is therefore allowed to control the verb; but there is always a harshness in this mixture of different numbers, and, to render such a construction tolerable, it is necessary to read the latter term like a parenthesis, and make the former emphatic: as, "A parenthesis, or brackets, consists of two angular strokes, or hooks, enclosing one or more words."--Whiting's Reader, p. 28. "To show us that our own schemes, or prudence, have no share in our advancements."--Addison. "The Mexican figures, or picture-writing, represent things, not words; they exhibit images to the eye, not ideas to the understanding."--Murray's Gram., p. 243; English Reader, p. xiii. "At Travancore, Koprah, or dried cocoa-nut kernels, is monopolized by government."--Maunder's Gram., p. 12. "The Scriptures, or Bible, are the only authentic source."--Bp. Tomline's Evidences.
"Nor foes nor fortune take this power away;
And is my Abelard less kind than they?"--Pope, p. 334.
OBS. 10.--The English adjective being indeclinable, we have no examples of some of the forms of zeugma which occur in Latin and Greek. But adjectives differing in number, are sometimes connected without a repetition of the noun; and, in the agreement of the verb, the noun which is understood, is less apt to be regarded than that which is expressed, though the latter be more remote; as, "There are one or two small irregularities to be noted."--Lowth's Gram., p. 63. "There are one or two persons, and but one or two."--Hazlitt's Lectures. "There are one or two others."--Crombie's Treatise, p. 206. "There are one or two."--Blair's Rhet., p. 319. "There are one or more seminaries in every province."--H. E. Dwight: Lit. Conv., p. 133. "Whether one or more of the clauses are to be considered the nominative case."--Murray's Gram., Vol. i, p. 150. "So that, I believe, there is not more than one genuine example extant."--Knight, on the Greek Alphabet, p. 10. "There is, properly, no more than one pause or rest in the sentence."--Murray's Gram., Vol. i, p. 329; Blair's Rhet., p. 125. "Sometimes a small letter or two is added to the capital."--Adam's Lat. Gram., p. 223; Gould's, 283. Among the examples in the seventh paragraph above, there is one like this last, but with a plural verb; and if either is objectionable, is should here be are. The preceding example, too, is such as I would not imitate. To L. Murray, the following sentence seemed false syntax, because one does not agree with persons: "He saw one or more persons enter the garden."--Murray's Exercises, Rule 8th, p. 54. In his Key, he has it thus: "He saw one person, or more than one, enter the garden."--Oct. Gram., Vol. ii, p. 189. To me, this stiff correction, which many later grammarians have copied, seems worse than none. And the effect of the principle may be noticed in Murray's style elsewhere; as, "When a semicolon, or more than one, have preceded."--Octavo Gram., i, p. 277; Ingersoll's Gram., p. 288. Here a ready writer would be very apt to prefer one of the following phrases: "When a semicolon or two have preceded,"--"When one or two semicolons have preceded,"--"When one or more semicolons have preceded." It is better to write by guess, than to become systematically awkward in expression.
OBS. 11.--In Greek and Latin, the pronoun of the first person, according to our critics, is generally[398] placed first; as, "[Greek: Ego kai su ta dikaia poiæsomen]. Xen."--Milnes's Gr. Gram., p. 120. That is, "Ego et tu justa faciemus." Again: "Ego et Cicero valemus. Cic."--Buchanan's Pref., p. x; Adam's Gram., 206; Gould's, 203. "I and Cicero are well."--Ib. But, in English, a modest speaker usually gives to others the precedence, and mentions himself last; as, "He, or thou, or I, must go."--"Thou and I will do what is right."--"Cicero and I are well."--Dr. Adam.[399] Yet, in speaking of himself and his dependants, a person most commonly takes rank before them; as, "Your inestimable letters supported myself, my wife, and children, in adversity."--Lucien Bonaparte, Charlemagne, p. v. "And I shall be destroyed, I and my house."--Gen., xxxiv, 30. And in acknowledging a fault, misfortune, or censure, any speaker may assume the first place; as, "Both I and thou are in the fault."--Adam's Gram., p. 207. "Both I and you are in fault."--Buchanan's Syntax, p. ix. "Trusty did not do it; I and Robert did it."--Edgeworth's Stories. <poem>
"With critic scales, weighs out the partial wit,
What I, or you, or he, or no one writ."
--Lloyd's Poems, p. 162.
<poem> OBS. 12.--According to the theory of this work, verbs themselves are not unfrequently connected, one to an other, by and, or, or nor; so that two or more of them, being properly in the same construction, may be parsed as agreeing with the same nominative: as, "So that the blind and dumb [man] both spake and saw."--Matt., xii, 22. "That no one might buy or sell."--Rev., xiii, 17. "Which see not, nor hear, nor know."--Dan., v, 23. We have certainly very many examples like these, in which it is neither convenient nor necessary to suppose an ellipsis of the nominative before the latter verb, or before all but the first, as most of our grammarians do, whenever they find two or more finite verbs connected in this manner. It is true, the nomina-
