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On English Preterites and Genitives. 245 two other cases in which the hypothesis of the contraction of the pronoun his would create an absurdity. Not only do we say the King of England's palace^ Lady Jane Greys execution ; making, for the purpose of inflexion^ King-of- England and Lady-Jane Grey into one word (see Grimm, Vol. II. p. 959) ; but in many cases where the names of two different persons are constantly connected with each other, we unite them, for the sake of declension, into one word. Thus Beaumont and Fletcher's plays^ Barnewall and Al- derson'^s Reports^ Rundell and Bridgets shop^ (like the German Ersch und Grubers Encyclopddie) ; where it is obvious that, if any pronoun had place, their and not his would have been used. Moreover the genitive case occurs in some instances where no pronoun, of any gender or number, can be sup- posed to have existed : thus a picture of the King is a representation of the King^s person^ a picture of the King^s means a picture belonging to the King, a picture of the King's pictures, i. e. one of his collection : in the same manner that a friend of mine means a friend of my friends. In cases of this kind such a mode of speech as a picture of the King his^ is a manifest absurdity. But it does not follow that, because one form of expres- sion has been incorrectly derived from another by dreaming etymologists, therefore that form is absurd, or was invented merely to furnish an etymology. The connexion between two forms may be a fiction, though the existence of both may be real. Accordingly it seems to me very questionable whether such expressions as the king his house^ Jesus Christ his sake^ are not perfectly correct, and in accordance with the spirit of the language : just as such phrases as der Konig sein Haus are used by the Germans in familiar con- versation, although they are less precise than the use of the genitive case, with which they have plainly no connexion. Swift, in some verses entitled Merlin's Prophecy, has the feminine pronoun in the same way : Seven and ten, addyd to nine. Of Fraunce her woe this is the sygne. The position of the nominative case, to which the pro- noun afterwards gives a genitive sense by relation, is exactly analogous, in respect of its want of grammatical connexion,