unity or of more than unity."—Hiley's Gram., p. 14. How hard this author laboured to think what number is, and could not! (19.) "Number is the distinction of unity and plurality."—Hart's E. Gram., p. 40, Why say, "distinction;" the numbers, or distinctions, being two? (20.) "Number is the capacity of nouns to represent either one or more than one object."—Barrett's Revised Gram., p. 40. (21.) "Number is a property of the noun which denotes one or more than one."—Weld's Gram., 2d Ed., p. 55. (22.) "Number is a property of the noun or pronoun [,] by which it denotes one, or more than one."—Weld's Gram., Abridged Ed., p. 49. (23.) "Number is the property that distinguishes one from more than one."—Weld's Gram., Improved Ed., p. 60. This, of course, excludes the plural. (24.) "Number is a modification of nouns to denote whether one object is meant, or more than one."—Butler's Gram., p. 19. (25.) "Number is that modification of the Noun which distinguishes one from more than one."—Spencer's Gram., p. 26. Now, it is plain, that not one of these twenty-five definitions comports with the idea that the singular is one number and the plural an other! Not one of them exhibits any tolerable approach to accuracy, either of thought or of expression! Many of the grammarians have not attempted any definition of number, or of the numbers, though they speak of both the singular and the plural, and perhaps sometimes apply the term number to the distinction which is in each: for it is the property of the singular number, to distinguish unity from plurality: and of the plural, to distinguish plurality from unity. Among the authors who are thus silent, are Lily, Colet, Brightland, Harris, Lowth, Ash, Priestly, Bicknell, Adam, Gould, Harrison, Comly, Jaudon, Webster, Webber, Churchill, Staniford, Lennie, Dalton, Blair, Cobbett, Cobb, A. Flint, Felch, Guy, Hall, and S. W. Clark. Adam and Gould, however, in explaining the properties of verbs, say: "Number marks how many we suppose to be, to act, or to suffer."—A., 80; G., 78.

[71] These are the parts of speech in some late grammars; as, Barrett's, of 1854, Butler's, Covell's, Day's, Frazee's, Fowle's New, Spear's, Weld's, Wells's, and the Well-wishers'. In Frost's Practical Grammar, the words of the language are said to be "divided into eight classes," and the names are given thus: "Noun, Article, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction, and Interjection."—P. 29. But the author afterwards treats of the Adjective, between the Article and the Pronoun, just as if he had forgotten to name it, and could not count nine with accuracy! In Perley's Grammar, the parts of speech are a different eight: namely, "Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs, Adverbs, Prepositions, Conjunctions, Interjections, and Particles!"—P. 8. S. W. Clark has Priestley's classes, but calls Interjections "Exclamations."

[72] Felton, who is confessedly a modifier of Murray, claims as a merit, "the rejection of several useless parts of speech" yet acknowledges "nine," and treats of ten; "viz., Nouns, Pronouns, Verbs, Participles, Prepositions, Adjectives, [Articles,] Adverbs, Conjunctions, Exclamations."—O. C. Felton's Gram. p. 5, and p. 9.

[73] Quintilian is at fault here; for, in some of his writings, if not generally, Aristotle recognized four parts of speech; namely, verbs, nouns, conjunctions, and articles. See Aristot. de Poetica, Cap. xx.

[74] "As there are ten different characters or figures in arithmetic to represent all possible quantities, there are also ten kinds of words or parts of speech to represent all possible sentences: viz.: article, noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, participle, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection."—Chauvier's Punctuation, p. 104.

[75] The Friend, 1829, Vol. ii, p. 117.

[76] The Friend, Vol. ii, p. 105.

[77] See the Preface to my Compendious English Grammar in the American editions of the Treasury of Knowledge, Vol. i, p. 8.

[78] Some say that Brightland himself was the writer of this grammar; but to suppose him the sole author, hardly comports with its dedication to the Queen, by her "most Obedient and Dutiful Subjects, the Authors;" or with the manner in which these are spoken of, in the following lines, by the laureate:

"Then say what Thanks, what Praises must attend The Gen'rous Wits, who thus could condescend! Skill, that to Art's sublimest Orb can reach, Employ'd its humble Elements to Teach! Yet worthily Esteem'd, because we know To raise Their Country's Fame they stoop'd so low."—TATE.

