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cannot possibly be taken ”as _the subject_ of the affirmation” Lindley Murray, who literally copies Priestley's note, (all but the first line and the last,) rejects these two exa for the former, ”His meat _was_ locusts and wild honey,” and for the latter, ”The wages of sin _is_ death” He very evidently supposes all three of his exa to Churchill, he is at fault in two instances out of the three; and still ard to the note, or rule, itself In stead of being ”a rule in all grammars,” it is (so far as I know) found only in these authors, and such as have ier, Ingersoll, R C Smith, Fisk, and Merchant Churchill, who cites it only as Murray's, and yet expends two pages of criticism upon it, very justly says: ”To make that the nominative case, [or subject of the affirmation,] which happens to stand nearest to the verb, appears to me to be on a par with the blunder pointed out in note 204th;” [that is, of ree with an objective case which happens to stand nearer to it, than its subject, or nominative]-- _Churchill's New Gram_, p 313
[393] ”If the excellence of Dryden's works was _lessened_ by his indigence, their number was increased”--_Dr Johnson_ This is an example of the proper and necessary use of the indicative arded as a fact But Dr Webster, who prefers the indicative _too often_, has the following note upon it: ”If Johnson had followed the corammars, or even his ohich is prefixed to his Dictionary, he would have written _were_--'If the excellence of Dryden's works _were_ lessened'--Fortunately this great lish, instead of grammar_”-- _Philosophical Gram_, p 238 Now this is as absurd, as it is characteristic of the graht sometimes, and neither can be used for the other, without error
[394] Taking this allegation in one sense, the readerhere; and that, had he condemned the _solecisms_ adopted by himself and others, about ”_unity of idea_” and ”_plurality of idea_,” in stead of condeht have ht See a footnote on page 738, under the head of _Absurdities_
[395] In his _English Reader_, (Part II, Chap 5th, Sec 7th,) Murray has this line in its proper form, as it here stands in the words of Thomson; but, in his _Grammar_, he corrupted it, first in his _Exercises_, and then stillhis examples of ”_False Syntax_” it stands thus:
”What black despair, what horror, _fills_ his _mind_!”
--_Exercises_, Rule 2
So the error is propagated in the naraersoll's Gram_, p 242; _Smith's New Gram_, p 127; _Fisk's Gram_, p 120; _Weld's E Gram_, 2d Ed, p 189; I ”_as_” a ”_preposition_,” perverts the construction of sentences like this, and inserts a wrong case after the conjunction See _Clark's Practical Grammar_, pp 92 and 178; also _this Syntax_, Obs 6 and Obs 18, on Conjunctions
[397] Murray gives us the following text for false grath_: ”And Elias with Moses appeared to them”--_Exercises_, 8vo, p 135 This he corrects thus: ”And _there appeared to them_ Elias with Moses”--_Key_, 8vo, p 266 He omits the comma after _Elias_, which some copies of the Bible contain, and others do not Whether he supposed the verb _appeared_ to be singular or plural, I cannot tell; and he did not extend his quotation to the pronoun _they_, which iruity lies
[398] This order of the persons, is _not universally_ es The words of Mary to her son, ”Thy _father and I_ have sought thee sorrowing,” seeive the precedence to her husband; and this is their arrangement in St Luke's Greek, and in the Latin versions, as well as in others
[399] The hackneyed exao et Cicero valeralish, and yet is ascribed to Cicero himself, deserves a word of explanation Cicero the orator, having with hi son Marcus Cicero at Athens, while his beloved daughter Tullia ith her mother in Italy, thus wrote to his wife, Terentia: ”_Si tu, et Tullia, lux nostra, valetix; ego, et suavissimus Cicero, valemus_”--EPIST AD FAM Lib xiv, Ep v
That is, ”If thou, and Tullia, our joy, are well; I, and the sweet lad Cicero, are likeell” This literal translation is good English, and not to be aive precedence to his child But, when I was a boy, the text and version of Dr
Adam puzzled me not a little; because I could not conceive how _Cicero_ could ever have said, ”_I and Cicero are well_” The garbled citation is now inal See it in _Crombie's Treatise_, p
243; _McCulloch's Graulars connected by _and_, when they form a part of such a disjunction, are still equivalent to a plural; and are to be treated as such, in the syntax of the verb Hence the following construction appears to be inaccurate: ”A single consonant or _a mute and a liquid_ before an accented vowel, _is_ joined to that vowel”--_Dr Bullions, Lat Gram_ p
xi
[401] Murray the schoollish Gra tense_ Dr Bullions has it, ”_usually governs_”--_Lat Graht--G B
[402] The two verbs _to sit_ and _to set_ are in general quite different in their ; but the passive verb _to be set_ sometimes comes pretty near to the sense of the former, which is for the most part neuter Hence, we not only find the Latin word _sedeo, to sit_, used in the sense of _being set_, as, ”Ingens coena _sedet_,” ”A huge supper _is set_,” _Juv_, 2, 119; but, in the seven texts above, our translators have used _is set, was set, &c_, with reference to the personal posture of _sitting_ This, in the opinion of Dr Lowth and some others, is erroneous ”_Set_,” says the Doctor, ”can be no part of the verb _to sit_ If it belong to the verb _to set_, the translation in these passages is wrong For _to set_, signifies _to place_, but without any designation of the _posture_ of the person placed; which is a circuinal”--_Lowth's Graentlemen cite three of these seven examples, and refer to the other four; but they do not tell us how they would amend any of them--except that they prefer _sitten_ to _sat_, vainly endeavouring to restore an old participle which is certainly obsolete If any critic dislike my version of the last two texts, because I use the present tense for what in the Greek is the first aorist; let him notice that this has been done in both by our translators, and in one by those of the Vulgate In the preceding example, too, the same aorist is rendered, ”_ah Montanus and the Vulgate render it literally by ”_sedi_,” as I do by _sat_ See _Key to False Syntax_, Rule XVII, Note xii
