The Grammar of English Grammars

by Goold Brown

OBSERVATIONS ON RULE XXIV.

OBS. 1.—To this rule, there are properly no exceptions. Though interjections are sometimes uttered in close connexion with other words, yet, being mere signs of passion or of feeling, they seem not to have any strict grammatical relation, or dependence according to the sense. Being destitute alike of relation, agreement, and government, they must be used independently, if used at all. Yet an emotion signified in this manner, not being causeless, may be accompanied by some object, expressed either by a nominative absolute, or by an adjective after for: as, "Alas! poor Yorick!"—Shak. Here the grief denoted by alas, is certainly for Yorick; as much so, as if the expression were, "Alas for poor Yorick!" But, in either case, alas, I think, has no dependent construction; neither has Yorick, in the former, unless we suppose an ellipsis of some governing word.

OBS. 2.—The interjection O is common to many languages, and is frequently uttered, in token of earnestness, before nouns or pronouns put absolute by direct address; as, "Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up thine hand."—Psalms, x, 12. "O ye of little faith!"—Matt., vi, 30. The Latin and Greek grammarians, therefore, made this interjection the sign of the vocative case; which case is the same as the nominative put absolute by address in English. But this particle is no positive index of the vocative; because an independent address may be made without that sign, and the O may be used where there is no address: as, "O scandalous want! O shameful omission!"—"Pray, Sir, don't be uneasy."—Burgh's Speaker, p. 86.

OBS. 3.—Some grammarians ascribe to two or three of our interjections the power of governing sometimes the nominative case, and sometimes the objective. First, NIXON; in an exercise entitled, "NOMINATIVE GOVERNED BY AN INTERJECTION," thus: "The interjections O! Oh! and Ah! require after them the nominative case of a substantive in the second person; as, 'O thou persecutor!'—'O Alexander! thou hast slain thy friend.' O is an interjection, governing the nominative case Alexander."—English Parser, Again, under the title, "OBJECTIVE CASE GOVERNED BY AN INTERJECTION," he says: "The interjections O! Oh! and Ah! require after them the objective case of a substantive in the first or third person; as, 'Oh me!' 'Oh the humiliations!' Oh is an interjection, governing the objective case humiliations."—These two rules are in fact contradictory, while each of them absurdly suggests that O, oh, and ah, are used only with nouns. So J. M. PUTNAM: "Interjections sometimes govern an objective case; as, Ah me! O the tender ties! O the soft enmity! O me miserable! O wretched prince! O cruel reverse of fortune! When an address is made, the interjection does not perform the office of government."—Putnam's Gram., So KIRKHAM; who, under a rule quite different from these, extends the doctrine of government to all interjections: "According to the genius of the English language, transitive verbs and prepositions require the objective case of a noun or pronoun after them; and this requisition is all that is meant by government, when we say that these parts of speech govern the objective case. THE SAME PRINCIPLE APPLIES TO THE INTERJECTION. 'Interjections require the objective case of a pronoun of the first person after them; but the nominative of a noun or pronoun of the second or third person; as, Ah me! Oh thou! O my country!' To say, then, that interjections require particular cases after them, is synonymous with saying, that they govern those cases; and this office of the interjection is in perfect accordance with that which it performs in the Latin, and many other languages."—Kirkham's Gram., According to this, every interjection has as much need of an object after it, as has a transitive verb or a preposition! The rule has, certainly, no "accordance" with what occurs in Latin, or in any other language; it is wholly a fabrication, though found, in some shape or other, in well-nigh all English grammars.

