among the latter, and that none of the remaining ten have been thought worthy to be copied without considerable alteration. Nor are the rules which I adopt, more nearly coincident with those of any other writer. I do not proffer to the schools the second-hand instructions of a mere compiler. In his twenty-two rules, independently of their examples, Hurray has used six hundred and seventeen words, thus giving an average of twenty-eight to each rule; whereas in the twenty-four rules which are presented above, the words are but four hundred and thirty-six, making the average less than nineteen. And yet I have not only divided some of his propositions and extended others, but, by rejecting what was useless or erroneous, and filling up the deficiencies which mark his code, I have delivered twice the amount of doctrine in two thirds of the space, and furnished eleven important rules which are not contained in his grammar. Thus much, in this place, to those who so frequently ask, "Wherein does your book differ from Murray's?"
OBS. 12.--Of all the systems of syntax, or of grammar, which it has been my fortune to examine, a book which was first published by Robinson and Franklin of New York in 1839, a fair-looking duodecimo volume of 384 pages, under the brief but rather ostentatious title, "THE GRAMMAR of the English Language" is, I think, the most faulty,--the most remarkable for the magnitude, multitude, and variety, of its strange errors, inconsistencies, and defects. This singular performance is the work of Oliver B. Peirce, an itinerant lecturer on grammar, who dates his preface at "Rome, N. Y., December 29th, 1838." Its leading characteristic is boastful innovation; it being fall of acknowledged "contempt for the works of other writers."--P. 379. It lays "claim to singularity" as a merit, and boasts of a new thing under the sun--"in a theory RADICALLY NEW, a Grammar of the English Language; something which I believe," says the author, "has NEVER BEFORE BEEN FOUND."--P. 9. The old scholastic notion, that because Custom is the arbitress of speech, novelty is excluded from grammar, this hopeful reformer thoroughly condemns; "repudiating this sentiment to the full extent of it," (ib.) and "writing his theory as though he had never seen a book, entitled an English Grammar."--Ib. And, for all the ends of good learning, it would have been as well or better, if he never had. His passion for novelty has led him not only to abandon or misapply, in an unprecedented degree, the usual terms of the art, but to disregard in many instances its most unquestionable principles, universal as well as particular. His parts of speech are the following ten: "Names, Substitutes, Asserters, Adnames, Modifiers, Relatives, Connectives, Interrogatives, Repliers, and Exclamations."--The Gram., p. 20. His names are nouns; his substitutes are pronouns, and any adjectives whose nouns are not expressed; his asserters are verbs and participles, though the latter assert nothing; his adnames are articles, adjectives whose nouns or pronouns are expressed, and adverbs that relate to adjectives; his modifiers are such adverbs as "modify the sense or sound of a whole sentence;" his relatives are prepositions, some of which govern no object; his connectives are conjunctions, with certain adverbs and phrases; his interrogatives and repliers are new parts of speech, very lamely explained; his exclamations are interjections, and "phrases used independently; as, O hapless choice!"--The Gram., p. 22. In parsing, he finds a world of "accommodatives;" as, "John is more than five years older than William."--Ib. p. 202. Here he calls the whole phrase "more than five years" "a secondary adname" i. e., adjective. But, in the phrase, "more than five years afterwards," he would call the same words "a secondary modifier;" i. e., adverb.--Ib., p. 203. And, in the phrase, "more than five years before the war," he would call them "a secondary relative;" i. e., preposition.--Ib., p. 204. And so of other phrases innumerable. His cases are five, two of which are new, "the Independent" and "the Twofold case." His "independent case" is sometimes the nominative in form, as "thou" and "she;" (p. 62;) sometimes the objective, as, "me" and "him;" (p. 62 and p. 199;) sometimes erroneously supposed to be the subject of a finite verb; while his nominative is sometimes as erroneously said to have no verb. His code of syntax has two sorts of rules, Analytical and Synthetical. The former are professedly seventeen in number; but, many of them consisting of two, three, or four distinct parts, their real number is more properly thirty-four. The latter are reckoned forty-five; but if we count their separate parts, they are fifty-six: and these with the others make ninety. I shall not particularize their faults. All of them are whimsically conceived and badly written. In short, had the author artfully designed to turn English grammar into a subject of contempt and ridicule, by as ugly a caricature of it as he could possibly invent, he could never have hit the mark more exactly than he has done in this "new theory"--this rash production, on which he so sincerely prides himself. Alone as he is, in well-nigh all his opinions, behold how prettily he talks of "COMMON SENSE, the only sure foundation of any theory!" and says, "On this imperishable foundation--this rock of eternal endurance--I rear my superstructure, the edifice of scientific truth, the temple of Grammatical consistency!"--Peirce's Preface, p. 7.
OBS. 13.--For the teaching of different languages, it has been thought very desirable to have "a Series of grammars, Greek, Latin, English, &c., all, so far as general principles are concerned, upon the same plan, and as nearly in the same words as the genius of the languages would permit."--See Bullions's Principles of E. Gram., 2d Ed., pp. iv and vi. This scheme necessarily demands a minute comparison not only of the several languages themselves, but also of the various grammars in which their principles, whether general or particular, are developed. For by no other means can it be ascertained to what extent uniformity of this kind will be either profitable to the learner, or consistent with truth. Some books have been published, which, it is pretended, are thus accommodated to one an other, and to the languages of which they treat. But, in view of the fact, that the Latin or the Greek grammars now extant, (to say nothing of
