Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/140

 those have done best who have deviated least from the track of him whom they professed to follow.[72]

9. Some seem to have supposed, that by reducing the number of the parts of speech, and of the rules for their construction, the study of grammar would be rendered more easy and more profitable to the learner. But this, as would appear from the history of the science, is a mere retrogression towards the rudeness of its earlier stages. It is hardly worth while to dispute, whether there shall be nine parts of speech or ten; and perhaps enough has already been stated, to establish the expediency of assuming the latter number. Every word in the language must be included in some class, and nothing is gained by making the classes larger and less numerous. In all the artificial arrangements of science, distinctions are to be made according to the differences in things; and the simple question here is, what differences among words shall be at first regarded. To overlook, in our primary division, the difference between a verb and a participle, is merely to reserve for a subdivision, or subsequent explanation, a species of words which most grammarians have recognized as a distinct sort in their original classification.

10. It should be observed that the early period of grammatical science was far remote from the days in which English grammar originated. Many things which we now teach and defend as grammar, were taught and defended two thousand years ago, by the philosophers of Greece and Rome. Of the parts of speech, Quintilian, who lived in the first century of our era, gives the following account: "For the ancients, among whom were Aristotle[73] and Theodectes, treated only of verbs, nouns, and conjunctions: as the verb is what we say, and the noun, that of which we say it, they judged the power of discourse to be in verbs, and the matter in nouns, but the connexion in conjunctions. Little by little, the philosophers, and especially the Stoics, increased the number: first, to the conjunctions were added articles; afterwards, prepositions; to nouns, was added the appellation; then the pronoun; afterwards, as belonging to each verb, the participle; and, to verbs in common, adverbs. Our language [i. e., the Latin] does not require articles, wherefore they are scattered among the other parts of speech; but there is added to the foregoing the interjection. But some, on the authority of good authors, make the parts only eight; as Aristarchus, and, in our day, Palæmon; who have included the vocable, or appellation, with the noun, as a species of it. But they who make the noun one and the vocable an other, reckon nine. But there are also some who divide the vocable from the appellation; making the former to signify any thing manifest to sight or touch, as house, bed; and the latter, any thing to which either or both are wanting, as ''wind, heaven, god, virtue''. They have also added the asseveration and the attrectation, which I do not approve. Whether the vocable or appellation should be included with the noun or not, as it is a matter of little consequence, I leave to the decision of others."--See QUINTIL. de Inst. Orat., Lib. i, Cap. 4, §24.

11. Several writers on English grammar, indulging a strange unsettlement of plan, seem not to have determined in their own minds, how many parts of speech there are, or ought to be. Among these are Horne Tooke, Webster, Dalton, Cardell, Green, and Cobb; and perhaps, from what he says above, we may add the name of Priestley. The present disputation about the sorts of words, has been chiefly owing to the writings of Horne Tooke, who explains the minor parts of speech as mere abbreviations, and rejects, with needless acrimony, the common classification. But many have mistaken the nature of his instructions, no less than that of the common grammarians. This author, in his third chapter, supposes his auditor to say, "But you have not all this while informed me how many parts of speech you mean to lay down." To whom he replies, "That shall be as you please. Either two, or twenty, or more." Such looseness comported well enough with his particular purpose; because he meant to teach the derivation of words, and not to meddle at