understand to be absolute, because the phrase resembles an interjection! But the noun "world" which is also absolute, and which still more resembles an interjection, he will have to be so for a different reason—because it is in what he chooses to call the vocative case. But, according to custom, he should rather have put his interjection absolute with the noun, and written it, "O world," and not, "Oh, world." What he meant to do with "Oh me! and Ah me!" is doubtful. If any phrases come fairly under his rule, these are the very ones; and yet he seems to introduce them as exceptions! Of these, it can hardly be said, that they "frequently occur." Lowth notices only the latter, which he supposes elliptical. The former I do not remember to have met with more than three or four times; except in grammars, which in this case are hardly to be called authorities: "Oh! me, how fared it with me then?"—Job Scott. "Oh me! all the horse have got over the river, what shall we do?"—WALTON: Joh. Dict.
"But when he was first seen, oh me!
What shrieking and what misery!"—Wordsworth's Works, p. 114.
OBS. 10.—When a declinable word not in the nominative absolute, follows an interjection, as part of an imperfect exclamation, its construction (if the phrase be good English) depends on something understood; as, "Ah me!"—that is, "Ah! pity me;" or, "Ah! it grieves me;" or, as some will have it, (because the expression in Latin is "Hei mihi!") "Ah for me!"—Ingersoll. "Ah! wo is to me."—Lowth. "Ah! sorrow is to me."—Coar. So of "oh me!" for, in these expressions, if not generally, oh and ah are exactly equivalent the one to the other. As for "O me" it is now seldom met with, though Shakspeare has it a few times. From these examples, O. B. Peirce erroneously imagines the "independent case" of the pronoun I to be me, and accordingly parses the word without supposing an ellipsis; but in the plural he makes that case to be we, and not us. So, having found an example of "Ah Him!" which, according to one half of our grammarians, is bad English, he conceives the independent case of he to be him; but in the plural, and in both numbers of the words thou and she, he makes it the nominative, or the same in form as the nominative. So builds he "the temple of Grammatical consistency!"—P. 7. Nixon and Cooper must of course approve of "Ah him!" because they assume that the interjection ah "requires" or "governs" the objective case of the third person. Others must condemn the expression, because they teach that ah requires the nominative case of this person. Thus Greenleaf sets down for false syntax, "O! happy them, surrounded with so many blessings!"—Gram. Simplified, p. 47. Here, undoubtedly, the word should be they; and, by analogy, (if indeed the instances are analogous,) it would seem more proper to say, "Ah he!" the nominative being our only case absolute. But if any will insist that "Ah him!" is good English, they must suppose that him is governed by something understood; as, "Ah! I lament him;" or, "Ah! I mourn for him." And possibly, on this principle, the example referred to may be most correct as it stands, with the pronoun in the objective case: "Ah Him! the first great martyr in this great cause."—D. WEBSTER: Peirce's Gram., p. 199.
OBS. 11.—If we turn to the Latin syntax, to determine by analogy what case is used, or ought to be used, after our English interjections, in stead of finding a "perfect accordance" between that syntax and the rule for which such accordance has been claimed, we see at once an utter repugnance, and that the pretence of their agreement is only a sample of Kirkham's unconscionable pedantry. The rule, in all its modifications, is based on the principle, that the choice of cases depends on the distinction of persons—a principle plainly contrary to the usage of the Latin classics, and altogether untrue. In Latin, some interjections are construed with the nominative, the accusative, or the vocative; some, only with the dative; some, only with the vocative. But, in English, these four cases are all included in two, the nominative and the objective; and, the case independent or absolute being necessarily the nominative, it follows that the objective, if it occur after an interjection, must be the object of something which is capable of governing it. If any disputant, by supposing ellipses, will make objectives of what I call nominatives absolute, so be it; but I insist that interjections, in fact, never "require" or "govern" one case more than an other. So Peirce, and Kirkham, and Ingersoll, with pointed self-contradiction, may continue to make "the independent case," whether vocative or merely exclamatory, the subject of a verb, expressed or understood; but I will content myself with endeavouring to establish a syntax not liable to this sort of objection. In doing this, it is proper to look at all the facts which go to show what is right, or wrong. "Lo, the poor Indian!" is in Latin, "Ecce pauper Indus!" or, "Ecce pauperem Indum!" This use of either the nominative or the accusative after ecce, if it proves any thing concerning the case of the word Indian, proves it doubtful. Some, it seems, pronounce it an objective. Some, like Murray, say nothing about it. Following the analogy of our own language, I refer it to the nominative absolute, because there is nothing to determine it to be otherwise. In the examples. "Heu me miserum! Ah wretch that I am!"—(Grant's Latin Gram., p. 263.) and "Miser ego homo! O wretched man that I am!"—(Rom., vii, 24,) if the word that is a relative pronoun, as I incline to think it is, the case of the nouns wretch and man does not depend on any other words, either expressed or implied. They are therefore nominatives absolute, according to Rule 8th, though the Latin words may be most properly explained on the principle of ellipsis.
OBS. 12.—Of some impenetrable blockhead, Horace, telling how himself was vexed, says: "O te, Bollane, cerebri Felicem! aiebam tacitus."—Lib. i, Sat. ix, 11. Literally: "O thee, Bollanus, happy of brain! said I to myself." That is, "O! I envy thee," &c. This shows that O does not "require the nominative case of the second person" after it, at least, in Latin. Neither does oh
