Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/547



RULE IX.—ADJECTIVES.

Adjectives relate to nouns or pronouns: as, "Miserable comforters are ye all"—Job, xvi, 2. "No worldly enjoyments are adequate to the high desires and powers of an immortal spirit."—Blair.

"Whatever faction's partial notions are,   No hand is wholly innocent in war." —Rowe's Lucan, B. vii, l. 191.

EXCEPTION FIRST.

An adjective sometimes relates to a phrase or sentence which is made the subject of an intervening verb; as, "To insult the afflicted, is impious"—Dillwyn. "That he should refuse, is not strange"—"To err is human." Murray says, "Human belongs to its substantive 'nature' understood."—Gram., p. 233. From this I dissent.

EXCEPTION SECOND.

In combined arithmetical numbers, one adjective often relates to an other, and the whole phrase, to a subsequent noun; as, "One thousand four hundred and fifty-six men."—"Six dollars and eighty-seven and a half cents for every five days' service."—"In the one hundred and twenty-second year."—"One seven times more than it was wont to be heated."—Daniel, iii, 19.

EXCEPTION THIRD.

With an infinitive or a participle denoting being or action in the abstract, an adjective is sometimes also taken abstractly; (that is, without reference to any particular noun, pronoun, or other subject;) as, "To be sincere, is to be wise, innocent, and safe."—Hawkesworth. "Capacity marks the abstract quality of being able to receive or hold."—Crabb's Synonymes. "Indeed, the main secret of being sublime, is to say great things in few and plain words."—Hiley's Gram., p. 215. "Concerning being free from sin in heaven, there is no question."—Barclay's Works, iii, 437. Better: "Concerning freedom from sin," &c.

EXCEPTION FOURTH.

Adjectives are sometimes substituted for their corresponding abstract nouns; (perhaps, in most instances, elliptically, like Greek neuters;) as, "The sensations of sublime and beautiful are not always distinguished by very distant boundaries."—Blair's Rhet., p. 47. That is, "of sublimity and beauty." "The faults opposite to the sublime are chiefly two: the frigid, and the bombast"—Ib., p. 44. Better: "The faults opposite to sublimity, are chiefly two; frigidity and bombast." "Yet the ruling character of the nation was that of barbarous and cruel."—Brown's Estimate, ii, 26. That is, "of barbarity and cruelty." "In a word, agreeable and disagreeable are qualities of the objects we perceive," &c.—''Kames, El. of Crit.'', i, 99. "Polished, or refined, was the idea which the author had in view."—Blair's Rhet., p. 219.

OBSERVATIONS ON RULE IX.

OBS. 1.—Adjectives often relate to nouns or pronouns understood; as, "A new sorrow recalls all the former" [sorrows].—Art of Thinking, p. 31. [The place] "Farthest from him is best."—Milton, P. L. "To whom they all gave heed, from the least [person] to the greatest" [person].—Acts, viii, 10. "The Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty [God], and a terrible" [God].—Deut., x, 17. "Every one can distinguish an angry from a placid, a cheerful from a melancholy, a thoughtful from a thoughtless, and a dull from a penetrating, countenance."—Beattie's Moral Science, p. 192. Here the word countenance is understood seven times; for eight different countenances are spoken of. "He came unto his own [possessions], and his own [men] received him not."—John, i, 11. The Rev. J. G. Cooper, has it: "He came unto his own (creatures,) and his own (creatures) received him not."—''Pl. and Pract. Gram.'', p. 44. This ambitious editor of Virgil, abridger of Murray, expounder of the Bible, and author of several "new and improved" grammars, (of different languages,) should have understood this text, notwithstanding the obscurity of our version. "[Greek: Eis ta idia ælthe. kai oi idioi auton ou parelabon]."—"In propria venit, et proprii eum non receperunt."—Montanus. "Ad sua venit, et sui eum non exceperunt."—Beza. "Il est venu chez soi; et les siens ne l'ont point reçu."—French Bible. Sometimes the construction of the adjective involves an ellipsis of several words, and those perhaps the principal parts of the clause; as, "The sea appeared to be agitated more than [in that degree which is] usual."—Murray's Key, 8vo, p. 217. "During the course of the sentence, the scene should be changed as little as [in the least] possible" [degree].—Blair's Rhet., p. 107; Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 312.

"Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find,   Why [thou art] form'd so weak, so little, and so blind" —Pope.

OBS. 2.—Because qualities belong only to things, most grammarians teach, that, "Adjectives are capable of being added to nouns only."—Buchanan's Syntax, p. 26. Or, as Murray expresses the doctrine: "Every adjective, and every adjective pronoun, belongs to a substantive, expressed or understood