OBS. 8.—In English, as in other languages, when a verb has discordant nominatives connected disjunctively, it most commonly agrees expressly with that which is nearest, and only by implication, with the more remote; as, "When some word or words are dependent on the attribute."—Webster's Philos. Gram., p. 153. "To the first of these qualities, dulness or refinements are dangerous enemies."—Brown's Estimate, Vol. ii, p. 15. "He hazards his own life with that of his enemy, and one or both are very honorably murdered."—Webster's Essays, p. 235. "The consequence is, that they frown upon everyone whose faults or negligence interrupts or retards their lessons."—W. C. Woodbridge: Lit. Conv., p. 114. "Good intentions, or at least sincerity of purpose, was never denied her."—West's Letters, p. 43. "Yet this proves not that either he or we judge them to be the rule."—Barclay's Works, i, 157. "First clear yourselves of popery before you or thou dost throw it upon us."—Ib., i, 169. "Is the gospel or glad tidings of this salvation brought nigh unto all?"—Ib., i, 362. "Being persuaded, that either they, or their cause, is naught."—Ib., i, 504. "And the reader may judge whether he or I do most fully acknowledge man's fall."—Ib., iii, 332. "To do justice to the Ministry, they have not yet pretended that any one, or any two, of the three Estates, have power to make a new law, without the concurrence of the third."—Junius, Letter xvii. "The forest, or hunting-grounds, are deemed the property of the tribe."—Robertson's America, i, 313. "Birth or titles confer no preëminence."—Ib., ii, 184. "Neither tobacco nor hides were imported from Caraccas into Spain."—Ib., ii, 507. "The keys or seed-vessel of the maple has two large side-wings."—The Friend, vii, 97. "An example or two are sufficient to illustrate the general observation."—Dr. Murray's Hist. of Lang., i, 58.
"Not thou, nor those thy factious arts engage, Shall reap that harvest of rebellious rage."—Dryden, p. 60.
OBS. 9.—But when the remoter nominative is the principal word, and the nearer one is expressed parenthetically, the verb agrees literally with the former, and only by implication, with the latter; as, "One example, (or ten,) says nothing against it."—Leigh Hunt. "And we, (or future ages,) may possibly have a proof of it."—Bp. Butler. So, when the alternative is merely in the words, not in the thought, the former term is sometimes considered the principal one, and is therefore allowed to control the verb; but there is always a harshness in this mixture of different numbers, and, to render such a construction tolerable, it is necessary to read the latter term like a parenthesis, and make the former emphatic: as, "A parenthesis, or brackets, consists of two angular strokes, or hooks, enclosing one or more words."—Whiting's Reader, p. 28. "To show us that our own schemes, or prudence, have no share in our advancements."—Addison. "The Mexican figures, or picture-writing, represent things, not words; they exhibit images to the eye, not ideas to the understanding."—Murray's Gram., p. 243; English Reader, p. xiii. "At Travancore, Koprah, or dried cocoa-nut kernels, is monopolized by government."—Maunder's Gram., p. 12. "The Scriptures, or Bible, are the only authentic source."—Bp. Tomline's Evidences.
"Nor foes nor fortune take this power away;
And is my Abelard less kind than they?"—Pope, p. 334.
OBS. 10.—The English adjective being indeclinable, we have no examples of some of the forms of zeugma which occur in Latin and Greek. But adjectives differing in number, are sometimes connected without a repetition of the noun; and, in the agreement of the verb, the noun which is understood, is less apt to be regarded than that which is expressed, though the latter be more remote; as, "There are one or two small irregularities to be noted."—Lowth's Gram., p. 63. "There are one or two persons, and but one or two."—Hazlitt's Lectures. "There are one or two others."—Crombie's Treatise, p. 206. "There are one or two."—Blair's Rhet., p. 319. "There are one or more seminaries in every province."—H. E. Dwight: Lit. Conv., p. 133. "Whether one or more of the clauses are to be considered the nominative case."—Murray's Gram., Vol. i, p. 150. "So that, I believe, there is not more than one genuine example extant."—Knight, on the Greek Alphabet, p. 10. "There is, properly, no more than one pause or rest in the sentence."—Murray's Gram., Vol. i, p. 329; Blair's Rhet., p. 125. "Sometimes a small letter or two is added to the capital."—Adam's Lat. Gram., p. 223; Gould's, 283. Among the examples in the seventh paragraph above, there is one like this last, but with a plural verb; and if either is objectionable, is should here be are. The preceding example, too, is such as I would not imitate. To L. Murray, the following sentence seemed false syntax, because one does not agree with persons: "He saw one or more persons enter the garden."—Murray's Exercises, Rule 8th, p. 54. In his Key, he has it thus: "He saw one person, or more than one, enter the garden."—Oct. Gram., Vol. ii, p. 189. To me, this stiff correction, which many later grammarians have copied, seems worse than none. And the effect of the principle may be noticed in Murray's style elsewhere; as, "When a semicolon, or more than one, have preceded."—Octavo Gram., i, p. 277; Ingersoll's Gram., p. 288. Here a ready writer would be very apt to prefer one of the following phrases: "When a semicolon or two have preceded,"—"When one or two semicolons have preceded,"—"When one or more semicolons have preceded." It is better to write by guess, than to become systematically awkward in expression.
OBS. 11.—In Greek and Latin, the pronoun of the first person, according to our critics, is generally[398] placed first; as, "[Greek: Ego kai su ta dikaia poiæsomen]. Xen."—Milnes's Gr. Gram., p. 120. That is, "Ego et tu justa faciemus." Again: "Ego et Cicero valemus. Cic."—Buchanan's Pref., p. x; Adam's Gram., 206; Gould's, 203. "I and Cicero are well."—Ib. But, in English, a modest speaker usually gives to others the precedence, and mentions himself last; as, "He, or thou, or I, must go."—"Thou and I will do what is right."—"Cicero and I are well."—Dr. Adam.[399] Yet, in speaking of himself and his dependants, a person most commonly takes rank before them; as, "Your inestimable letters supported myself, my wife, and children, in adversity."—Lucien Bonaparte, Charlemagne, p. v. "And I shall be destroyed, I and my house."—Gen., xxxiv, 30. And in acknowledging a fault, misfortune, or censure, any speaker may assume the first place; as, "Both I and thou are in the fault."—Adam's Gram., p. 207. "Both I and you are in fault."—Buchanan's Syntax, p. ix. "Trusty did not do it; I and Robert did it."—Edgeworth's Stories.
"With critic scales, weighs out the partial wit,
What I, or you, or he, or no one writ."
—Lloyd's Poems, p. 162.
OBS. 12.—According to the theory of this work, verbs themselves are not unfrequently connected, one to an other, by and, or, or nor; so that two or more of them, being properly in the same construction, may be parsed as agreeing with the same nominative: as, "So that the blind and dumb [man] both spake and saw."—Matt., xii, 22. "That no one might buy or sell."—Rev., xiii, 17. "Which see not, nor hear, nor know."—Dan., v, 23. We have certainly very many examples like these, in which it is neither convenient nor necessary to suppose an ellipsis of the nominative before the latter verb, or before all but the first, as most of our grammarians do, whenever they find two or more finite verbs connected in this manner. It is true, the nominative may, in most instances, be repeated without injury to the sense; but this fact is no proof of such an ellipsis; because many a sentence which is not incomplete, may possibly take additional words without change of meaning. But these authors, (as I have already suggested under the head of conjunctions,) have not been very careful of their own consistency. If they teach, that, "Every finite verb has its own separate nominative, either expressed or implied," which idea Murray and others seem to have gathered from Lowth; or if they say, that, "Conjunctions really unite sentences, when they appear to unite only words," which notion they may have acquired from Harris; what room is there for that common assertion, that, "Conjunctions connect the same moods and tenses of verbs," which is a part of Murray's eighteenth rule, and found in most of our grammars? For no agreement is usually required between verbs that have separate nominatives; and if we supply a nominative wherever we do not find one for each verb, then in fact no two verbs will ever be connected by any conjunction.
OBS. 13.—What agreement there must be, between verbs that are in the same construction, it is not easy to determine with certainty. Some of the Latin grammarians tell us, that certain conjunctions connect "sometimes similar moods and tenses, and sometimes similar moods but different tenses." See Prat's Grammatica Latina, Octavo, Part ii, p. 95. Ruddiman, Adam, and Grant, omit the concord of tenses, and enumerate certain conjunctions which "couple like cases and moods." But all of them acknowledge some exceptions to their rules. The instructions of Lindley Murray and others, on this point, may be summed up in the following canon: "When verbs are connected by a conjunction, they must either agree in mood, tense, and form, or have separate nominatives expressed." This rule, (with a considerable exception to it, which other authors had not noticed.) was adopted by myself in the Institutes of English Grammar, and also retained in the Brief Abstract of that work, entitled, The First Lines of English Grammar. It there stands as the thirteenth in the series of principal rules; but, as there is no occasion to refer to it in the exercise of parsing, I now think, a less prominent place may suit it as well or better. The principle may be considered as being less certain and less important than most of the usual rules of syntax: I shall therefore both modify the expression of it, and place it among the notes of the present code. See Notes 5th and 6th below.
OBS. 14.—By the agreement of verbs with each other in form, it is meant, that the simple form and the compound, the familiar form and the solemn, the affirmative form and the negative, or the active form and the passive, are not to be connected without a repetition of the nominative. With respect to our language, this part of the rule is doubtless as important, and as true, as any other. A thorough agreement, then, in mood, tense, and form, is generally required, when verbs are connected by and, or, or nor; and, under each part of this concord, there may be cited certain errors which ought to be avoided, as will by-and-by be shown. But, at the same time, there seem to be many allowable violations of the rule, some or other of which may perhaps form exceptions to every part of it. For example, the tense may be varied, as it often is in Latin; thus, "As the general state of religion has been, is, or shall be, affected by them."—Butlers Analogy, p. 241. "Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shall be, because thou hast judged thus."—Rev., xvi, 5. In the former of these examples, a repetition of the nominative would not be agreeable; in the latter, it would perhaps be an improvement: as, "who art, and who wast, and who shalt be." (I here change the pronoun, because the relative which is not now applied as above.) "This dedication may serve for almost any book, that has been, or shall be published."—Campbell's Rhet. p. 207; Murray's Gram., p. 222. "It ought to be, 'has been, is, or shall be, published.'"—Crombie's Treatise, p. 383. "Truth and good sense are firm, and will establish themselves."—Blair's Rhet. p. 286. "Whereas Milton followed a different plan, and has given a tragic conclusion to a poem otherwise epic in its form."—Ib., p. 428. "I am certain, that such are not, nor ever were, the tenets of the church of England."—West's Letters, p. 148. "They deserve, and will meet with, no regard."—Blair's Rhet., p. 109.