OBS. 4.—L. MURRAY'S doctrine on this point is thus expressed: "The interjections O! Oh! and Ah! require the objective case of a pronoun in the first person after them, as, 'O me! oh me! Ah me!' But the nominative case in the second person: as, 'O thou persecutor!' 'Oh ye hypocrites!' 'O thou, who dwellest,' &c."—Octavo Gram., INGERSOLL copies this most faulty note literally, adding these words to its abrupt end,—i. e., to its inexplicable "&c." used by Murray; "because the first person is governed by a preposition understood: as, 'Ah for me!' or, 'O what will become of me!' &c., and the second person is in the nominative independent, there being a direct address."—Conversations on E. Gram., So we see that this grammarian and Kirkham, both modifiers of Murray, understand their master's false verb "require" very differently. LENNIE too, in renouncing a part of Murray's double or threefold error, "Oh! happy us!" for, "O happy we!" teaches thus: "Interjections sometimes require the objective case after them, but they never govern it. In the first edition of this grammar," says he, "I followed Mr. Murray and others, in leaving we, in the exercises to be turned into us; but that it should be we, and not us, is obvious; because it is the nominative to are understood; thus, Oh happy are we, or, Oh we are happy, (being) surrounded with so many blessings."—Lennie's Gram., Fifth Edition, Twelfth, Here is an other solution of the construction of this pronoun of the first person, contradictory alike to Ingersoll's, to Kirkham's, and to Murray's; while all are wrong, and this among the rest. The word should indeed be we, and not us; because we have both analogy and good authority for the former case, and nothing but the false conceit of sundry grammatists for the latter. But it is a nominative absolute, like any other nominative which we use in the same exclamatory manner. For the first person may just as well be put in the nominative absolute, by exclamation, as any other; as, "Behold I and the children whom God hath given me!"—Heb., "Ecce ego et pueri quos mihi dedit Deus!"—Beza. "O brave we!"—Dr. Johnson, often. So Horace: "O ego lævus," &c.—Ep. ad Pi., 301.

"Ah! luckless I! who purge in spring my spleen—
Else sure the first of bards had Horace been."
—Francis's Hor., ii, 209.

OBS. 5.—Whether Murray's remark above, on "O! Oh! and Ah!" was originally designed for a rule of government or not, it is hardly worth any one's while to inquire. It is too lame and inaccurate every way, to deserve any notice, but that which should serve to explode it forever. Yet no few, who have since made English grammars, have copied the text literally; as they have, for the public benefit, stolen a thousand other errors from the same quarter. The reader will find it, with little or no change, in Smith's New Grammar, p. 96 and 134; Alger's, 56; Allen's, 117; Russell's, 92; Blair's, 100, Guy's, 89; Abel Flint's, 59; A Teacher's, 43, Picket's, 210; Cooper's[439] Murray, 136; Wilcox's, 95; Bucke's, 87; Emmons's, 77; and probably in others. Lennie varies it indefinitely, thus: "RULE. The interjections Oh! and Ah! &c. generally require the objective case of the first personal pronoun, and the nominative of the second; as, Ah me! O thou fool! O ye hypocrites!"—Lennie's Gram., p. 110; Brace's, 88. M'Culloch, after Crombie, thus: "RULE XX. Interjections are joined with the objective case of the pronoun of the first person, and with the nominative of the pronoun of the second; as, Ah me! O ye hypocrites."—Manual of E. Gram., p. 145; and Crombie's Treatise, p. 315; also Fowler's E. Language, p. 563. Hiley makes it a note, thus: "The interjections. O! Oh! Ah! are followed by the objective case of a pronoun of the first person; as, 'Oh me!' 'Ah me!' but by the nominative case of the pronoun in the second person; as, 'O thou who dwellest.' "—Hiley's Gram., p. 82. This is what the same author elsewhere calls "THE GOVERNMENT OF INTERJECTIONS;" though, like some others, he had set it in the "Syntax of PRONOUNS." See Ib., p. 108. Murray, in forming his own little "Abridgment," omitted it altogether. In his other grammars, it is still a mere note, standing where he at first absurdly put it, under his rule for the agreement of pronouns with their antecedents. By many of his sage amenders, it has been placed in the catalogue of principal rules. But, that it is no adequate rule for interjections, is manifest; for, in its usual form, it is limited to three, and none of these can ever, with any propriety, be parsed by it. Murray himself has not used it in any of his forms of parsing. He conceived, (as I hinted before in Chapter 1st,) that, "The syntax of the Interjection is of so very limited a nature, that it does not require a distinct, appropriate rule."—Octavo Gram., i. 224.

OBS. 6.—Against this remark of Murray's, a good argument may be drawn from the ridiculous use which has been made of his own suggestion in the other place. For, though that suggestion never had in it the least shadow of truth, and was never at all applicable either to the three interjections, or to pronouns, or to cases, or to the persons, or to any thing else of which it speaks, it has not only been often copied literally, and called a "RULE" of syntax, but many have, yet more absurdly, made it a general canon which imposes on all interjections a syntax that belongs to none of them. For example: "An interjection must be followed by the objective case of a pronoun in the first person; and by a nominative of the second person; as—Oh me! ah me! oh thou! AH hail, ye happy men!"—Jaudon's Gram., p. 116. This is as much as to say, that every interjection must have a pronoun or two after it! Again: "Interjections must be followed by the objective case of the pronoun in the first person; as, O me! Ah me! and by the nominative case of the second person; as, O thou persecutor! Oh ye hypocrites!"—Merchant's Murray, p. 80; Merchant's School Gram., p. 99. I imagine there is a difference between O and oh,[440] and that this author, as well as Murray, in the first and the last of these examples, has misapplied them both. Again: "Interjections require the objective case of a pronoun of the first person, and the nominative case of the second; as, Ah me! O thou"—Frost's El. of E. Gram., p. 48. This, too, is general, but equivocal; as if one case or both were necessary to each interjection!

OBS. 7.—Of nouns, or of the third person, the three rules last cited say nothing;[441] though it appears from other evidence, that their authors supposed them applicable at least to some nouns of the second person. The supposition however was quite needless, because each of their grammars contains an other Rule, that, "When an address is made, the noun or pronoun is in the nominative case independent;" which, by the by, is far from being universally true, either of the noun or of the pronoun. Russell imagines, "The words depending upon interjections, have so near a resemblance to those in a direct address, that they may very properly be classed under the same general head," and be parsed as being, "in the nominative case independent." See his "Abridgment of Murray's Grammar," p. 91. He does not perceive that depending and independent are words that contradict each other. Into the same inconsistency, do nearly all those gentlemen fall, who ascribe to interjections a control over cases. Even Kirkham, who so earnestly contends that what any words require after them they must necessarily govern, forgets his whole argument, or justly disbelieves it, whenever he parses any noun that is uttered with an interjection. In short, he applies his principle to nothing but the word me in the phrases, "Ah me!" "Oh me!" and "Me miserable!" and even these he parses falsely. The second person used in the vocative, or the nominative put absolute by direct address, whether an interjection be used or not, he rightly explains as being "in the nominative case independent;" as, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!"—Kirkham's Gram., p. 130. "O maid of Inistore!"—Ib., p. 131. But he is wrong in saying that, "Whenever a noun is of the second person, it is in the nominative case independent;" (Ib., p. 130;) and still more so, in supposing that, "The principle contained in the note" [which tells what interjections require,] "proves that every noun of the second person is in the nominative case."—Ib., p. 164. A falsehood proves nothing but the ignorance or the wickedness of him who utters it. He is wrong too, as well as many others, in supposing that this nominative independent is not a nominative absolute; for, "The vocative is [generally, if not always,] absolute."—W. Allen's Gram., p. 142. But that nouns of the second person are not always absolute or independent, nor always in the nominative case, or the vocative, appears, I think, by the following example: "This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders."—Acts, iv, II. See Obs. 3d on Rule 8th.

OBS. 8.—The third person, when uttered in exclamation, with an interjection before it, is parsed by Kirkham, not as being governed by the interjection, either in the nominative case, according to his own argument and own rule above cited, or in the objective, according to Nixon's notion of the construction; nor yet as being put absolute in the nominative, as I believe it generally, if not always is; but as being "the nominative to a verb understood; as, 'Lo,' there is 'the poor Indian!' '0, the pain' there is! 'the bliss' there is 'IN dying!'"—Kirkham's Gram., p. 129. Pope's text is, "Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!" and, in all that is here changed, the grammarian has perverted it, if not in all that he has added. It is an other principle of Kirkham's Grammar, though a false one, that, "Nouns have but two persons, the second and [the] third."—P. 37. So that, these two being disposed of agreeably to his own methods above, which appear to include the second and third persons of pronouns also, there remains to him nothing but the objective of the pronoun of the first person to which he can suppose his other rule to apply; and I have shown that there is no truth in it, even in regard to this. Yet, with the strongest professions of adhering to the principles, and even to "the language" of Lindley Murray, this gentleman, by copying somebody else in preference to "that eminent philologist," has made himself one of those by whom Murray's erroneous remark on O, oh, and ah, with pronouns of the first and second persons, is not only stretched into a rule for all interjections, but made to include nouns of the second person, and both nouns and pronouns of the third person: as, "Interjections require the objective case of a pronoun of the first person after them, but the nominative of a noun or pronoun of the second or third person; as, 'Ah! me; Oh! thou; O! virtue!'"—Kirkham's Gram., 2d Ed., p. 134; Stereotype Ed., p. 177. See the same rule, with examples and punctuation different, in his Stereotype Edition, p. 164; Comly's Gram., 116; Greenleaf's, 36; and Fisk's, 144. All these authors, except Comly, who comes much nearest to the thing, profess to present to us "Murray's Grammar Simplified;" and this is a sample of their work of simplification!—an ignorant piling of errors on errors!

