The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown (free ebook reader .txt) 📕

most agreeable of all amusements, and finding no obstruction in its progress, advances far into the sensitive part of our nature; and gains imperceptibly a thorough knowledge of the human heart, of its desires, and of every motive to action."—Kames, El. of Crit., i, 42.

   "They please, are pleased; they give to get esteem;
    Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem."—Goldsmith.

LESSON VII.—ADVERBS.

"How cheerfully, how freely, how regularly, how constantly, how unweariedly, how powerfully, how extensively, he communicateth his convincing, his enlightening, his heart-penetrating, warming, and melting; his soul-quickening, healing, refreshing, directing, and fructifying influence!"—Brown's Metaphors, p. 96.

"The passage, I grant, requires to be well and naturally read, in order to be promptly comprehended; but surely there are very few passages worth comprehending, either of verse or prose, that can be promptly understood, when they are read unnaturally and ill."—Thelwall's Lect. "They waste life in what are called good resolutions—partial efforts at reformation, feebly commenced, heartlessly conducted, and hopelessly concluded."—Maturin's Sermons, p. 262.

"A man may, in respect of grammatical purity, speak unexceptionably, and yet speak obscurely and ambiguously; and though we cannot say, that a man may speak properly, and at the same time speak unintelligibly, yet this last case falls more naturally to be considered as an offence against perspicuity, than as a violation of propriety."—Jamieson's Rhet., p. 104.

"Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblamably we behaved ourselves among you that believe."—1 Thes., ii, 10.

"The question is not, whether they know what is said of Christ in the Scriptures; but whether they know it savingly, truly, livingly, powerfully."—Penington's Works, iii, 28.

   "How gladly would the man recall to life
    The boy's neglected sire! a mother too,
    That softer friend, perhaps more gladly still,
    Might he demand them at the gates of death!"—Cowper.

LESSON VIII.—CONJUNCTIONS.

"Every person's safety requires that he should submit to be governed; for if one man may do harm without suffering punishment, every man has the same right, and no person can be safe."—Webster's Essays, p. 38.

"When it becomes a practice to collect debts by law, it is a proof of corruption and degeneracy among the people. Laws and courts are necessary, to settle controverted points between man and man; but a man should pay an acknowledged debt, not because there is a law to oblige him, but because it is just and honest, and because he has promised to pay it."—Ib., p. 42.

"The liar, and only the liar, is invariably and universally despised, abandoned, and disowned. It is therefore natural to expect, that a crime thus generally detested, should be generally avoided."—Hawkesworth.

"When a man swears to the truth of his tale, he tacitly acknowledges that his bare word does not deserve credit. A swearer will lie, and a liar is not to be believed even upon his oath; nor is he believed, when he happens to speak the truth."—Red Book, p. 108.

"John Adams replied, 'I know Great Britain has determined on her system, and that very determination determines me on mine. You know I have been constant and uniform in opposition to her measures. The die is now cast. I have passed the Rubicon. Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish with my country, is my unalterable determination.'"—SEWARD'S Life of John Quincy Adams, p. 26.

"I returned, and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all."—Ecclesiastes, ix, 11.

   "Little, alas! is all the good I can;
    A man oppress'd, dependent, yet a man."—Pope, Odys., B. xiv, p. 70.

LESSON IX.—PREPOSITIONS.

"He who legislates only for a party, is engraving his name on the adamantine pillar of his country's history, to be gazed on forever as an object of universal detestation."—Wayland's Moral Science, p. 401.

"The Greek language, in the hands of the orator, the poet, and the historian, must be allowed to bear away the palm from every other known in the world; but to that only, in my opinion, need our own yield the precedence."—Barrow's Essays, p. 91.

"For my part, I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation, is incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew."—Burke, on Taste, p. 37. Better—"on which truths grow."

"All that I have done in this difficult part of grammar, concerning the proper use of prepositions, has been to make a few general remarks upon the subject; and then to give a collection of instances, that have occurred to me, of the improper use of some of them."—Priestley's Gram., p. 155.

"This is not an age of encouragement for works of elaborate research and real utility. The genius of the trade of literature is necessarily unfriendly to such productions."—Thelwall's Lect., p. 102.

"At length, at the end of a range of trees, I saw three figures seated on a bank of moss, with a silent brook creeping at their feet."—Steele.

   "Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulph'rous bolt,
    Splitst the unwedgeable and gnarled oak."—Shakspeare.

LESSON X.—INTERJECTIONS.

"Hear the word of the Lord, O king of Judah, that sittest upon the throne of David; thou, and thy servants, and thy people, that enter in by these gates: thus saith the Lord, Execute ye judgement and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor."—Jeremiah, xxii, 2, 3.

"Therefore, thus saith the Lord concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, They shall not lament for him, saying, Ah my brother! or, Ah sister! they shall not lament for him, saying, Ah lord! or, Ah his glory! He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem."—Jer., xxii, 18, 19.

"O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires."—Isaiah, liv, 11.

   "O prince! O friend! lo! here thy Medon stands;
    Ah! stop the hero's unresisted hands."
        —Pope, Odys., B. xxii, l. 417.

    "When, lo! descending to our hero's aid,
    Jove's daughter Pallas, war's triumphant maid!"
        —Ib., B. xxii, l. 222.

    "O friends! oh ever exercised in care!
    Hear Heaven's commands, and reverence what ye hear!"
        —Ib., B. xii, l. 324.

