[67] These are much disused in common discourse, and are retained only in the Solemn, or Formulary Style. “They [our Authors] have of late, ’tis true, reformed in some measure the gouty joints and darning-work of whereunto’s, whereby’s, thereof’s, therewith’s, and the rest of this kind; by which complicated periods are so curiously strung, or hook’d on, one to another, after the long-spun manner of the bar or pulpit.” Lord Shaftesbury, Miscel. V.
[68] Or in these and the like Phrases, may not me, thee, him, her, us, which in Saxon are the Dative Cases of their respective Pronouns, be considered as still continuing such in the English, and including in their very form the force of the Prepositions to and for? There are certainly some other Phrases, which are to be resolved in this manner: “Wo is me!” The Phrase is pure Saxon; “wa is me:” me is the Dative Case; in English, with the Preposition to me. So, “methinks;” Saxon, “me thincth,” εμοι δοκει. “O well is thee!” Psal. cxxviii. 2. “Wel is him that ther mai be.” Anglo-Saxon Poem in Hickes’s Thesaur. Vol. I. p. 231. “Well is him, that dwelleth with a wife of understanding.”⸺“Well is him, that hath found prudence.” Ecclus. xxv. 8, 9. The Translator thought to correct his phrase afterward, and so hath made it neither Saxon nor English: “Well is he, that is defended from it.” Ecclus. xxviii. 19. “Wo worth the day!” Ezek. xxx. 2. that is, Wo be to the day. The word worth is not the Adjective, but the Saxon Verb weorthan, or worthan, fieri, to be, to become; which is often used by Chaucer, and is still retained as an Auxiliary Verb in the German Language.
[69] That has been used in the same manner, as including the Relative which; but it is either improper, or obsolete: as, “To consider advisedly of that is moved.” Bacon, Essay xxii. “She appeared not to wish that without doubt she would have been very glad of.” Clarendon, Hist. Vol. II. p. 363. 8ᵛᵒ. “We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen.” John iii. 11.
[70] “Who, instead of going about doing good, they are perpetually intent upon doing mischief.” Tillotson, Vol. I. Serm. 18. The Nominative Case they in this sentence is superfluous; it was expressed before in the Relative who.
[71] “I am the Lord, that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone:”⸺Isaiah xliv. 24. Thus far is right: the Lord in the third Person is the Antecedent, and the Verb agrees with the Relative in the third Person: “I am the Lord, which Lord, or He that, maketh all things.” It would have been equally right, if I had been made the Antecedent, and the Relative and the Verb had agreed with it in the First Person: “I am the Lord, that make all things.” But when it follows, “that spreadeth abroad the heavens by myself;” there arises a confusion of Persons, and a manifest Solecism.
“Thou great first Cause, least understood!
Who all my sense confin’d
To know but this, that Thou art good,
And that myself am blind:
Yet gave me in this dark estate,” &c.