[79] Dr. Campbell, in his Philosophy of Rhetoric, page 158th, makes a difficulty respecting the meaning of this passage: cites it as an instance of the misapplication of the term grammar; and supposes the writer's notion of the thing to have been, "of grammar in the abstract, an universal archetype by which the particular grammars of all different tongues ought to be regulated." And adds, "If this was his meaning, I cannot say whether he is in the right or in the wrong, in this accusation. I acknowledge myself to be entirely ignorant of this ideal grammar." It would be more fair to suppose that Dr. Swift meant by "grammar" the rules and principles according to which the English language ought to be spoken and written; and, (as I shall hereafter show,) it is no great hyperbole to affirm, that every part of the code—nay, well-nigh every one of these rules and principles—is, in many instances, violated, if not by what may be called the language itself, at least by those speakers and writers who are under the strongest obligations to know and observe its true use.

[80] The phrase "of any" is here erroneous. These words ought to have been omitted; or the author should have said—"the least valuable of all his productions."

[81] This word latter should have been last; for three works are here spoken of.

[82] With this opinion concurred the learned James White, author of a Grammatical Essay on the English Verb, an octavo volume of more than three hundred pages, published in London in 1761. This author says, "Our Essays towards forming an English Grammar, have not been very many: from the reign of Queen Elizabeth, to that of Queen Ann, there are but Two that the author of the Present knows of: one in English by the renown'd Ben Jonson, and one in Latin by the learn'd Dr. Wallis. In the reign of Queen Ann indeed, there seems to have arisen a noble Spirit of ingenious Emulation in this Literary way: and to this we owe the treatises compos'd at that period for the use of schools, by Brightland, Greenwood, and Maittaire. But, since that time, nothing hath appear'd, that hath come to this Essayist's knowledge, deserving to be taken any notice of as tending to illustrate our Language by ascertaining the Grammar of it; except Anselm Bayly's Introduction to Languages, Johnson's Grammar prefix'd to the Abridgement of his Dictionary, and the late Dr. Ward's Essays upon the English Language.—These are all the Treatises he hath met with, relative to this subject; all which he hath perus'd very attentively, and made the best use of them in his power. But notwithstanding all these aids, something still remains to be done, at least it so appears to him, preparatory to attempting with success the Grammar of our Language. All our efforts of this kind seem to have been render'd ineffectual hitherto, chiefly by the prevaliency of two false notions: one of which is, that our Verbs have no Moods; and the other, that our Language hath no Syntax."—White's English Verb, p. viii.

[83] A similar doctrine, however, is taught by no less an author than "the Rev. Alexander Crombie, LL. D.," who says, in the first paragraph of his introduction, "LANGUAGE consists of intelligible signs, and is the medium, by which the mind communicates its thoughts. It is either articulate, or inarticulate; artificial, or natural. The former is peculiar to man; the latter is common to all animals. By inarticulate language, we mean those instinctive cries, by which the several tribes of inferior creatures are enabled to express their sensations and desires. By articulate language is understood a system of expression, composed of simple sounds, differently modified by the organs of speech, and variously combined."—Treatise on the Etymology and Syntax of the English Language, p. 1. See the same doctrine also in Hiley's Gram., p. 141. The language which "is common to all animals," can be no other than that in which Æsop's wolves and weasels, goats and grasshoppers, talked—a language quite too unreal for grammar. On the other hand, that which is composed of sounds only, and not of letters, includes but a mere fraction of the science.

[84] The pronoun whom is not properly applicable to beasts, unless they are personified: the relative which would therefore, perhaps, have been preferable here, though whom has a better sound.—G. B.

[85] "The great difference between men and brutes, in the utterance of sound by the mouth, consists in the power of articulation in man, and the entire want of it in brutes."—Webster's Improved Gram., p. 8.

[86] Strictly speaking, an articulate sound is not a simple element of speech, but rather a complex one, whether syllable or word; for articulate literally means jointed. But our grammarians in general, have applied the term to the sound of a letter, a syllable, or a word, indiscriminately: for which reason, it seems not very suitable to be used alone in describing any of the three. Sheridan says, "The essence of a syllable consists in articulation only, for every articulate sound of course forms a syllable."—Lectures on Elocution, p. 62. If he is right in this, not many of our letters—or, perhaps more properly, none of them—can singly represent articulate sounds. The looseness of this term induces me to add or prefer an other. "The Rev. W. Allen," who comes as near as any of our grammarians, to the true definition of a letter, says: 1. "The sounds used in language are called articulate sounds." 2. "A letter is a character used in printing or writing, to represent an articulate sound."—Allen's Elements of E. Gram., p. 2. Dr. Adam says: 1. "A letter is the mark of a sound, or of an articulation of sound." 2. "A vowel is properly called a simple sound; and the sounds formed by the concourse of vowels and consonants, articulate sounds."—Latin and English Gram., pp. 1 and 2.

