The Grammar of English Grammars

by Goold Brown

"From the low earth aspiring genius springs,
And sails triumphant borne on eagle's wings."—Lloyd cor.

LESSON XIII.—TWO ERRORS

"An ostentatious, a feeble, a harsh, or an obscure style, for instance, is always faulty."—Dr. Blair cor. "Yet in this we find that the English pronounce quite agreeably to rule." Or thus: "Yet in this we find the English pronunciation perfectly agreeable to rule." Or thus: "Yet in this we find that the English pronounce in a manner perfectly agreeable to rule."—J. Walker cor. "But neither the perception of ideas, nor knowledge of any sort, is a habit, though absolutely necessary to the forming of habits."—Bp. Butler cor. "They were cast; and a heavy fine was imposed upon them."—Goldsmith cor. "Without making this reflection, he cannot enter into the spirit of the author, or relish the composition."—Dr. Blair cor. "The scholar should be instructed in relation to the finding of his words." Or thus: "The scholar should be told how to find his words."—Osborn cor. "And therefore they could neither have forged, nor have reversified them."—Knight cor. "A dispensary is a place at which medicines are dispensed to the poor."—L. Mur. cor. "Both the connexion and the number of words are determined by general laws."—Neef cor. "An Anapest has the first two syllables unaccented, and the last one accented; as, c~ontr~av=ene, acquiésce."—L. Mur. cor. "An explicative sentence is one in which a thing is said, in a direct manner, to be or not to be, to do or not to do, to suffer or not to suffer."—Lowth and Mur. cor. "BUT is a conjunction whenever it is neither an adverb nor a preposition." [551]—R. C. Smith cor. "He wrote in the name of King Ahasuerus, and sealed the writing with the king's ring."—Bible cor. "Camm and Audland had departed from the town before this time."—Sewel cor. "Before they will relinquish the practice, they must be convinced."—Webster cor. "Which he had thrown up before he set out."—Grimshaw cor. "He left to him the value of a hundred drachms in Persian money."—Spect cor. "All that the mind can ever contemplate concerning them, must be divided among the three."—Cardell cor. "Tom Puzzle is one of the most eminent immethodical disputants, of all that have fallen under my observation."—Spect. cor. "When you have once got him to think himself compensated for his suffering, by the praise which is given him for his courage."—Locke cor. "In all matters in which simple reason, or mere speculation is concerned."—Sheridan cor. "And therefore he should be spared from the trouble of attending to anything else than his meaning."—Id. "It is this kind of phraseology that is distinguished by the epithet idiomatical; a species that was originally the spawn, partly of ignorance, and partly of affectation."—Campbell and Murray cor. "That neither the inflection nor the letters are such as could have been employed by the ancient inhabitants of Latium."—Knight cor. "In those cases in which the verb is intended to be applied to any one of the terms."—L. Murray cor. "But these people who know not the law, are accursed."—Bible cor. "And the magnitude of the choruses has weight and sublimity."—Gardiner cor. "Dares he deny that there are some of his fraternity guilty?"—Barclay cor. "Giving an account of most, if not all, of the papers which had passed betwixt them."—Id. "In this manner, as to both parsing and correcting, should all the rules of syntax be treated, being taken up regularly according to their order."—L. Murray cor. "To Ovando were allowed a brilliant retinue and a body-guard."—Sketch cor. "Was it I or he, that you requested to go?"—Kirkham cor. "Let thee and me go on."—Bunyan cor. "This I nowhere affirmed; and I do wholly deny it."—Barclay cor. "But that I deny; and it remains for him to prove it."—Id. "Our country sinks beneath the yoke: She weeps, she bleeds, and each new day a gash Is added to her wounds."—Shak. cor. "Thou art the Lord who chose Abraham and brought him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees."—Bible and Mur. cor. "He is the exhaustless fountain, from which emanate all these attributes that exist throughout this wide creation."—Wayland cor. "I am he who has communed with the son of Neocles; I am he who has entered the gardens of pleasure."—Wright cor.

"Such were in ancient times the tales received,
Such by our good forefathers were believed."—Rowe cor.

LESSON XIV.—TWO ERRORS.

"The noun or pronoun that stands before the active verb, usually represents the agent."—A. Murray cor. "Such seem to have been the musings of our hero of the grammar-quill, when he penned the first part of his grammar."—Merchant cor. "Two dots, the one placed above the other [:], are called Sheva, and are used to represent a very short e."—Wilson cor. "Great have been, and are, the obscurity and difficulty, in the nature and application of them" [: i.e.—of natural remedies].—Butler cor. "As two are to four, so are four to eight."—Everest cor. "The invention and use of arithmetic, reach back to a period so remote, as to be beyond the knowledge of history."— Robertson cor. "What it presents as objects of contemplation or enjoyment, fill and satisfy his mind."—Id. "If he dares not say they are, as I know he dares not, how must I then distinguish?"—Barclay cor. "He had now grown so fond of solitude, that all company had become uneasy to him."—Life of Cic. cor. "Violence and spoil are heard in her; before me continually are grief and wounds."—Bible cor. "Bayle's Intelligence from the Republic of Letters, which makes eleven volumes in duodecimo, is truly a model in this kind."—Formey cor. "Pauses, to be rendered pleasing and expressive, must not only be made in the right place, but also be accompanied with a proper tone of voice."—L. Murray cor. "To oppose the opinions and rectify the mistakes of others, is what truth and sincerity sometimes require of us."—Locke cor. "It is very probable, that this assembly was called, to clear some doubt which the king had, whether it were lawful for the Hollanders to throw off the monarchy of Spain, and withdraw entirely their allegiance to that crown." Or:—"About the lawfulness of the Hollanders' rejection of the monarchy of Spain, and entire withdrawment of their allegiance to that crown."—L. Murray cor. "A naming of the numbers and cases of a noun in their order, is called the declining of it, or its declension."—Frost cor. "The embodying of them is, therefore, only a collecting of such component parts of words."—Town cor. "The one is the voice heard when Christ was baptized; the other, when he was transfigured."—Barclay cor. "An understanding of the literal sense"—or, "To have understood the literal sense, would not have prevented them from condemning the guiltless."—Bp. Butler cor. "As if this were, to take the execution of justice out of the hands of God, and to give it to nature."—Id. "They will say, you must conceal this good opinion of yourself; which yet is an allowing of the thing, though not of the showing of it." Or:—"which yet is, to allow the thing, though not the showing of it."—Sheffield cor. "So as to signify not only the doing of an action, but the causing of it to be done."—Pike cor. "This, certainly, was both a dividing of the unity of God, and a limiting of his immensity."—Calvin cor. "Tones being infinite in number, and varying in almost every individual, the arranging of them under distinct heads, and the reducing of them to any fixed and permanent rules, may be considered as the last refinement in language."—Knight cor. "The fierce anger of the Lord shall not return, until he hath done it, and until he hath performed the intents of his heart."—Bible cor. "We seek for deeds more illustrious and heroic, for events more diversified and surprising."—Dr. Blair cor. "We distinguish the genders, or the male and the female sex, in four different ways."—Buchanan cor. "Thus, ch and g are ever hard. It is therefore proper to retain these sounds in those Hebrew names which have not been modernized, or changed by public use."—Dr. Wilson cor. "A Substantive, or Noun, is the name of any thing which is conceived to subsist, or of which we have any notion."—Murray and Lowth cor. "A Noun is the name of any thing which exists, or of which we have, or can form, an idea."—Maunder cor. "A Noun is the name of any thing in existence, or of any thing of which we can form an idea."—Id. "The next thing to be attended to, is, to keep him exactly to the speaking of truth."—Locke cor. "The material, the vegetable, and the animal world, receive this influence according to their several capacities."—Dial cor. "And yet it is fairly defensible on the principles of the schoolmen; if those things can be called principles, which consist merely in words."—Campbell cor.

