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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[552] "Cum vestieris te coccino, cum ornata fueris monili aureo, et pinxeris stibio oculos tuos, frustra componeris."—Vulgate. "[Greek: Ean peribalae[i] kokkinon, kai kosm'aesae[i] kosmw[i] chrys~w[i]. ean egchrisae[i] stibi tous ophthalmous sou eis mataion wraismos sou.]"—Septuagint. "Quoique tu te revetes de pourpre, que tu te pares d'ornemens d'or, et que tu te peignes les yeux avec du fard, tu t'embellis en vain."—French Bible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE END