About two hundred pounds a year.”—Hudibras.
That is, “every year.”
Note 9.—There is a particular use of this article, which merits attention, as ambiguity may thus, in many cases, be avoided. In denoting comparison, when the article is suppressed before the second term, the latter, though it may be an appellative, assumes the character of an attributive, and becomes the predicate of the subject, or first term. If, on the contrary, the second term be prefaced with the article, it continues an appellative, and forms the other subject of comparison. In the former case, the subject, as possessing different qualities in various degrees, is compared with itself; in the latter, it is compared with something else.
Thus, if we say, “he is a better soldier than scholar,” the article is suppressed before the second term, and the expression is equivalent to, “he is more warlike than learned,” or “he possesses the qualities, which form the soldier, in a greater degree than those, which constitute the scholar.” If, we say, “he would make a better soldier, than a scholar,” here the article is prefixed to the second term; this term, therefore, retains the character of an appellative, and forms the second subject of comparison. The meaning accordingly is, “he would make a better soldier, than a scholar would make;” that is, “he has more of the constituent qualities of a soldier, than are to be found in any literary man.”
Pope commits a similar error, when, in one of his letters to Atterbury, he says, “You thought me not a worse man than a poet.” This strictly means “a worse man than a poet is;” whereas he intended to say, that his moral qualities were not inferior to his poetical genius. He should have said, “a worse man than poet.”
These two phraseologies are frequently confounded, which seldom fails to create ambiguity. Baker erroneously considers them as equivalent, and prefers that, in which the article is omitted before the second substantive. When there are two subjects with one predicate, the article should be inserted; but when there is one subject with two predicates, it should be omitted.
Note 10.—Perspicuity in like manner requires, that, when an additional epithet or description of the same subject is intended, the definite article should not be employed. It is by an attention to this rule, that we clearly distinguish between subject and predicate. For this reason the following sentence appears to me faulty: “The apostle James, the son of Zebedee, and the brother of St. John, would be declared the apostle of the Britons.”—Henry’s History of Britain. It should be rather, “and brother of St. John.” When a diversity of persons, or a change of subject is intended to be expressed, the definite article is necessarily employed, as “Cincinnatus the dictator, and the master of horse, marched against the Æqui.” The definite article before the latter appellative marks the diversity of subject, and clearly shows that two persons are designed. Were the article omitted, the expression would imply, that the dictator, and the master of horse, were one and the same individual.
Rule VII.—Substantives signifying the same thing agree in case, thus, “I, George the Third, king of Great Britain, defender of the faith.” The words I, George, king, defender, are all considered as the nominative case. “The chief of the princes, he who defied the bravest of the enemy, was assassinated by a dastardly villain:” where the pronoun he agrees in case with the preceding term chief. This rule, however, may be deemed unnecessary, as all such expressions are elliptical; thus, “the chief of the princes was assassinated,” “he was assassinated.” “He was the son of the Rev. Dr. West, perhaps him who published Pindar at Oxford.”—Johnson’s Life of West. That is, “the son of him.” Were the pronoun in the nominative case, it would refer to the son, and not the father, and thus convey a very different meaning.
Note 1.—As proper names are, by the trope antonomasia, frequently used for appellatives, as when we say, “the Socrates of the present age,” where Socrates is equivalent to “the wisest man,” so also appellatives have frequently the meaning and force of attributives. Thus, if we say, “he is a soldier,” it means either that he is by profession a soldier, or that he possesses all the qualities of a military man, whether professionally a soldier or not. According to the former acceptation of the term, it is a mere appellative; agreeably to the latter, it has the force of an attributive.