[87] Of this sort of blunder, the following false definition is an instance: "A Vowel is a letter, the name of which makes a full open sound."—Lennie's Gram., p. 5; Brace's, 7; Hazen's, 10. All this is just as true of a consonant as of a vowel. The comma too, used in this sentence, defeats even the sense which the writers intended. It is surely no description either of a vowel or of a consonant, to say, that it is a letter, and that the name of a letter makes a full open sound. Again, a late grammarian teaches, that the names of all the letters are nothing but Roman capitals, and then seems to inquire which of these names are vowels, thus: "Q. How many letters are in the alphabet? A. Twenty-six. Q. What are their names? A. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z. Q. Which of these are called Vowels?"—Fowle's Common School Gram., Part First, p. 7. If my worthy friend Fowle had known or considered what are the names of the letters in English, he might have made a better beginning to his grammar than this.

[88] By the colloquial phrase, "to a Tee" we mean, "to a nicety, to a tittle, a jot, an iota. Had the British poet Cawthorn, himself a noted schoolmaster, known how to write the name of "T," he would probably have preferred it in the following couplet:

"And swore by Varro's shade that he Conceived the medal to a T."—British Poets, Vol. VII, p. 65.

Here the name would certainly be much fitter than the letter, because the text does not in reality speak of the letter. With the names of the Greek letters, the author was better acquainted; the same poem exhibits two of them, where the characters themselves are spoken of:

"My eye can trace divinely true, In this dark curve a little Mu; And here, you see, there seems to lie The ruins of a Doric Xi."—Ibidem.

The critical reader will see that "seems" should be seem, to agree with its nominative "ruins."

[89] Lily, reckoning without the H, J, or V, speaks of the Latin letters as "twenty-two;" but says nothing concerning their names. Ruddiman, Adam, Grant, Gould, and others, who include the H, J, and V, rightly state the number to be "twenty-five;" but, concerning their names, are likewise entirely silent. Andrews and Stoddard, not admitting the K, teach thus: "The letters of the Latin language are twenty-four. They have the same names as the corresponding characters in English."—Andrews and Stoddard's Latin Gram., p. 1. A later author speaks thus: "The Latin Alphabet consists of twenty-five letters, the same in name and form as the English, but without the w."—Bullions's Latin Gram., p. 1. It would probably be nearer to the truth, to say, "The Latin Alphabet, like the French, has no W; it consists of twenty-five letters, which are the same in name and form as the French." Will it be pretended that the French names and the English do not differ?

[90] The Scotch Iz and the Craven Izzet, if still in use anywhere, are names strictly local, not properly English, nor likely to spread. "IZZET, the letter Z. This is probably the corruption of izzard, the old and common name for the letter, though I know not, says Nares, on what authority."—Glossary of Craven, w. Izzet. "Z z, zed, more commonly called izzard or uzzard, that is, s hard."—Dr. Johnson's Gram., p. 1.

"And how she sooth'd me when with study sad I labour'd on to reach the final Zad."—Crabbe's Borough, p. 228.

[91] William Bolles, in his new Dictionary, says of the letter Z: "Its sound is uniformly that of a hard S." The name, however, he pronounces as I do; though he writes it not Zee but zé; giving not the orthography of the name, as he should have done, but a mere index of its pronunciation. Walker proves by citations from Professor Ward and Dr. Wallis, that these authors considered the sharp or hissing sound of s the "hard" sound; and the flat sound, like that of z, its "soft" sound. See his Dictionary, 8vo, p. 53.

[92] Dr. Webster died in 1843. Most of this work was written while he was yet in vigour.

[93] This old definition John L. Parkhurst disputes:—says it "is ambiguous;"—questions whether it means, "that the name of such a letter, or the simple sound," requires a vowel! "If the latter," says he, "the assertion is false. The simple sounds, represented by the consonants, can be uttered separately, distinctly, and perfectly. It can be done with the utmost ease, even by a little child."—Parkhurst's Inductive Gram. for Beginners, p. 164. He must be one of these modern philosophers who delight to make mouths of these voiceless elements, to show how much may be done without sound from the larynx.

