Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/518

 plays are opened in this manner."--Blair's Rhet., p. 459. And in this order one possessive sometimes governs an other: as, "Peter's wife's mother;"--"Paul's sister's son."--Bible. But, to this general principle of arrangement, there are some exceptions: as,

1. When the governing noun has an adjective, this may intervene; as, "Flora's earliest smells."--Milton. "Of man's first disobedience."--Id. In the following phrase from the Spectator, "Of Will's last night's lecture," it is not very clear, whether Will's is governed by night's or by lecture; yet it violates a general principle of our grammar, to suppose the latter; because, on this supposition, two possessives, each having the sign, will be governed by one noun.

2. When the possessive is affirmed or denied; as, "The book is mine, and not John's." But here the governing noun may be supplied in its proper place; and, in some such instances, it must be, else a pronoun or the verb will be the only governing word: as, "Ye are Christ's [disciples, or people]; and Christ is God's" [son].--St. Paul. Whether this phraseology is thus elliptical or not, is questionable. See Obs. 4th, in this series.

3. When the case occurs without the sign, either by apposition or by connexion; as, "In her brother Absalom's house."--Bible. "David and Jonathan's friendship."--Allen. "Adam and Eve's morning hymn."--Dr. Ash. "Behold the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, is the Lord's thy God."--Deut.,, x, 14. "For peace and quiet's sake."--Cowper. "To the beginning of King James the First's reign."--Bolingbroke, on Hist., p. 32.

OBS. 21--The possessive case is in general (though not always) equivalent to the preposition of and the objective; as, "Of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son."--John, xiii, 2. "To Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon."--Ib., xiii, 26. On account of this one-sided equivalence, many grammarians erroneously reckon the latter to be a "genitive case" as well as the former. But they ought to remember, that the preposition is used more frequently than the possessive, and in a variety of senses that cannot be interpreted by this case; as, "Of some of the books of each of these classes of literature, a catalogue will be given at the end of the work."--L. Murray's Gram., p. 178. Murray calls this a "laborious mode of expression," and doubtless it might be a little improved by substituting in for the third of; but my argument is, that the meaning conveyed cannot be expressed by possessives. The notion that of forms a genitive case, led Priestley to suggest, that our language admits a "double genitive;" as, "This book of my friend's."--Priestley's Gram., p. 71. "It is a discovery of Sir Isaac Newton's."--Ib., p. 72. "This exactness of his."--STERNE: ib. The doctrine has since passed into nearly all our grammars; yet is there no double case here, as I shall presently show.

OBS. 22.--Where the governing noun cannot be easily mistaken, it is often omitted by ellipsis: as, "At the alderman's" [house];--"St. Paul's" [church];--"A book of my brother's" [books];--"A subject of the emperor's" [subjects];--"A friend of mine;" i. e., one of my friends. "Shall we say that Sacrificing was a pure invention of Adam's, or of Cain or Abel's?"--Leslie, on Tythes, p. 93. That is--of Adam's inventions, or of Cain or Abel's inventions. The Rev. David Blair, unable to resolve this phraseology to his own satisfaction, absurdly sets it down among what he calls "ERRONEOUS OR VULGAR PHRASES." His examples are these: "A poem of Pope's;"--"A soldier of the king's;"--"That is a horse of my father's."--Blair's Practical Gram., p. 110, 111. He ought to have supplied the plural nouns, poems, soldiers, horses. This is the true explanation of all the "double genitives" which our grammarians discover; for when the first noun is partitive, it naturally suggests more or other things of the same kind, belonging to this possessor; and when such is not the meaning, this construction is improper. In the following example, the noun eyes is understood after his:

"Ev'n his, the warrior's eyes, were forced to yield,   That saw, without a tear, Pharsalia's field." --Rowe's Lucan, B. viii, l. 144.

OBS. 23.--When two or more nouns of the possessive form are in any way connected, they usually refer to things individually different but of the same name; and when such is the meaning, the governing noun, which we always suppress somewhere to avoid tautology, is understood wherever the sign is added without it; as, "A father's or mother's sister is an aunt."--Dr. Webster. That is, "A father's sister or a mother's sister is an aunt." "In the same commemorative acts of the senate, were thy name, thy father's, thy brother's, and the emperor's."--Zenobia, Vol. i, p. 231.

"From Stiles's pocket into Nokes's" [pocket]. --Hudibras, B. iii, C. iii, l. 715.

"Add Nature's, Custom's, Reason's, Passion's strife." --''Pope, Brit. Poets'', Vol. vi, p. 383.

It will be observed that in all these examples the governing noun is singular; and, certainly, it must be so, if, with more than one possessive sign, we mean to represent each possessor as having or possessing but one object. If the noun be made plural where it is expressed, it will also be plural where it is implied. It is good English to say, "A father's or mother's sisters are aunts;" but the meaning is, "A father's sisters or a mother's sisters are aunts." But a recent school critic teaches differently, thus: "When different things of the same name belong to different possessors, the sign should be annexed to each; as, Adams's, Davies's, and Perkins' Arithmetics; i. e., three different books."--Spencer's Gram., p. 47. Here the example is fictitious, and has almost as many errors as words. It would be much better English to say, "Adams's, Davies's, and Perkins's Arithmetic;" though the objective form with of would, perhaps, be still more agreeable for these peculiar names. Spencer, whose Grammar abounds with useless repetitions, repeats his note elsewhere, with the following illustrations: "E. g. Olmstead's and Comstock's Philosophies. Gould's Adam's Latin Grammar."--Ib., p. 106. The latter example is no better suited to his text, than "''Peter's wife's