my assertion.
OBS. 4.--The pronoun who is usually applied only to persons. Its application to brutes or to things is improper, unless we mean to personify them. But whose, the possessive case of this relative, is sometimes used to supply the place of the possessive case, otherwise wanting, to the relative which. Examples: "The mutes are those consonants whose sounds cannot be protracted."--Murray's Gram., p. 9. "Philosophy, whose end is, to instruct us in the knowledge of nature."--Ib., p. 54; Campbell's Rhet., 421. "Those adverbs are compared whose primitives are obsolete."--Adam's Latin Gram., p. 150. "After a sentence whose sense is complete in itself, a period is used."--Nutting's Gram., p. 124. "We remember best those things whose parts are methodically disposed, and mutually connected."--Beattie's Moral Science, i, 59. "Is there any other doctrine whose followers are punished?"--ADDISON: Murray's Gram., p. 54; Lowth's, p. 25.
"The question, whose solution I require, Is, what the sex of women most desire."--DRYDEN: Lowth, p. 25.
OBS. 5.--Buchanan, as well as Lowth, condemns the foregoing use of whose, except in grave poetry: saying, "This manner of personification adds an air of dignity to the higher and more solemn kind of poetry, but it is highly improper in the lower kind, or in prose."--Buchanan's English Syntax, p. 73. And, of the last two examples above quoted, he says, "It ought to be of which, in both places: i. e. The followers of which; the solution of which."--Ib., p. 73. The truth is, that no personification is here intended. Hence it may be better to avoid, if we can, this use of whose, as seeming to imply what we do not mean. But Buchanan himself (stealing the text of an older author) has furnished at least one example as objectionable as any of the foregoing: "Prepositions are naturally placed betwixt the Words whose Relation and Dependence each of them is to express."--English Syntax, p. 90; British Gram., p. 201. I dislike this construction, and yet sometimes adopt it, for want of another as good. It is too much, to say with Churchill, that "this practice is now discountenanced by all correct writers."--New Gram., p. 226. Grammarians would perhaps differ less, if they would read more. Dr. Campbell commends the use of whose for of which, as an improvement suggested by good taste, and established by abundant authority. See Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 420. "WHOSE, the possessive or genitive case of who or which; applied to persons or things."--Webster's Octavo Dict. "Whose is well authorized by good usage, as the possessive of which."--Sanborn's Gram., p. 69. "Nor is any language complete, whose verbs have not tenses."--Harris's Hermes.
"--------'Past and future, are the wings
On whose support, harmoniously conjoined,
Moves the great spirit of human knowledge.'--MS."
Wordsworth's Preface to his Poems, p. xviii.
OBS. 6.--The relative which, though formerly applied to persons and made equivalent to who, is now confined to brute animals and inanimate things. Thus, "Our Father which art in heaven," is not now reckoned good English; it should be, "Our Father who art in heaven." In this, as well as in many other things, the custom of speech has changed; so that what was once right, is now ungrammatical. The use of which for who is very common in the Bible, and in other books of the seventeenth century; but all good writers now avoid the construction. It occurs seventy-five times in the third chapter of Luke; as, "Joseph, which was the son of Heli, which was the son of Matthat," etc. etc. After a personal term taken by metonymy for a thing, which is not improper; as, "Of the particular author which he is studying."--Gallaudet. And as an interrogative or a demonstrative pronoun or adjective, the word which is still applicable to persons, as formerly; as, "Which of you all?"--"Which man of you all?"--"There arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be the greatest."--Luke, ix, 46. "Two fair twins--the puzzled Strangers, which is which, inquire."--Tickell.
OBS. 7.--If which, as a direct relative, is inapplicable to persons, who ought to be preferred to it in all personifications: as,
"The seal is set. Now welcome thou dread power,
Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here
Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour."
BYRON: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cant, iv, st. 138.
What sort of personage is here imagined and addressed, I will not pretend to say; but it should seem, that who would be more proper than which, though less agreeable in sound before the word here. In one of his notes on this word, Churchill has fallen into a strange error. He will have who to represent a horse! and that, in such a sense, as would require which and not who, even for a person. As he prints the masculine pronoun in Italics, perhaps he thought, with Murray and Webster, that which must needs be "of the neuter gender." [189] He says, "In the following passage, which seems to be used instead of who:--
'Between two horses, which doth bear him best;
I have, perhaps, some shallow spirit of judgment'
SHAKS., 1 Hen. VI."--Churchill's Gram., p. 226.