"O imitatores servum pecus! ut mihi sæpe
Bilem, sæpe jocum vestri movêre tumultus!"—Horace.

OBS. 9.—Since so many of our grammarians conceive that interjections require or govern cases, it may be proper to cite some who teach otherwise. "Interjections, in English, have no government."—Lowth's Gram., p. 111. "Interjections have no government, or admit of no construction."—Coar's Gram., p. 189. "Interjections have no connexion with other word's."—Fuller's Gram., p. 71. "The interjection, in a grammatical sense, is totally unconnected with every other word in a sentence. Its arrangement, of course, is altogether arbitrary, and cannot admit of any theory."—Jamieson's Rhet., p. 83. "Interjections cannot properly have either concord or government. They are only mere sounds excited by passion, and have no just connexion with any other part of a sentence. Whatever case, therefore, is joined with them, must depend on some other word understood, except the vocative, which is always placed absolutely."—Adam's Latin Gram., p. 196; Gould's, 193. If this is true of the Latin language, a slight variation will make it as true of ours. "Interjections, and phrases resembling them, are taken absolutely; as, Oh, world, thy slippery turns! But the phrases Oh me! and Ah me! frequently occur."—W. Allen's Gram., p. 188. This passage is, in several respects, wrong; yet the leading idea is true. The author entitles it, "SYNTAX OF INTERJECTIONS," yet absurdly includes in it I know not what phrases! In the phrase, "thy slippery turns!" no word is absolute, or "taken absolutely" but this noun "turns;" and this, without the least hint of its case, the learned author will have us to understand to be absolute, because the phrase resembles an interjection! But the noun "world" which is also absolute, and which still more resembles an interjection, he will have to be so for a different reason—because it is in what he chooses to call the vocative case. But, according to custom, he should rather have put his interjection absolute with the noun, and written it, "O world," and not, "Oh, world." What he meant to do with "Oh me! and Ah me!" is doubtful. If any phrases come fairly under his rule, these are the very ones; and yet he seems to introduce them as exceptions! Of these, it can hardly be said, that they "frequently occur." Lowth notices only the latter, which he supposes elliptical. The former I do not remember to have met with more than three or four times; except in grammars, which in this case are hardly to be called authorities: "Oh! me, how fared it with me then?"—Job Scott. "Oh me! all the horse have got over the river, what shall we do?"—WALTON: Joh. Dict.

"But when he was first seen, oh me!
What shrieking and what misery!"—Wordsworth's Works, p. 114.

OBS. 10.—When a declinable word not in the nominative absolute, follows an interjection, as part of an imperfect exclamation, its construction (if the phrase be good English) depends on something understood; as, "Ah me!"—that is, "Ah! pity me;" or, "Ah! it grieves me;" or, as some will have it, (because the expression in Latin is "Hei mihi!") "Ah for me!"—Ingersoll. "Ah! wo is to me."—Lowth. "Ah! sorrow is to me."—Coar. So of "oh me!" for, in these expressions, if not generally, oh and ah are exactly equivalent the one to the other. As for "O me" it is now seldom met with, though Shakspeare has it a few times. From these examples, O. B. Peirce erroneously imagines the "independent case" of the pronoun I to be me, and accordingly parses the word without supposing an ellipsis; but in the plural he makes that case to be we, and not us. So, having found an example of "Ah Him!" which, according to one half of our grammarians, is bad English, he conceives the independent case of he to be him; but in the plural, and in both numbers of the words thou and she, he makes it the nominative, or the same in form as the nominative. So builds he "the temple of Grammatical consistency!"—P. 7. Nixon and Cooper must of course approve of "Ah him!" because they assume that the interjection ah "requires" or "governs" the objective case of the third person. Others must condemn the expression, because they teach that ah requires the nominative case of this person. Thus Greenleaf sets down for false syntax, "O! happy them, surrounded with so many blessings!"—Gram. Simplified, p. 47. Here, undoubtedly, the word should be they; and, by analogy, (if indeed the instances are analogous,) it would seem more proper to say, "Ah he!" the nominative being our only case absolute. But if any will insist that "Ah him!" is good English, they must suppose that him is governed by something understood; as, "Ah! I lament him;" or, "Ah! I mourn for him." And possibly, on this principle, the example referred to may be most correct as it stands, with the pronoun in the objective case: "Ah Him! the first great martyr in this great cause."—D. WEBSTER: Peirce's Gram., p. 199.