[94] This test of what is, or is not, a vowel sound or a consonant sound, is often appealed to, and is generally admitted to be a just one. Errors in the application of an or a are not unfrequent, but they do not affect the argument. It cannot be denied, that it is proper to use a, and not proper to use an, before the initial sound of w or y with a vowel following. And this rule holds good, whether the sound be expressed by these particular letters, or by others; as in the phrases, "a wonder, a one, a yew, a use, a ewer, a humour, a yielding temper." But I have heard it contended, that these are vowel sounds, notwithstanding they require a; and that the w and y are always vowels, because even a vowel sound (it was said) requires a and not an, whenever an other vowel sound immediately follows it. Of this notion, the following examples are a sufficient refutation: an aëronaut, an aërial tour, an oeiliad, an eyewink, an eyas, an iambus, an oäsis, an o'ersight, an oil, an oyster, an owl, an ounce. The initial sound of yielding requires a, and not an; but those who call the y a vowel, say, it is equivalent to the unaccented long e. This does not seem to me to be exactly true; because the latter sound requires an, and not a; as, "Athens, as well as Thebes, had an Eëtion."

[95] Dr. Rush, in his Philosophy of the Human Voice, has exhibited some acuteness of observation, and has written with commendable originality. But his accuracy is certainly not greater than his confidence. On page 57th, he says, "The m, n, and ng, are purely nasal;" on page 401st, "Some of the tonic elements, and one of the subtonics, are made by the assistance of the lips; they are o-we, oo-ze, ou-r, and m." Of the intrinsic value of his work, I am not prepared or inclined to offer any opinion; I criticise him only so far as he strikes at grammatical principles long established, and worthy still to be maintained.

[96] Dr. Comstock, by ¸enumerating as elementary the sound of the diphthong ou, as in our, and the complex power of wh, as in what, (which sounds ought not to be so reckoned,) makes the whole number of vocal elements in English to be "thirty-eight." See Comstock's Elocution, p. 19.

[97] This word is commonly heard in two syllables, yune'yun; but if Walker is right in making it three, yu'ne-un, the sound of y consonant is heard in it but once. Worcester's notation is "y=un'yun." The long sound of u is yu; hence Walker calls the letter, when thus sounded, a "semi-consonant diphthong."

[98] Children ought to be accustomed to speak loud, and to pronounce all possible sounds and articulations, even those of such foreign languages as they will be obliged to learn; for almost every language has its particular sounds which we pronounce with difficulty, if we have not been early accustomed to them. Accordingly, nations who have the greatest number of sounds in their speech, learn the most easily to pronounce foreign languages, since they know their articulations by having met with similar sounds in their own language."—Spurzheim, on Education, p. 159.

[99] If it be admitted that the two semivowels l and n have vocality enough of their own to form a very feeble syllable, it will prove only that there are these exceptions to an important general rule. If the name of Haydn rhymes with maiden, it makes one exception to the rule of writing; but it is no part of the English language. The obscure sound of which I speak, is sometimes improperly confounded with that of short u; thus a recent writer, who professes great skill in respect to such matters, says, "One of the most common sounds in our language is that of the vowel u, as in the word urn, or as the diphthong ea in the word earth, for which we have no character. Writers have made various efforts to express it, as in earth, berth, mirth, worth, turf, in which all the vowels are indiscriminately used in turn. [Fist] This defect has led to the absurd method of placing the vowel after the consonants, instead of between them, when a word terminates with this sound; as in the following, Bible, pure, centre, circle, instead of Bibel, puer, center, cirkel."—Gardiner's Music of Nature, p. 498. "It would be a great step towards perfection to spell our words as they are pronounced!"—Ibid., p. 499. How often do the reformers of language multiply the irregularities of which they complain!

[100] "The number of simple sounds in our tongue is twenty-eight, 9 Vowels and 19 Consonants. H is no letter, but merely a mark of aspiration."—Jones's Prosodial Gram. before his Dict., p. 14.

"The number of simple vowel and consonant sounds in our tongue is twenty-eight, and one pure aspiration h, making in all twenty-nine."—Bolles's Octavo Dict., Introd., p. 9.

"The number of letters in the English language is twenty-six; but the number of elements is thirty-eight."—Comstock's Elocution, p. 18. "There are thirty-eight elements in the English alphabet, and to represent those elements by appropriate characters, we should have thirty-eight letters. There is, then, a deficiency in our alphabet of twelve letters—and he who shall supply this imperfection, will be one of the greatest benefactors of the human race."—Ib., p. 19. "Our alphabet is both redundant and defective. C, q, and z, are respectively represented by k or s, k, and ks, or gz; and the remaining twenty-three letters are employed to represent forty-one elementary sounds."—Wells's School Gram., 1st Ed., p. 36.

