[171] Lindley Murray, or some ignorant printer of his octavo Grammar, has omitted this s; and thereby spoiled the prosody, if not the sense, of the line:
"Of Sericana, where Chinese drive," &c. —Fourth American Ed., p. 345.
If there was a design to correct the error of Milton's word, something should have been inserted. The common phrase, "the Chinese," would give the sense, and the right number of syllables, but not the right accent. It would be sufficiently analogous with our mode of forming the words, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Scotchmen, Dutchmen, and Irishmen, and perhaps not unpoetical, to say:
"Of Sericana, where Chinese-men drive,
With sails and wind, their cany wagons light."
[172] The last six words are perhaps more frequently pronouns; and some writers will have well-nigh all the rest to be pronouns also. "In like manner, in the English, there have been rescued from the adjectives, and classed with the pronouns, any, aught, each, every, many, none, one, other, some, such, that, those, this, these; and by other writers, all, another, both, either, few, first, last, neither, and several."—Wilson's Essay on Gram., p. 106. Had the author said wrested, in stead of "rescued," he would have taught a much better doctrine. These words are what Dr. Lowth correctly called "Pronominal Adjectives."—Lowth's Gram., p. 24. This class of adjectives includes most of the words which Murray, Lennie, Bullions, Kirkham, and others, so absurdly denominate "Adjective Pronouns." Their "Distributive Adjective Pronouns, each, every, either, neither;" their "Demonstrative Adjective Pronouns, this, that, these, those;" and their "Indefinite Adjective Pronouns, some, other, any, one, all, such, &c.," are every one of them here; for they all are Adjectives, and not Pronouns. And it is obvious, that the corresponding words in Latin, Greek, or French, are adjectives likewise, and are, for the most part, so called; so that, from General Grammar, or "the usages of other languages," arises an argument for ranking them as adjectives, rather than as pronouns. But the learned Dr. Bullions, after improperly assuming that every adjective must "express the quality of a noun," and thence arguing that no such definitives can rightly be called adjectives, most absurdly suggests, that "other languages," or "the usages of other languages," generally assign to these English words the place of substitutes! But so remarkable for self-contradiction, as well as other errors, is this gentleman's short note upon the classification of these words, that I shall present the whole of it for the reader's consideration.
"NOTE. The distributives, demonstratives, and indefinites, cannot strictly be called pronouns; since they never stand instead of nouns, but always agree with a noun expressed or understood: Neither can they be properly called adjectives, since they never express the quality of a noun. They are here classed with pronouns, in accordance with the usages of other languages, which generally assign them this place. All these, together with the possessives, in parsing, may with sufficient propriety be termed adjectives, being uniformly regarded as such in syntax."—Bullions's Principles of English Gram., p. 27. (See also his Appendix III, E. Gram., p. 199.)
What a sample of grammatical instruction is here! The pronominal adjectives "cannot properly be called adjectives," but "they may with sufficient propriety be termed adjectives!" And so may "the possessives," or the personal pronouns in the possessive case! "Here," i.e., in Etymology, they are all "classed with pronouns;" but, "in Syntax," they are "uniformly regarded as adjectives!" Precious MODEL for the "Series of Grammars, English, Latin, and Greek, all on THE SAME PLAN!"
[173] Some, for somewhat, or in some degree, appears to me a vulgarism; as, "This pause is generally some longer than that of a period."—Sanborn's Gram., p. 271. The word what seems to have been used adverbially in several different senses; in none of which is it much to be commended: as, "Though I forbear, what am I eased?"—Job, xvi, 6. "What advantageth it me?"—1 Cor., xv, 32. Here what, means in what degree? how much? or wherein? "For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband?"—1 Cor., vii, 16. Here how would have been better. "The enemy, having his country wasted, what by himself and what by the soldiers, findeth succour in no place."—Spenser. Here what means partly;—"wasted partly by himself and partly by the soldiers." This use of what was formerly very common, but is now, I think, obsolete. What before an adjective seems sometimes to denote with admiration the degree of the quality; and is called, by some, an adverb; as, "What partial judges are our love and hate!"—Dryden. But here I take what to be an adjective; as when we say, such partial judges, some partial judges, &c. "What need I be forward with Death, that calls not on me?"—Shakspeare. Here what seems to be improperly put in place of why.
[174] Dr. Blair, in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, often uses the phrase "this much;" but it is, I think, more common to say "thus much," even when the term is used substantively.
[175] There seems to be no good reason for joining an and other: on the contrary, the phrase an other is always as properly two words, as the phrase the other, and more so. The latter, being long ago vulgarly contracted into t'other, probably gave rise to the apparent contraction another; which many people nowadays are ignorant enough to divide wrong, and mispronounce. See "a-no-ther" in Murray's Spelling-Book, p. 71; and "a-noth-er" in Emerson's, p. 76. An here excludes any other article; and both analogy and consistency require that the words be separated. Their union, like that of the words the and other, has led sometimes to an improper repetition of the article: as, "Another such a man," for, "An other such man."—"Bind my hair up. An 'twas yesterday? No, nor the t'other day."—BEN JONSON: in Joh. Dict. "He can not tell when he should take the tone, and when the tother."—SIR T. MOORE: Tooke's D. P., Vol. 15, p. 448. That is—"when he should take the one and when the other." Besides, the word other is declined, like a noun, and has the plural others; but the compounding of another constrains our grammarians to say, that this word "has no plural." All these difficulties will be removed by writing an other as two words. The printers chiefly rule this matter. To them, therefore, I refer it; with directions, not to unite these words for me, except where it has been done in the manuscript, for the sake of exactness in quotation.—G. BROWN.