39. With singular ignorance and untruth, this gentleman claims to have invented a better method of analysis than had ever been practised before. Of other grammars, his preface avers, "They have all overlooked what the author considers a very important object; namely, a systematick order of parsing."--Grammar, p. 9. And, in his "Hints to Teachers," presenting himself as a model, and his book as a paragon, he says: "By pursuing this system, he can, with less labour, advance a pupil farther in the practical knowledge of this abstruse science, in two months, than he could in one year, when he taught in the old way."--Grammar, p. 12. What his "old way" was, does not appear. Doubtless something sufficiently bad. And as to his new way, I shall hereafter have occasion to show that that is sufficiently bad also. But to this gasconade the simple-minded have given credit--because the author showed certificates that testified to his great success, and called him "amiable and modest!" But who can look into the book, or into the writer's pretensions in regard to his predecessors, and conceive the merit which has made him--"preëminent by so much odds?" Was Murray less praiseworthy, less amiable, or less modest? In illustration of my topic, and for the sake of literary justice, I have selected that honoured "Compiler" to show the abuses of praise; let the history of this his vaunting modifier cap the climax of vanity. In general, his amendments of "that eminent philologist," are not more skillful than the following touch upon an eminent dramatist; and here, it is plain, he has mistaken two nouns for adjectives, and converted into bad English a beautiful passage, the sentiment of which is worthy of an author's recollection:
"The evil deed or deeds that men do, lives after them; The good deed or deeds is oft interred with their bones." [16]
Kirkham's Grammar, p. 75.
40. Lord Bacon observes, "Nothing is thought so easy a request to a great person as his letter; and yet, if it be not in a good cause, it is so much out of his reputation." It is to this mischievous facility of recommendation, this prostituted influence of great names, that the inconvenient diversity of school-books, and the continued use of bad ones, are in a great measure to be attributed. It belongs to those who understand the subjects of which authors profess to treat, to judge fairly and fully of their works, and then to let the reasons of their judgement be known. For no one will question the fact, that a vast number of the school-books now in use are either egregious plagiarisms or productions of no comparative merit. And, what is still more surprising and monstrous, presidents, governors, senators, and judges; professors, doctors, clergymen, and lawyers; a host of titled connoisseurs;