"The simple sounds were in no wise to be reckoned of any certain number: by the first men they were determined to no more than ten, as spine suppose; as others, fifteen or twenty; it is however certain that mankind in general never exceed twenty simple sounds; and of these only five are reckoned strictly such."—Bicknell's Grammar, Part ii, p. 4.

[101] "When these sounds are openly pronounced, they produce the familiar assent ay: which, by the old English dramatic writers, was often expressed by I."—Walker. We still hear it so among the vulgar; as, "I, I, sir, presently!" for "Ay, ay, sir, presently!" Shakspeare wrote,

"To sleepe, perchance to dreame; I, there's the rub." —Bucke's Classical Gram., p. 143.

[102] Walker pronounces yew and you precisely alike, "yoo;" but, certainly, ew is not commonly equivalent to oo, though some make it so: thus Gardiner, in his scheme of the vowels, says, "ew equals oo, as in new, noo."—Music of Nature, p. 483. Noo for new, is a vulgarism, to my ear.—G. BROWN.

[103] "As harmony is an inherent property of sound, the ear should he first called to the attention of simple sounds; though, in reality, all are composed of three, so nicely blended as to appear but as one."—Gardiner's Music of Nature, p. 8. "Every sound is a mixture of three tones; as much as a ray of light is composed of three prismatic colours."—Ib., p. 387.

[104] The titulary name of the sacred volume is "The Holy Bible." The word Scripture or Scriptures is a common name for the writings contained in this inestimable volume, and, in the book itself, is seldom distinguished by a capital; but, in other works, it seems proper in general to write it so, by way of eminence.

[105] "Benedictus es Domine Deus Israel patris nostri ab eterno in eternum."—Vulgate. "O Eternel! Dieu d'Israël, notre père, tu es béni de tout temps et à toujours."—Common French Bible. "[Greek: Eulogætos ei Kyrie ho theos Israel ho patær hæmon apo tou aionos kai heos tou aionos.]"—Septuagint.

[106] Where the word "See" accompanies the reference, the reader may generally understand that the citation, whether right or wrong in regard to grammar, is not in all respects exactly as it will be found in the place referred to. Cases of this kind, however, will occur but seldom; and it is hoped the reasons for admitting a few, will be sufficiently obvious. Brevity is indispensable; and some rules are so generally known and observed, that one might search long for half a dozen examples of their undesigned violation. Wherever an error is made intentionally in the Exercises, the true reading and reference are to be expected in the Key.

[107] "Et irritaverunt ascendentes in mare, Mare rubrum."—Latin Vulgate, folio, Psal. cv, 7. This, I think, should have been "Mare Rubrum," with two capitals.—G. BROWN.

[108] The printers, from the manner in which they place their types before them, call the small letters "lower-case letters," or "letters of the lower case."

[109] I imagine that "plagues" should here be plague, in the singular number, and not plural. "Ero more ius, o mors; morsus tuus ero, inferne."—Vulgate. "[Greek: Pou hæ dikæ sou, thanate; pou to kentron sou, aidæ;]"—Septuagint, ibid.

[110] It is hoped that not many persons will be so much puzzled as are Dr. Latham and Professor Fowler, about the application of this rule. In their recent works on The English Language, these gentlemen say, "In certain words of more than one syllable, it is difficult to say to which syllable the intervening Consonant belongs. For instance, does the v in river and the v in fever belong to the first or to the second syllable? Are the words to be divided thus, ri-ver, fe-ver? or thus, riv-er, fev-er?"—Fowler's E. Gram., 1850, §85; Latham's Hand-Book, p. 95. Now I suppose it plain, that, by the rule given above, fever is to be divided in the former way, and river in the latter; thus, fe-ver, riv-er. But this paragraph of Latham's or Fowler's is written, not to disembarrass the learner, but just as if it were a grammarian's business to confound his readers with fictitious dilemmas—and those expressed ungrammatically! Of the two Vees, so illogically associated in one question, and so solecistically spoken of by the singular verb "does," one belongs to the former syllable, and the other, to the latter; nor do I discover that "it is difficult to say" this, or to be well assured that it is right. What an admirable passage for one great linguist to steal from an other!

[111] "The usual rules for dividing [words into] syllables, are not only arbitrary but false and absurd. They contradict the very definition of a syllable given by the authors themselves. * * * * A syllable in pronunciation is an indivisible thing; and strange as it may appear, what is indivisible in utterance is divided in writing: when the very purpose of dividing words into syllables in writing, is to lead the learner to a just pronunciation."—Webster's Improved Gram., p. 156; Philosophical Gram., 221.

[112] This word, like distich and monostich, is from the Greek stichos, a verse; and is improperly spelled by Walker with a final k. It should be hemistich, with the accent on the first syllable. See Webster, Scott, Perry, Worcester, and others.

[113] According to Aristotle, the compounding of terms, or the writing of them as separate words, must needs be a matter of great importance to the sense. For he will have the parts of a compound noun, or of a compound verb, to be, like other syllables, destitute of any distinct signification in themselves, whatever may be their meaning when written separately. See his definitions of the parts of speech, in his Poetics, Chapter 20th of the Greek; or Goulston's Version in Latin, Chapter 12th.

[114] Whether worshipper should follow this principle, or not, is questionable. If Dr. Webster is right in making worship a compound of worth and ship, he furnishes a reason against his own practice of using a single p in worshiper, worshiped, and worshiping. The Saxon word appears to have been weorthscype. But words ending in ship are derivatives, rather than compounds; and therefore they seem to belong to the rule, rather than to the exception: as, "So we fellowshiped him."—Herald of Freedom: Liberator, Vol. ix, p. 68.

[115] When ee comes before e, or may be supposed to do so, or when ll comes before l, one of the letters is dropped that three of the same kind may not meet: as, free, freer, freest, freeth, freed; skill, skilless; full, fully; droll, drolly. And, as burgess-ship, hostess-ship, and mistress-ship are derivatives, and not compounds, I think they ought to follow the same principle, and be written burgesship, hostesship, mistresship. The proper form of gall-less is perhaps more doubtful. It ought not to be gallless, as Dr. Webster has it; and galless, the analogical form, is yet, so far as I know without authority. But is it not preferable to the hyphened form, with three Ells, which has authority? "GALL-LESS, a. Without gall or bitterness. Cleaveland."—Chalmers, Bolles, Worcester.

"Ah! mild and gall-less dove, Which dost the pure and candid dwellings love, Canst thou in Albion still delight?"—Cowley's Odes.

Worcester's Dictionary has also the questionable word bellless. Treen, for trees, or for an adjective meaning a tree's, or made of a tree, is exhibited in several of our dictionaries, and pronounced as a monosyllable: but Dr. Beattie, in his Poems, p. 84, has made it a dissyllable, with three like letters divided by a hyphen, thus:—

"Plucking from tree-en bough her simple food."

[116] Handiwork, handicraft, and handicraftsman, appear to have been corruptly written for handwork, handcraft, and handcraftsman. They were formerly in good use, and consequently obtained a place in our vocabulary, from which no lexicographer, so far as I know, has yet thought fit to discard them; but, being irregular, they are manifestly becoming obsolete, or at least showing a tendency to throw off these questionable forms. Handcraft and handcraftsman are now exhibited in some dictionaries, and handiwork seems likely to be resolved into handy and work, from which Johnson supposes it to have been formed. See Psalm xix, 1. The text is varied thus: "And the firmament sheweth his handiwork."—Johnson's Dict.. "And the firmament sheweth his handy-work."—Scott's Bible; Bruce's Bible; Harrison's Gram., p. 83. "And the firmament showeth his handy work."—Alger's Bible; Friends' Bible; Harrison's Gram., p. 103.

[117] Here a word, formed from its root by means of the termination ize, afterwards assumes a prefix, to make a secondary derivative: thus, organ, organize, disorganize. In such a case, the latter derivative must of course be like the former; and I assume that the essential or primary formation of both from the word organ is by the termination ize; but it is easy to see that disguise, demise, surmise, and the like, are essentially or primarily formed by means of the prefixes, dis, de, and sur. As to advertise, exercise, detonize, and recognize, which I have noted among the exceptions, it is not easy to discover by which method we ought to suppose them to have been formed; but with respect to nearly all others, the distinction is very plain; and though there may be no natural reason for founding upon it such a rule as the foregoing, the voice of general custom is as clear in this as in most other points or principles of orthography, and, surely, some rule in this case is greatly needed.

[118] Criticise, with s, is the orthography of Johnson, Walker, Webster, Jones, Scott, Bolles, Chalmers, Cobb, and others; and so did Worcester spell it in his Comprehensive Dictionary of 1831, but, in his Universal and Critical Dictionary of 1846, he wrote it with z, as did Bailey in his folio, about a hundred years ago. Here the z conforms to the foregoing rule, and the s does not.

