LESSON I.—PARSING.
"My Lord, I do here, in the name of all the learned and polite persons of the nation, complain to your Lordship, as first minister, that our language is imperfect; that its daily improvements are by no means in proportion to its daily corruptions; that the pretenders to polish and refine it, have chiefly multiplied abuses and absurdities; and that, in many instances, it offends against every part of grammar."—Dean Swift, to the Earl of Oxford.
"Swift must be allowed to have been a good judge of this matter; to which he was himself very attentive, both in his own writings, and in his remarks upon those of his friends: He is one of the most correct, and perhaps [he is] the best, of our prose writers. Indeed the justness of this complaint, as far as I can find, hath never yet been questioned; and yet no effectual method hath hitherto been taken to redress the grievance which was the object of it."—Lowth's Gram., p. iv.
"The only proper use to be made of the blemishes which occur in the writings of such authors, [as Addison and Swift—authors whose 'faults are overbalanced by high beauties'—] is, to point out to those who apply themselves to the study of composition, some of the rules which they ought to observe for avoiding such errors; and to render them sensible of the necessity of strict attention to language and style."—Blair's Rhet., p. 233.
"Thee, therefore, and with thee myself I weep,
For thee and me I mourn in anguish deep."—Pope's Homer.