"Art thou so bare, and full of wretchedness,
And fearst to die? Famine is in thy cheeks,
Need and oppression starve in thy sunk eyes."—Shak. cor.

LESSON XV.—THREE ERRORS.

"The silver age is reckoned to have commenced at the death of Augustus, and to have continued till the end of Trajan's reign."—Gould cor. "Language has indeed become, in modern times, more correct, and more determinate."—Dr. Blair cor. "It is evident, that those words are the most agreeable to the ear, which are composed of smooth and liquid sounds, and in which there is a proper intermixture of vowels and consonants."—Id. "It would have had no other effect, than to add to the sentence an unnecessary word."—Id. "But as rumours arose, that the judges had been corrupted by money in this cause, these gave occasion to much popular clamour, and threw a heavy odium on Cluentius."—Id. "A Participle is derived from a verb, and partakes of the nature both of the verb and of an adjective."—Ash and Devis cor. "I shall have learned my grammar before you will have learned yours."—Wilbur and Livingston cor. "There is no other earthly object capable of making so various and so forcible impressions upon the human mind, as a complete speaker."—Perry cor. "It was not the carrying of the bag, that made Judas a thief and a hireling."—South cor. "As the reasonable soul and the flesh are one man, so God and man are one Christ."—Creed cor. "And I will say to them who were not my people, Ye are my people; and they shall say, Thou art our God."—Bible cor. "Where there is in the sense nothing that requires the last sound to be elevated or suspended, an easy fall, sufficient to show that the sense is finished, will be proper."—L. Mur. cor. "Each party produce words in which the letter a is sounded in the manner for which they contend."—J. Walker cor. "To countenance persons that are guilty of bad actions, is scarcely one remove from an actual commission of the same crimes."—L. Mur. cor. "'To countenance persons that are guilty of bad actions,' is a phrase or clause which is made the subject of the verb 'is.'"—Id. "What is called the splitting of particles,—that is, the separating of a preposition from the noun which it governs, is always to be avoided."—Dr. Blair et al. cor. (See Obs. 15th on Rule 23d.) "There is properly but one pause, or rest, in the sentence; and this falls betwixt the two members into which the sentence is divided."—Iid. "To go barefoot, does not at all help a man on, in the way to heaven."—Steele cor. "There is nobody who does not condemn this in others, though many overlook it in themselves."—Locke cor. "Be careful not to use the same word in the same sentence either too frequently or in different senses."—L. Murray cor. "Nothing could have made her more unhappy, than to have married a man of such principles."—Id. "A warlike, various, and tragical age is the best to write of, but the worst to write in."—Cowley cor. "When thou instancest Peter's babtizing [sic—KTH] of Cornelius."—Barclay cor. "To introduce two or more leading thoughts or topics, which have no natural affinity or mutual dependence."—L. Murray cor. "Animals, again, are fitted to one an other, and to the elements or regions in which they live, and to which they are as appendices."—Id. "This melody, however, or so frequent varying of the sound of each word, is a proof of nothing, but of the fine ear of that people."—Jamieson cor. "They can, each in its turn, be used upon occasion."—Duncan cor. "In this reign, lived the poets Gower and Chaucer, who are the first authors that can properly be said to have written English."—Bucke cor. "In translating expressions of this kind, consider the [phrase] 'it is' as if it were they are."—W. Walker cor. "The chin has an important office to perform; for, by the degree of its activity, we disclose either a polite or a vulgar pronunciation."—Gardiner cor. "For no other reason, than that he was found in bad company."—Webster cor. "It is usual to compare them after the manner of polysyllables."—Priestley cor. "The infinitive mood is recognized more easily than any other, because the preposition TO precedes it."—Bucke cor. "Prepositions, you recollect, connect words, and so do conjunctions: how, then, can you tell a conjunction from a preposition?" Or:—"how, then, can you distinguish the former from the latter?"—R. C. Smith cor.

"No kind of work requires a nicer touch,
And, this well finish'd, none else shines so much."
—Sheffield cor.