[403] Nutting, I suppose, did not ilish or Saxon verb _do_, to be equivalent or kindred words But there is no knohat tery may not contrive to identify, or at least to approxienious David Booth, if he does not actually identify _do_, with [Greek: to], _the_, has discovered synonyether as unapparent to common observers: as, ”_It_ and _the_,” says he, ”when Gender is not attended to, are _synonyeneral, and when used Verbally, signifies to _bring forth_, or to _add_ to e already see _The, it, and, add, at, to_, and _do_, are _kindred words_ They mark that an _addition_ is made to sonifies _add_, (like _at_ and the Latin _ad_,) is merely a different pronunciation of _do_ It expresses the _junction_ of an other thing, or circuraphy of _too_”--_Introd to analyt Dict_, p 45
Horne Tooke, it seems, could not persuade this author into his notion of the derivation andof _the, it, to_, or _do_ But Lindley Murray, and his followers, have been”To,” say they, ”conify action, effect, termination, to act, &c”--_Murray's Gram_, 8vo, p 183; _Fisk's_, 92 What an adreat Couided by _judgment_, and [when] _proper lireat attention!”--_Ib_, p 135 According to his own express rules for interpreting ”a substantive _without any article to limit it_” and the ”relative pronoun _with a comma before it_,” he must have meant, that ”_to_ comes from Saxon and Gothic words” _of every sort_, and that _the words of these two languages_ ”signify action, effect, terh: but, concerning the former, a man of sense may demur Nor do I see how it is possible not to despise _such_ etyy, be the interpretation of the words what it may For, if _to_ means _action_ or _to act_, then our little infinitive phrase, _to be_, must mean, _action be_, or _to act be_; and what is this, but nonsense?
[404] So, froe of three modern authors, one cannot but infer, that they would parse the verb _as governed by the preposition_; but I do not perceive that they anywhere expressly say so:
(1) ”The Infinitive is the form of the supplemental verb that always has, or adeneral character is to represent the action in _prospect_, or _to do_; or in _retrospect_, as _to have done_ As a verb, it signifies _to do_ the action; and as _object of the preposition_ TO, it stands in the place of a noun for _the doing_ of it The infinitive verb and its prefix _to_ are used much like a preposition and its noun object”--_Felch's Conification of a verb eneral sense, without any lient, but _merely as the end or purpose_ of so; it is, from this want of limitation, said to be in the _Infinitive mode_; and is expressed by the verb with the _preposition_ TO before it, to denote _this relation of end or purpose_; as, 'He caht for hilish Gram_, p 35
(3) ”RULE 3 A verb in the Infinitive Mode, is _the object_ of the preposition TO, expressed or understood”--_S W Clark's Practical Grarammarian of some skill, supposes that in all such sentences there was ”_anciently_” an ellipsis, not of the phrase ”_in order to_,” but of the preposition _for_ He says, ”Considering this ht be observed, that the infinitive, when it expresses the _object_, is governed by a _transitive_ verb; and, when it expresses the _final cause_, is governed by an _intransitive_ verb, OR ANCIENTLY, BY A PREPOSITION UNDERSTOOD Of the former kind--'he learns _to read_' Of the latter--'he reads _to learn_,' i e '_for_ to learn'”--_Practical Gram_, p 101 If _for_ was anciently understood in exareater extent; because we do not now insert the word _for_, as our ancestors sorow obsolete, than by a continual use of as once occasionally omitted
[406] (1) ”La preposition, est un mot indeclinable, place devant les noit_”--”The preposition is an indeclinable word placed before the nouns, pronouns, and _verbs_ which it _governs_”--_Perrin's Grammar_, p 152
(2) ”Every verb placed imht to be put in the _infinitive_; because it is then _the regimen_ of the verb or preposition which precedes”--See _La Grammaire des Grammaires, par Girault Du Vivier_, p 774
(3) The American translator of the Elements of General Gra a version of his author's lish infinitivethe word _to_ a preposition, and the exponent, or sign, of a _relation_ between the verb which follows it, and some other hich is antecedent to it Thus, in the phrase, ”_co_ them _to use_ his power,” he says, that ”'_to_' [is the] Exponent of a relation whose Antecedent is '_co_,' and [whose] Consequent [is]
'_use_'”--_Fosdick's De Sacy_, p 131 In short, he expounds the word _to_ in this relation, just as he does when it stands before the objective case
For exa to him alone: 'to_,' Exponent of a relation of which the Antecedent is '_belonging_,' and the Consequent, '_him alone'”--Ib_, p 126 My solution, in either case, differs fro else than the _choice of words_ to express it
(4) It appears that, in sundry dialects of the north of Europe, the preposition _at_ has been preferred for the governing of the infinitive: ”The use of _at_ for _to_, as the sign of the infinitive ular prefix in Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, and Feroic It is also found in the northern dialects of the Old English, and in the particular dialect of Weste_, 8vo, 1850, p 46
[407] Here is a literal version, in which two infinitives are governed by the preposition _between_; and though such a construction is uncoht less accurate in the one language than in the other In some exceptive phrases, also, it seems not improper to put the infinitive after some other preposition than _to_; as, ”What can she do _besides sing_?”--”What has she done, _except rock_ herself?” But such expressions, if allowable, are too unfrequent to be noticed in any general Rule of syntax In the following exaoverns the infinitive: ”Intemperance characterizes our discussions, that is calculated to embitter in stead _of conciliate_”--CINCINNATI HERALD: _Liberator_, No 986