OBS. 11.—If we turn to the Latin syntax, to determine by analogy what case is used, or ought to be used, after our English interjections, in stead of finding a "perfect accordance" between that syntax and the rule for which such accordance has been claimed, we see at once an utter repugnance, and that the pretence of their agreement is only a sample of Kirkham's unconscionable pedantry. The rule, in all its modifications, is based on the principle, that the choice of cases depends on the distinction of persons—a principle plainly contrary to the usage of the Latin classics, and altogether untrue. In Latin, some interjections are construed with the nominative, the accusative, or the vocative; some, only with the dative; some, only with the vocative. But, in English, these four cases are all included in two, the nominative and the objective; and, the case independent or absolute being necessarily the nominative, it follows that the objective, if it occur after an interjection, must be the object of something which is capable of governing it. If any disputant, by supposing ellipses, will make objectives of what I call nominatives absolute, so be it; but I insist that interjections, in fact, never "require" or "govern" one case more than an other. So Peirce, and Kirkham, and Ingersoll, with pointed self-contradiction, may continue to make "the independent case," whether vocative or merely exclamatory, the subject of a verb, expressed or understood; but I will content myself with endeavouring to establish a syntax not liable to this sort of objection. In doing this, it is proper to look at all the facts which go to show what is right, or wrong. "Lo, the poor Indian!" is in Latin, "Ecce pauper Indus!" or, "Ecce pauperem Indum!" This use of either the nominative or the accusative after ecce, if it proves any thing concerning the case of the word Indian, proves it doubtful. Some, it seems, pronounce it an objective. Some, like Murray, say nothing about it. Following the analogy of our own language, I refer it to the nominative absolute, because there is nothing to determine it to be otherwise. In the examples. "Heu me miserum! Ah wretch that I am!"—(Grant's Latin Gram., p. 263.) and "Miser ego homo! O wretched man that I am!"—(Rom., vii, 24,) if the word that is a relative pronoun, as I incline to think it is, the case of the nouns wretch and man does not depend on any other words, either expressed or implied. They are therefore nominatives absolute, according to Rule 8th, though the Latin words may be most properly explained on the principle of ellipsis.

OBS. 12.—Of some impenetrable blockhead, Horace, telling how himself was vexed, says: "O te, Bollane, cerebri Felicem! aiebam tacitus."—Lib. i, Sat. ix, 11. Literally: "O thee, Bollanus, happy of brain! said I to myself." That is, "O! I envy thee," &c. This shows that O does not "require the nominative case of the second person" after it, at least, in Latin. Neither does oh or ah: for, if a governing word be suggested, the objective may be proper; as, "Whom did he injure? Ah! thee, my boy?"—or even the possessive; as, "Whose sobs do I hear? Oh! thine, my child?" Kirkham tells us truly, (Gram., p. 126,) that the exclamation "O my" is frequently heard in conversation. These last resemble Lucan's use of the genitive, with an ellipsis of the governing noun: "O miseræ sortis!" i.e., "O [men] of miserable lot!" In short, all the Latin cases as well as all the English, may possibly occur after one or other of the interjections. I have instanced all but the ablative, and the following is literally an example of that, though the word quanto is construed adverbially: "Ah, quanto satius est!"—Ter. And., ii, 1. "Ah, how much better it is!" I have also shown, by good authorities, that the nominative of the first person, both in English and in Latin, may be properly used after those interjections which have been supposed to require or govern the objective. But how far is analogy alone a justification? Is "O thee" good English, because "O te" is good Latin? No: nor is it bad for the reason which our grammarians assign, but because our best writers never use it, and because O is more properly the sign of the vocative. The literal version above should therefore be changed; as, "O Bollanus, thou happy numskull! said I to myself."