[119] Like this, the compound brim-full ought to be written with a hyphen and accented on the last syllable; but all our lexicographers have corrupted it into brim'ful, and, contrary to the authorities they quote, accented it on the first. Their noun brim'fulness, with a like accent, is also a corruption; and the text of Shakspeare, which they quote for it, is nonsense, unless brim, be there made a separate adjective:—

"With ample and brimfulness of his force."—Johnson's Dict. et al.

"With ample and brim fullness of his force," would be better.

[120] According to Littleton, the coraliticus lapis was a kind of Phrygian marble, "called Coralius or by an other name Sangarius." But this substance seems to be different from all that are described by Webster, under the names of "coralline," "corallinite," and "corallite." See Webster's Octavo Dict.

[121] The Greek word for argil is [Greek: argilos], or [Greek: argillos], (from [Greek: argos], white,) meaning pure white earth; and is as often spelled with one Lamda as with two.

[122] Dr. Webster, with apparent propriety, writes caviling and cavilous with one l, like dialing and perilous; but he has in general no more uniformity than Johnson, in respect to the doubling of l final. He also, in some instances, accents similar words variously: as, cor'alliform, upon the first syllable, metal'liform, upon the second; cav'ilous and pap'illous, upon the first, argil'lous, upon the second; ax'illar, upon the first, medul'lar, upon the second. See Webster's Octavo Dict.

[123] Perry wrote crystaline, crystalize, crystalization, metaline, metalist, metalurgist, and metalurgy; and these forms, as well as crystalography, metalic, metalography, and metaliferous, are noticed and preferred by the authors of the Red Book, on pp. 288 and 302.

[124] "But if a diphthong precedes, or the accent is on the preceding syllable, the consonant remains single: as, to toil, toiling; to offer, an offering."—Murray's Octavo Gram., p. 24; Walker's Rhym. Dict., Introd., p. ix.

[125] Johnson, Walker, and Webster, all spell this word sep'ilible; which is obviously wrong; as is Johnson's derivation of it from sepio, to hedge in. Sepio would make, not this word, but sepibilis and sepible, hedgeable.

[126] If the variable word control, controul, or controll, is from con and troul or troll, it should be spelled with ll, by Rule 7th, and retain the ll by Rule 6th. Dr. Webster has it so, but he gives control also.

[127] Ache, and its plural, aches, appear to have been formerly pronounced like the name of the eighth letter, with its plural, Aitch, and Aitches; for the old poets made "aches" two syllables. But Johnson says of ache, a pain, it is "now generally written ake, and in the plural akes, of one syllable."—See his Quarto Dict. So Walker: "It is now almost universally written ake and akes."—See Walker's Principles, No. 355. So Webster: "Ake, less properly written ache."—See his Octavo Dict. But Worcester seems rather to prefer ache.—G. B.

[128] This book has, probably, more recommenders than any other of the sort. I have not patience to count them accurately, but it would seem that more than a thousand of the great and learned have certified to the world, that they never before had seen so good a spelling-book! With personal knowledge of more than fifty of the signers, G. B. refused to add his poor name, being ashamed of the mischievous facility with which very respectable men had loaned their signatures.

[129] Scrat, for scratch. The word is now obsolete, and may be altered by taking ch in the correction.

[130] "Hairbrained, adj. This should rather be written harebrained; unconstant, unsettled, wild as a hare."—Johnson's Dict. Webster writes it harebrained, as from hare and brain. Worcester, too, prefers this form.

[131] "The whole number of verbs in the English language, regular and irregular, simple and compounded, taken together, is about 4,300. See, in Dr. Ward's Essays on the English language, the catalogue of English verbs. The whole number of irregular verbs, the defective included, is about 176."—Lowth's Gram., Philad., 1799, p. 59. Lindley Murray copied the first and the last of these three sentences, but made the latter number "about 177."—Octavo Gram., p. 109; Duodecimo, p. 88. In the latter work, he has this note: "The whole number of words, in the English language, is about thirty-five thousand."—Ib. Churchill says, "The whole number of verbs in the English language, according to Dr. Ward, is about 4,300. The irregulars, including the auxilaries [sic—KTH], scarcely exceed 200."—New Gram., p. 113. An other late author has the following enumeration: "There are in the English language about twenty thousand five hundred nouns, forty pronouns, eight thousand verbs, nine thousand two hundred adnouns, two thousand six hundred adverbs, sixty-nine prepositions, nineteen conjunctions, and sixty-eight interjections; in all, above forty thousand words."—Rev. David Blair's Gram., p. 10. William Ward, M. A., in an old grammar undated, which speaks of Dr. Lowth's as one with which the public had "very lately been favoured," says: "There are four Thousand and about Five Hundred Verbs in the English [language]."—Ward's Practical Gram., p. 52.

