Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/181

 Oh! I have alienated my friend; alas! I fear for life."--Ib., p. 128; et al. Again: "He went from London to York;" "she is above disguise;" "they are supported by industry."--Ib., p. 28; et al. "On the foregoing examples, I have a word to say. they are better than a fair specimen of their kind, our grammars abound with worse illustrations, their models of English are generally spurious quotations. few of their proof-texts have any just parentage, goose-eyes are abundant, but names scarce. who fathers the foundlings? nobody. then let their merit be nobody's, and their defects his who could write no better."--Author. "goose-eyes!" says a bright boy; "pray, what are they? does this Mr. Author make new words when he pleases? dead-eyes are in a ship, they are blocks, with holes in them, but what are goose-eyes in grammar?" ANSWER: "goose-eyes are quotation points, some of the Germans gave them this name, making a jest of their form, the French call them guillemets, from the name of their inventor."--Author. "it is a personal pronoun, of the third person singular."--Comly's Gram., 12th Ed., p. 126. "ourselves is a personal pronoun, of the first person plural."--Ib., 138. "thee is a personal pronoun, of the second person singular."--Ib., 126. "contentment is a noun common, of the third person singular."--Ib., 128. "were is a neuter verb, of the indicative mood, imperfect tense."--Ib., 129.

UNDER RULE III.--OF DEITY.

"O thou dispenser of life! thy mercies are boundless."--W. Allen's Gram., p. 449.

[FORMULE.--Not proper, because the word dispenser begins with a small letter. But, according to Rule 3d, "All names of the Deity, and sometimes their emphatic substitutes, should begin with capitals." Therefore, "Dispenser" should here begin with a capital D.]

"Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?"--SCOTT: Gen., xviii, 25. "And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."--Murray's Gram., p. 330. "It is the gift of him, who is the great author of good, and the Father of mercies."--Ib., 287. "This is thy god that brought thee up out of Egypt."--SCOTT, ALGER: Neh., ix, 18. "For the lord is our defence; and the holy one of Israel is our king."--See Psalm lxxxix, 18. "By making him the responsible steward of heaven's bounties."--''Anti- Slavery Mag.'', i, 29. "Which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day."--SCOTT, FRIENDS: 2 Tim., iv, 8. "The cries of them * * * entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth."--SCOTT: James, v, 4. "In Horeb, the deity revealed himself to Moses, as the eternal I am, the self-existent one; and, after the first discouraging interview of his messengers with Pharaoh, he renewed his promise to them, by the awful name, jehovah--a name till then unknown, and one which the Jews always held it a fearful profanation to pronounce."--Author. "And god spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the lord: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of god almighty; but by my name jehovah was I not known to them."--See[106] Exod., vi, 2. "Thus saith the lord the king of Israel, and his redeemer the lord of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and besides me there is no god."--See Isa., xliv, 6.

"His impious race their blasphemy renew'd,   And nature's king through nature's optics view'd."--Dryden, p. 90.

UNDER RULE IV.--OF PROPER NAMES.

"Islamism prescribes fasting during the month ramazan."--Balbi's Geog., p. 17.

[FORMULE.--Not proper, because the word ramazan here begins with a small letter. But, according to Rule 4th, "Proper names, of every description, should always begin with capitals." Therefore, "Ramazan" should begin with a capital R. The word is also misspelled: it should rather be Ramadan.]

"Near mecca, in arabia, is jebel nor, or the mountain of light, on the top of which the mussulmans erected a mosque, that they might perform their devotions where, according to their belief, mohammed received from the angel gabriel the first chapter of the Koran."--Author. "In the kaaba at mecca, there is a celebrated block of volcanic basalt, which the mohammedans venerate as the gift of gabriel to abraham, but their ancestors once held it to be an image of remphan, or saturn; so 'the image which fell down from jupiter,' to share with diana the homage of the ephesians, was probably nothing more than a meteoric stone."--Id. "When the lycaonians, at lystra, took paul and barnabas to be gods, they called the former mercury, on account of his eloquence, and the latter jupiter, for the greater dignity of his appearance."--Id. "Of the writings of the apostolic fathers of the first century, but few have come down to us; yet we have in those of barnabas, clement of rome, hermas, ignatius, and polycarp, very certain evidence of the authenticity of the New Testament, and the New Testament is a voucher for the old."--Id.

"It is said by tatian, that theagenes of rhegium, in the time of cambyses, stesimbrotus the thracian, antimachus the colophonian, herodotus of halicarnassus, dionysius the olynthian, ephorus of cumæ, philochorus the athenian, metaclides and chamæleon the peripatetics, and zenodotus, aristophanes, callimachus, erates, eratosthenes, aristarchus, and apollodorus, the grammarians, all wrote concerning the poetry, the birth, and the age of homer." See Coleridge's Introd., p. 57. "Yet, for aught that now appears, the life of homer is as fabulous as that of hercules; and some have even