OBS. 13—Allen Fisk, "author of Adam's Latin Grammar Simplified," and of "Murray's English Grammar Simplified," sets down for "False Syntax" not only that hackneyed example, "Oh! happy we," &c., but, "O! You, who love iniquity," and, "Ah! you, who hate the light."—Fisk's E. Gram., p. 144. But, to imagine that either you or we is wrong here, is certainly no sing of a great linguist; and his punctuation is very inconsistent both with his own rule of syntax and with common practice. An interjection set off by a comma or an exclamation point, is of course put absolute singly, or by itself. If it is to be read as being put absolute with something else, the separation is improper. One might just as well divide a preposition from its object, as an interjection from the case which it is supposed to govern. Yet we find here not only such a division as Murray sometimes improperly adopted, but in one instance a total separation, with a capital following; as, "O! You, who love iniquity," for, "O you who love iniquity!" or "O ye," &c. If a point be here set between the two pronouns, the speaker accuses all his hearers of loving iniquity; if this point be removed, he addresses only such as do love it. But an interjection and a pronoun, each put absolute singly, one after the other, seem to me not to constitute a very natural exclamation. The last example above should therefore be, "Ah! you hate the light." The first should be written, "O happy we!"

OBS. 14.—In other grammars, too, there are many instances of some of the errors here pointed out. R. C. Smith knows no difference between O and oh; takes "Oh! happy us" to be accurate English; sees no impropriety in separating interjections from the pronouns which he supposes them to "govern;" writes the same examples variously, even on the same page; inserts or omits commas or exclamation points at random; yet makes the latter the means by which interjections are to be known! See his New Gram., pp. 40, 96 and 134. Kirkham, who lays claim to "a new system of punctuation," and also stoutly asserts the governing power of interjections, writes, and rewrites, and finally stereotypes, in one part of his book. "Ah me! Oh thou! O my country!" and in an other, "Ah! me; Oh! thou; O! virtue." See Obs. 3d and Obs. 8th above. From such hands, any thing "new" should be received with caution: this last specimen of his scholarship has more errors than words.

OBS. 15.—Some few of our interjections seem to admit of a connexion with other words by means of a preposition or the conjunction that as, "O to forget her!"—Young. "O for that warning voice!"—Milton. "O that they were wise!"—Deut., xxxii, 29. "O that my people had hearkened unto me!"—Ps., lxxxi, 13, "Alas for Sicily!"—Cowper. "O for a world in principle as chaste As this is gross and selfish!"—Id. "Hurrah for Jackson!"—Newspaper. "A bawd, sir, fy upon him!"—SHAK.: Joh. Dict. "And fy on fortune, mine avowed foe!"—SPENCER: ib. This connexion, however, even if we parse all the words just as they stand, does not give to the interjection itself any dependent construction. It appears indeed to refute Jamieson's assertion, that, "The interjection is totally unconnected with every other word in a sentence;" but I did not quote this passage, with any averment of its accuracy; and, certainly, many nouns which are put absolute themselves, have in like manner a connexion with words that are not put absolute: as, "O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah."—Ps., lxxxiv, 8. But if any will suppose, that in the foregoing examples something else than the interjection must be the antecedent term to the preposition or the conjunction, they may consider the expressions elliptical: though it must be confessed, that much of their vivacity will be lost, when the supposed ellipses are supplied: as, "O! I desire to forget her."—"O! how I long for that warning voice!"—"O! how I wish that they were wise!"—"Alas! I wail for Sicily."—"Hurrah! I shout for Jackson."—"Fy! cry out upon him." Lindley Murray has one example of this kind, and if his punctuation of it is not bad in all his editions, there must be an ellipsis in the expression: "O! for better times."—Octavo Gram., ii, 6; Duodecimo Exercises, p. 10. He also writes it thus: "O. for better times."—Octavo Gram., i, 120; Ingersoll's Gram., p. 47. According to common usage, it should be, "O for better times!"

OBS. 16.—The interjection may be placed at the beginning or the end of a simple sentence, and sometimes between its less intimate parts; but this part of speech is seldom, if ever, allowed to interrupt the connexion of any words which are closely united in sense. Murray's definition of an interjection, as I have elsewhere shown, is faulty, and directly contradicted by his example: "O virtue! how amiable thou art!"—Octavo Gram., i, 28 and 128; ii. 2. This was a favourite sentence with Murray, and he appears to have written it uniformly in this fashion; which, undoubtedly, is altogether right, except that the word "virtue" should have had a capital Vee, because the quality is here personified.

