The Grammar of English Grammars - Goold Brown (spiritual books to read TXT) 📗

the verb to be is understood after it; As, You are taller than he, and not taller than him; because at full length, it would be, You are taller than he is; but since it is allowed, that the oblique case should follow prepositions; and since the comparative degree of an adjective, and the particle than have, certainly, between them, the force of a preposition, expressing the relation of one word to another, they ought to require the oblique case of the pronoun following."—Priestley's Gram., p. 105. If than were a preposition, this reasoning would certainly be right; but the Doctor begs the question, by assuming that it is a preposition. William Ward, an other noted grammarian of the same age, supposes that, "ME sapientior es, may be translated, Thou art wiser THAN ME." He also, in the same place, avers, that, "The best English Writers have considered than as a Sign of an oblique Case; as, 'She suffers more THAN ME.' Swift, i.e. more than I suffer.

    'Thou art a Girl as much brighter THAN HER,
    As he was a Poet sublimer THAN ME.' Prior.

i.e. Thou art a Girl as much brighter than she was, as he was a Poet sublimer than I am."—Ward's Practical Gram., p. 112. These examples of the objective case after than, were justly regarded by Lowth as bad English. The construction, however, has a modern advocate in S. W. Clark, who will have the conjunctions as, but, save, saving, and than, as well as the adjectives like, unlike, near, next, nigh, and opposite, to be prepositions. "After a Comparative the Preposition than is commonly used. Example—Grammar is more interesting than all my other studies."—Clark's Practical Gram., p. 178. "As, like, than, &c., indicate a relation of comparison. Example 'Thou hast been wiser all the while than me.' Southey's Letters."—Ib., p. 96. Here correct usage undoubtedly requires I, and not me. Such at least is my opinion.

[436] In respect to the case, the phrase than who is similar to than he, than they, &c., as has been observed by many grammarians; but, since than is a conjunction, and who or whom is a relative, it is doubtful whether it can be strictly proper to set two such connectives together, be the case of the latter which it may. See Note 5th, in the present chapter, below.

[437] After else or other, the preposition besides is sometimes used; and, when it recalls an idea previously suggested, it appears to be as good as than, or better: as, "Other words, besides the preceding, may begin with capitals."—Murray's Gram., Vol. i. p. 285. Or perhaps this preposition may be proper, whenever else or other denotes what is additional to the object of contrast, and not exclusive of it; as, "When we speak of any other quantity besides bare numbers."—Tooke's Diversions, Vol. i, p. 215. "Because he had no other father besides God."—Milton, on Christianity, p. 109. Though we sometimes express an addition by more than, the following example appears to me to be bad English, and its interpretation still worse: "'The secret was communicated to more men than him.' That is, (when the ellipsis is duly supplied,) 'The secret was communicated to more persons than to him.'"—Murray's Key, 12mo, p. 61; his Octavo Gram., p. 215; Ingersoll's Gram., 252. Say rather,—"to other men besides him." Nor, again, does the following construction appear to be right: "Now shew me another Popish rhymester but he."—DENNIS: Notes to the Dunciad, B. ii, l. 268. Say rather, "Now show me an other popish rhymester besides him." Or thus: "Now show me any popish rhymester except him." This too is questionable: "Now pain must here be intended to signify something else besides warning."—Wayland's Moral Science, p. 121. If "warning" was here intended to be included with "something else," the expression is right; if not, besides should be than. Again: "There is seldom any other cardinal in Poland but him."—Life of Charles XII. Here "but him" should be either "besides him," or "than he;" for but never rightly governs the objective case, nor is it proper after other. "Many more examples, besides the foregoing, might have been adduced."—Nesbit's English Parsing, p. xv. Here, in fact, no comparison is expressed; and therefore it is questionable, whether the word "more" is allowably used. Like else and other, when construed with besides, it signifies additional; and, as this idea is implied in besides, any one of these adjectives going before is really pleonastic. In the sense above noticed, the word beside is sometimes written in stead of besides, though not very often; as, "There are other things which pass in the mind of man, beside ideas."—Sheridan's Elocution, p. 136.

[438] A few of the examples under this head might be corrected equally well by some preceding note of a more specific character; for a general note against the improper omission of prepositions, of course includes those principles of grammar by which any particular prepositions are to be inserted. So the examples of error which were given in the tenth chapter of Etymology, might nearly all of them have been placed under the first note in this tenth chapter of Syntax. But it was thought best to illustrate every part of this volume, by some examples of false grammar, out of the infinite number and variety with which our literature abounds.

[439] "The Rev. Joab Goldsmith Cooper, A. M.," was the author of two English grammars, as well as of what he called "A New and Improved Latin Grammar," with "An Edition of the Works of Virgil, &c.," all published in Philadelphia. His first grammar, dated 1828, is entitled, "An Abridgment of Murray's English Grammar, and Exercises." But it is no more an abridgement of Murray's work, than of mine; he having chosen to steal from the text of my Institutes, or supply matter of his own, about as often as to copy Murray. His second is the Latin Grammar. His third, which is entitled, "A Plain and Practical English Grammar," and dated 1831, is a book very different from the first, but equally inaccurate and worthless. In this book, the syntax of interjections stands thus: "RULE 21. The interjections O, oh and ah are followed by the objective case of a noun or pronoun, as: 'O me! ah me! oh me!' In the second person, they are a mark or sign of an address, made to a person or thing, as: O thou persecutor! Oh, ye hypocrites! O virtue, how amiable thou art!"—Page 157. The inaccuracy of all this can scarcely be exceeded.