    "Too daring prince! ah, whither dost thou run?
    Ah, too forgetful of thy wife and you!"
        —Pope's Iliad, B. vi, l. 510.

CHAPTER II.—ARTICLES.

In this chapter, and those which follow it, the Rules of Syntax are again exhibited, in the order of the parts of speech, with Examples, Exceptions, Observations, Notes, and False Syntax. The Notes are all of them, in form and character, subordinate rules of syntax, designed for the detection of errors. The correction of the False Syntax placed under the rules and notes, will form an oral exercise, similar to that of parsing, and perhaps more useful.[334]

RULE I.—ARTICLES.

Articles relate to the nouns which they limit:[335] as, "At a little distance from the ruins of the abbey, stands an aged elm."

   "See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing,
    The sot a hero, lunatic a king."—Pope's Essay, Ep. ii, l. 268.

EXCEPTION FIRST.

The definite article used intensively, may relate to an adjective or adverb of the comparative or the superlative degree; as, "A land which was the mightiest."—Byron. "The farther they proceeded, the greater appeared their alacrity."—Dr. Johnson. "He chooses it the rather"—Cowper. See Obs. 10th, below.

EXCEPTION SECOND.

The indefinite article is sometimes used to give a collective meaning to what seems a plural adjective of number; as, "Thou hast a few names even in Sardis."—Rev., iii, 4. "There are a thousand things which crowd into my memory."—Spectator, No. 468. "The centurion commanded a hundred men."—Webster. See Etymology, Articles, Obs. 26.

OBSERVATIONS ON RULE I.

OBS. 1.—The article is a kind of index, usually pointing to some noun; and it is a general, if not a universal, principle, that no one noun admits of more than one article. Hence, two or more articles in a sentence are signs of two or more nouns; and hence too, by a very convenient ellipsis, an article before an adjective is often made to relate to a noun understood; as, "The grave [people] rebuke the gay [people], and the gay [people] mock the grave" [people].—Maturin's Sermons, p. 103. "The wise [persons] shall inherit glory."—Prov., iii, 35. "The vile [person] will talk villainy."—Coleridge's Lay Sermons, p. 105: see Isaiah, xxxii, 6. "The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple" [ones].—Psal., xix, 7. "The Old [Testament] and the New Testament are alike authentic."—"The animal [world] and the vegetable world are adapted to each other."—"An epic [poem] and a dramatic poem are the same in substance."—Ld. Kames, El. of Crit., ii, 274. "The neuter verb is conjugated like the active" [verb].—Murray's Gram., p. 99. "Each section is supposed to contain a heavy [portion] and a light portion; the heavy [portion] being the accented syllable, and the light [portion] the unaccented" [syllable].—Rush, on the Voice, p. 364.

OBS. 2.—Our language does not, like the French, require a repetition of the article before every noun in a series; because the same article may serve to limit the signification of several nouns, provided they all stand in the same construction. Hence the following sentence is bad English: "The understanding and language have a strict connexion."—Murray's Gram., i, p. 356. The sense of the former noun only was meant to be limited. The expression therefore should have been, "Language and the understanding have a strict connexion," or, "The understanding has a strict connexion with language." In some instances, one article seems to limit the sense of several nouns that are not all in the same construction, thus: "As it proves a greater or smaller obstruction to the speaker's or writer's aim."—Campbell's Rhet., p. 200. That is—"to the aim of the speaker or the writer." It is, in fact, the possessive, that limits the other nouns; for, "a man's foes" means, "the foes of a man;" and, "man's wisdom," means, "the wisdom of man." The governing noun cannot have an article immediately before it. Yet the omission of articles, when it occurs, is not properly by ellipsis, as some grammarians declare it to be; for there never can be a proper ellipsis of an article, when there is not also an ellipsis of its noun. Ellipsis supposes the omitted words to be necessary to the construction, when they are not so to the sense; and this, it would seem, cannot be the case with a mere article. If such a sign be in any wise necessary, it ought to be used; and if not needed in any respect, it cannot be said to be understood. The definite article being generally required before adjectives that are used by ellipsis as nouns, we in this case repeat it before every term in a series; as, "They are singled out from among their fellows, as the kind, the amiable, the sweet-tempered, the upright."—Dr. Chalmers.

"The great, the gay, shall they partake The heav'n that thou alone canst make?"—Cowper.

OBS. 3.—The article precedes its noun, and is never, by itself, placed after it; as, "Passion is the drunkenness of the mind."—Southey. When an adjective likewise precedes the noun, the article is usually placed before the adjective, that its power of limitation may extend over that also; as, "A concise writer compresses his thoughts into the fewest possible words."—Blair's Rhet., p. 176.

"The private path, the secret acts of men, If noble, far the noblest of their lives."—Young.

OBS. 4.—The relative position of the article and the adjective is seldom a matter of indifference. Thus, it is good English to say, "both the men," or, "the two men;" but we can by no means say, "the both men" or, "two the men." Again, the two phrases, "half a dollar," and "a half dollar," though both good, are by no means equivalent. Of the pronominal adjectives, some exclude the article; some precede it; and some follow it, like other adjectives. The word same is seldom, if ever used without the definite article or some stronger definitive before it; as, "On the same day,"—"in that same hour,"—"These same gentlemen." After the adjective both, the definite article may be used, but it is generally unnecessary, and this is a sufficient reason for omitting it: as, "The following sentences will fully exemplify, to the young grammarian, both the parts of this rule."—Murray's Gram., i,