Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/119

 videntur''--Many things are not as they seem to many. Common errors are apt to conceal themselves from the common mind; and the appeal to reason and just authority is often frustrated, because a wrong head defies both. But, apart from this, there are difficulties: multiplicity perplexes choice; inconvenience attends change; improvement requires effort; conflicting theories demand examination; the principles of the science are unprofitably disputed; the end is often divorced from the means; and much that belies the title, has been published under the name.

29. It is certain, that the printed formularies most commonly furnished for the important exercises of parsing and correcting, are either so awkwardly written or so negligently followed, as to make grammar, in the mouths of our juvenile orators, little else than a crude and faltering jargon. Murray evidently intended that his book of exercises should be constantly used with his grammar; but he made the examples in the former so dull and prolix, that few learners, if any, have ever gone through the series agreeably to his direction. The publishing of them in a separate volume, has probably given rise to the absurd practice of endeavouring to teach his grammar without them. The forms of parsing and correcting which this author furnishes, are also misplaced; and when found by the learner, are of little use. They are so verbose, awkward, irregular, and deficient, that the pupil must be either a dull boy or utterly ignorant of grammar, if he cannot express the facts extemporaneously in better English. They are also very meagre as a whole, and altogether inadequate to their purpose; many things that frequently occur in the language, not being at all exemplified in them, or even explained in the grammar itself. When we consider how exceedingly important it is, that the business of a school should proceed without loss of time, and that, in the oral exercises here spoken of, each pupil should go through his part promptly, clearly, correctly, and fully, we cannot think it a light objection that these forms, so often to be repeated, are so badly written. Nor does the objection lie against this writer only: "Ab uno disce omnes." But the reader may demand some illustrations.[61]

30. First--from his etymological parsing: "O Virtue! how amiable thou art!" Here his form for the word Virtue is--"Virtue is a common substantive, of the neuter gender, of the third person, in the singular number, and the nominative case."--Murray's Gram., 8vo, Vol. ii, p. 2. It should have been--"Virtue is a common noun, personified proper, of the second person, singular number, feminine gender, and nominative case." And then the definitions of all these things should have followed in regular numerical order. He gives the class of this noun wrong, for virtue addressed becomes an individual; he gives the gender wrong, and in direct contradiction to what he says of the word in his section on gender; he gives the person wrong, as may be seen by the pronoun thou, which represents it; he repeats the definite article three times unnecessarily, and inserts two needless prepositions, making them different where the relation is precisely the same: and all this, in a sentence of two lines,