[440] "Oh is used to express the emotion of pain, sorrow, or surprise. O is used to express wishing, exclamation, or a direct address to a person."—Lennie's Gram., 12th Ed., p. 110. Of this distinction our grammarians in general seem to have no conception; and, in fact, it is so often disregarded by other authors, that the propriety of it may be disputed. Since O and oh are pronounced alike, or very nearly so, if there is no difference in their application, they are only different modes of writing the same word, and one or the other of them is useless. If there is a real difference, as I suppose there is, it ought to be better observed; and O me! and oh ye! which I believe are found only in grammars, should be regarded as bad English. Both O and oh, as well as ah, were used in Latin by Terence, who was reckoned an elegant writer; and his manner of applying them favours this distinction: and so do our own dictionaries, though Johnson and Walker do not draw it clearly, for oh is as much an "exclamation" as O. In the works of Virgil, Ovid, and Horace, we find O or o used frequently, but nowhere oh. Yet this is no evidence of their sameness, or of the uselessness of the latter; but rather of their difference, and of the impropriety of confounding them. O, oh, ho, and ah, are French words as well as English. Boyer, in his Quarto Dictionary, confounds them all; translating "O!" only by "Oh!" "OH! ou HO!" by "Ho! Oh!" and "AH!" by "Oh! alas! well-a-day! ough! A! ah! hah! ho!" He would have done better to have made each one explain itself; and especially, not to have set down "ough!" and "A!" as English words which correspond to the French ah!

[441] This silence is sufficiently accounted for by Murray's; of whose work, most of the authors who have any such rule, are either piddling modifiers or servile copyists. And Murray's silence on these matters, is in part attributable to the fact, that when he wrote his remark, his system of grammar denied that nouns have any first person, or any objective case. Of course he supposed that all nouns that were uttered after interjections, whether they were of the second person or of the third, were in the nominative case; for he gave to nouns two cases only, the nominative and the possessive. And when he afterwards admitted the objective case of nouns, he did not alter his remark, but left all his pupils ignorant of the case of any noun that is used in exclamation or invocation. In his doctrine of two cases, he followed Dr. Ash: from whom also he copied the rule which I am criticising: "The Interjections, O, Oh, and Ah, require the accusative case of a pronoun in the first Person: as, O me, Oh me, Ah me: But the Nominative in the second: as, O thou, O ye."—Ash's Gram., p. 60. Or perhaps he had Bicknell's book, which was later: "The interjections O, oh, and ah, require the accusative case of a pronoun in the first person after them; as, O, me! Oh, me! Ah, me! But the nominative case in the second person; as, O, thou that rulest! O, ye rulers of this land!"—The Grammatical Wreath, Part I, p. 105.

[442] See 2 Sam., xix, 4; also xviii, 33. Peirce has many times misquoted this text, or some part of it; and, what is remarkable, he nowhere agrees either with himself or with the Bible! "O! Absalom! my son!"—Gram., p. 283. "O Absalom! my son, my son! would to God I had died for thee."—Ib., p. 304. Pinneo also misquotes and perverts a part of it, thus: "Oh, Absalom! my son"—Primary Gram., Revised Ed., p. 57.

[443] Of this example, Professor Bullions says, "This will be allowed to be a correct English sentence, complete in itself, and requiring nothing to be supplied. The phrase, 'being an expert dancer,' is the subject of the verb 'does entitle;' but the word 'dancer' in that phrase is neither the subject of any verb, nor is governed by any word in the sentence."—Eng. Gram., p. 52. It is because this word cannot have any regular construction after the participle when the possessive case precedes, that I deny his first proposition, and declare the sentence not "to be correct English." But the Professor at length reasons himself into the notion, that this indeterminate "predicate," as he erroneously calls it, "is properly in the objective case, and in parsing, may correctly be called the objective indefinite;" of which case, he says, "The following are also examples: 'He had the honour of being a director for life.' 'By being a diligent student, he soon acquired eminence in his profession.'"—Ib., p. 83. But "director" and "student" are here manifestly in the nominative case: each agreeing with the pronoun he, which denotes the same person. In the latter sentence, there is a very obvious transposition of the first five words.

[444] Faulty as this example is, Dr. Blair says of it: "Nothing can be more elegant, or more finely turned, than this sentence. It is neat, clear, and musical. We could hardly alter one word, or disarrange one member, without spoiling it. Few sentences are to be found, more finished, or more happy."—Lecture XX, p. 201. See the six corrections suggested in my Key, and judge whether or not they spoil the sentence.—G. B.

[445] This Note, as well as all the others, will by-and-by be amply illustrated by citations from authors of sufficient repute to give it some value as a grammatical principle: but one cannot hope such language as is, in reality, incorrigibly bad, will always appear so to the generality of readers. Tastes, habits, principles, judgements, differ; and, where confidence is gained, many utterances are well received, that are neither well considered nor well understood. When a professed critic utters what is incorrect beyond amendment, the fault is the more noteworthy, as his professions are louder, or his standing is more eminent. In a recent preface, deliberately composed for a very comprehensive work on "English Grammar," and designed to allure both young and old to "a thorough and extensive acquaintance with their mother tongue,"—in the studied preface of a learned writer, who has aimed "to furnish not only a text-book for