[132] These definitions are numbered here, because each of them is the first of a series now begun. In class rehearsals, the pupils may be required to give the definitions in turn; and, to prevent any from losing the place, it is important that the numbers be mentioned. When all have become sufficiently familiar with the definitions, the exercise may be performed without them. They are to be read or repeated till faults disappear—or till the teacher is satisfied with the performance. He may then save time, by commanding his class to proceed more briefly; making such distinctions as are required in the praxis, but ceasing to explain the terms employed; that is, omitting all the definitions, for brevity's sake. This remark is applicable likewise to all the subsequent praxes of etymological parsing.]

[133] The modifications which belong to the different parts of speech consist chiefly of the inflections or changes to which certain words are subject. But I use the term sometimes in a rather broader sense, as including not only variations of words, but, in certain instances, their original forms, and also such of their relations as serve to indicate peculiar properties. This is no questionable license in the use of the term; for when the position of a word modifies its meaning, or changes its person or case, this effect is clearly a grammatical modification, though there be no absolute inflection. Lord Kames observes, "That quality, which distinguishes one genus, one species, or even one individual, from an other, is termed a modification: thus the same particular that is termed a property or quality, when considered as belonging to an individual, or a class of individuals, is termed a modification, when considered as distinguishing the individual or the class from an other."—Elements of Criticism, Vol. ii, p. 392.

[134] Wells, having put the articles into the class of adjectives, produces authority as follows: "'The words a or an, and the, are reckoned by some grammarians a separate part of speech; but, as they in all respects come under the definition of the adjective, it is unnecessary, as well as improper, to rank them as a class by themselves.'—Cannon." To this he adds, "The articles are also ranked with adjectives by Priestley, E. Oliver, Bell, Elphinston, M'Culloch, D'Orsey, Lindsay, Joel, Greenwood. Smetham, Dalton, King, Hort, Buchanan, Crane, J. Russell, Frazee, Cutler, Perley, Swett, Day. Goodenow, Willard, Robbins, Felton, Snyder, Butler, S. Barrett, Badgley, Howe, Whiting, Davenport, Fowle, Weld, and others."—Wells's School Gram., p. 69. In this way, he may have made it seem to many, that, after thorough investigation, he had decided the point discreetly, and with preponderance of authority. For it is claimed as a "peculiar merit" of this grammar, that, "Every point of practical importance is thoroughly investigated, and reference is carefully made to the researches of preceding writers, in all cases which admit of being determined by weight of authority."—WILLIAM RUSSELL, on the cover. But, in this instance, as in sundry others, wherein he opposes the more common doctrine, and cites concurrent authors, both he and all his authorities are demonstrably to the wrong. For how can they be right, while reason, usage, and the prevailing opinion, are still against them? If we have forty grammars which reject, the articles as a part of speech, we have more than twice as many which recognize them as such; among which are those of the following authors: viz., Adam, D. Adams, Ainsworth, Alden, Alger, W. Allen, Ash, Bacon, Barnard, Beattie, Beck, Bicknell, Bingham, Blair, J. H. Brown, Bucke, Bullions, Burn, Burr, Chandler, Churchill, Coar, Cobbett, Cobbin, Comly, Cooper, Davis, Dearborn, Ensell, Everett, Farnum, Fisk, A. Flint, Folker, Fowler, Frost, R. G. Greene, Greenleaf, Guy, Hall, Hallock, Hart, Harrison, Matt. Harrison, Hazen, Hendrick, Hiley, Hull, Ingersoll, Jaudon, Johnson, Kirkham, Latham, Lennie, A. Lewis, Lowth, Maltby, Maunder, Mennye, Merchant, T. H. Miller, Murray, Nixon, Nutting, Parker and Fox, John Peirce, Picket, Pond, S. Putnam, Russell, Sanborn, Sanders, R. C. Smith, Rev. T. Smith, Spencer, Tower, Tucker, Walker, Webber, Wilcox, Wilson, Woodworth, J. E. Worcester, S. Worcester, Wright. The articles characterize our language more than some of the other parts of speech, and are worthy of distinction for many reasons, one of which is the very great frequency of their use.