OBS. 17.—Misled by the false notion, that the term interjection is appropriate only to what is "thrown in between the parts of a sentence," and perceiving that this is in fact but rarely the situation of this part of speech, a recent critic, (to whom I should owe some acknowledgements, if he were not wrong in every thing in which he charges me with error,) not only denounces this name as "barbarous," preferring Webster's loose term, "exclamation;" but avers, that, "The words called interjection should never be so used—should always stand alone; as, 'Oh! virtue, how amiable thou art.' 'Oh? Absalom, my son.' G. Brown," continues he, "drags one into the middle of a sentence, where it never belonged; thus, 'This enterprise, alas! will never compensate us for the trouble and expense with which it has been attended.' If G. B. meant the enterprize of studying grammar, in the old theories, his sentiment is very appropriate; but his alas! he should have known enough to have put into the right place:—before the sentence representing the fact that excites the emotion expressed by alas! See on the Chart part 3, of RULE XVII. An exclamation must always precede the phrase or sentence describing the fact that excites the emotion to be expressed by the exclamation; as: Alas! I have alienated my friend! Oh! Glorious hope of bliss secure!"—Oliver B. Peirce's Gram., p. 375. "O Glorious hope of bliss secure!"—Ib., p. 184. "O glorious hope!"—Ib., p. 304.

OBS. 18.—I see no reason to believe, that the class of words which have always, and almost universally, been called interjections, can ever be more conveniently explained under any other name; and, as for the term exclamation, which is preferred also by Cutler, Felton, Spencer, and S. W. Clark, it appears to me much less suitable than the old one, because it is less specific. Any words uttered loudly in the same breath, are an exclamation. This name therefore is too general; it includes other parts of speech than interjections; and it was but a foolish whim in Dr. Webster, to prefer it in his dictionaries. When David "cried with a loud voice, O my son Absalom! O Absalom, my son, my son!" [442] he uttered two exclamations, but they included all his words. He did not, like my critic above, set off his first word with an interrogation point, or any other point. But, says Peirce, "These words are used in exclaiming, and are what all know them to be, exclamations; as I call them. May I not call them what they are?"—Ibid. Yes, truly. But to exclaim is to cry out, and consequently every outcry is an exclamation; though there are two chances to one, that no interjection at all be used by the bawler. As good an argument, or better, may be framed against every one of this gentleman's professed improvements in grammar; and as for his punctuation and orthography, any reader may be presumed capable of seeing that they are not fit to be proposed as models.

OBS. 19.—I like my position of the word "alas" better than that which Peirce supposes to be its only right place; and, certainly, his rule for the location of words of this sort, as well as his notion that they must stand alone, is as false, as it is new. The obvious misstatement of Lowth, Adam, Gould, Murray, Churchill, Alger, Smith, Guy, Ingersoll, and others, that, "Interjections are words thrown in between the parts of a sentence," I had not only excluded from my grammars, but expressly censured in them. It was not, therefore, to prop any error of the old theorists, that I happened to set one interjection "where" according to this new oracle, "it never belonged." And if any body but he has been practically misled by their mistake, it is not I, but more probably some of the following authors, here cited for his refutation: "I fear, alas! for my life."—Fisk's Gram., p. 89. "I have been occupied, alas! with trifles."—Murray's Gr., Ex. for Parsing, p. 5; Guy's, p. 56. "We eagerly pursue pleasure, but, alas! we often mistake the road."—Smith's New Gram., p. 40, "To-morrow, alas! thou mayest be comfortless!"—Wright's Gram., p. 35. "Time flies, O! how swiftly."—Murray's Gram., i, 226. "My friend, alas! is dead."—J. Flint's Gram., p. 21. "But John, alas! he is very idle."—Merchant's Gram., p. 22. "For pale and wan he was, alas the while!"—SPENSER: Joh. Dict. "But yet, alas! O but yet, alas! our haps be but hard haps."—SYDNEY: ib. "Nay, (what's incredible,) alack! I hardly hear a woman's clack."—SWIFT: ib. "Thus life is spent (oh fie upon't!) In being touch'd, and crying—Don't!"—Cowper, i, 231. "For whom, alas! dost thou prepare The sweets that I was wont to share"—Id., i, 203. "But here, alas! the difference lies."—Id., i. 100. "Their names, alas! in vain reproach an age," &c.—Id., i, 88. "What nature, alas! has denied," &c.—Id., i, 235. "A. Hail Sternhold, then; and Hopkins, hail! B. Amen."—Id., i 25.

"These Fate reserv'd to grace thy reign divine,
Foreseen by me, but ah! withheld from mine!"—Pope, Dun., iii, 215.