are dangerous."—Evening Post. (Better: "The editor of the Utica Sentinel says, he has not heard," &c.) "There is little Benjamin with their ruler."—Psalms, lxviii, 27.
"Her end when emulation misses,
She turns to envy, stings, and hisses."—Swift's Poems, p. 415.
OBSERVATIONS ON RULE X.
Obs. 1.—Respecting a pronoun, the main thing is, that the reader perceive clearly for what it stands; and next, that he do not misapprehend its relation of case. For the sake of completeness and uniformity in parsing, it is, I think, expedient to apply the foregoing rule not only to those pronouns which have obvious antecedents expressed, but also to such as are not accompanied by the nouns for which they stand. Even those which are put for persons or things unknown or indefinite, may be said to agree with whatever is meant by them; that is, with such nouns as their own properties indicate. For the reader will naturally understand something by every pronoun, unless it be a mere expletive, and without any antecedent. For example: "It would depend upon who the forty were."—Trial at Steubenville, p. 50. Here who is an indefinite relative, equivalent to what persons; of the third person, plural, masculine; and is in the nominative case after were, by Rule 6th. For the full construction seems to be this: "It would depend upon the persons who the forty were." So which, for which person, or which thing, (if we call it a pronoun rather than an adjective,) may be said to have the properties of the noun person or thing understood; as,
"His notions fitted things so well, That which was which he could not tell."—Hudibras.
Obs. 2.—The pronoun we is used by the speaker or writer to represent himself and others, and is therefore plural. But it is sometimes used, by a sort of fiction, in stead of the singular, to intimate that the speaker or writer is not alone in his opinions; or, perhaps more frequently, to evade the charge of egotism; for this modest assumption of plurality seems most common with those who have something else to assume: as, "And so lately as 1809, Pope Pius VII, in excommunicating his 'own dear son,' Napoleon, whom he crowned and blessed, says: 'We, unworthy as we are, represent the God of peace.'"—Dr. Brownlee. "The coat fits us as well as if we had been melted and poured into it."—Prentice. Monarchs sometimes prefer we to I, in immediate connexion with a singular noun; as, "We Alexander, Autocrat of all the Russias."—"We the Emperor of China," &c.—Economy of Human Life, p. vi. They also employ the anomalous compound ourself, which is not often used by other people; as, "Witness ourself at Westminster, 28 day of April, in the tenth year of our reign. CHARLES."
"Cæs. What touches us ourself, shall be last serv'd."
—Shak., J. C., Act iii, Sc. 1.
"Ourself to hoary Nestor will repair."
—Pope, Iliad, B. x, l. 65.
Obs. 3.—The pronoun you, though originally and properly plural, is now generally applied alike to one person or to more. Several observations upon this fashionable substitution of the plural number for the singular, will be found in the fifth and sixth chapters of Etymology. This usage, however it may seem to involve a solecism, is established by that authority against which the mere grammarian has scarcely a right to remonstrate. Alexander Murray, the schoolmaster, observes, "When language was plain and simple, the English always said thou, when speaking to a single person. But when an affected politeness, and a fondness for continental manners and customs began to take place, persons of rank and fashion said you in stead of thou. The innovation gained ground, and custom gave sanction to the change, and stamped it with the authority of law."—English Gram., Third Edition, 1793, p. 107. This respectable grammarian acknowledged both thou and you to be of the second person singular. I do not, however, think it necessary or advisable to do this, or to encumber the conjugations, as some have done, by introducing the latter pronoun, and the corresponding form of the verb, as singular.[381] It is manifestly better to say, that the plural is used for the singular, by the figure Enallagè. For if you has literally become singular by virtue of this substitution, we also is singular for the same reason, as often as it is substituted for I; else the authority of innumerable authors, editors, compilers, and crowned, heads, is insufficient to make it so. And again, if you and the corresponding form of the verb are literally of the second person singular, (as Wells contends, with an array of more than sixty names of English grammarians to prove it,) then, by their own rule of concord, since thou and its verb are still generally retained in the same place by these grammarians, a verb that agrees with one of these nominatives, must also agree with the other; so that you hast and thou have, you seest and thou see, may be, so far as appears from their instructions, as good a concord as can be made of these words!
