Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/576

 or John will favour us with his company."--"Neither wealth nor honour can secure the happiness of its votaries."

"What virtue or what mental grace,   But men unqualified and base        Will boast it their possession?"--Cowper, on Friendship.

OBSERVATIONS ON RULE XIII.

OBS. 1.--When two or more singular antecedents are connected by or or nor, the pronoun which represents them, ought in general to be singular, because or and nor are disjunctives; and, to form a complete concord, the nouns ought also to be of the same person and gender, that the pronoun may agree in all respects with each of them. But when plural nouns are connected in this manner, the pronoun will of course be plural, though it still agrees with the antecedents singly; as, "Neither riches nor honours ever satisfy their pursuers." Sometimes, when different numbers occur together, we find the plural noun put last, and the pronoun made plural after both, especially if this noun is a mere substitute for the other; as,

"What's justice to a man, or laws,   That never comes within their claws."--Hudibras.

OBS. 2.--When antecedents of different persons, numbers, or genders, are connected by or or nor, they cannot very properly be represented by any pronoun that is not applicable to each of them. The following sentences are therefore inaccurate; or at least they contradict the teachings of their own authors: "Either thou or I am greatly mistaken, in our judgment on this subject."--Murray's Key, p. 184 "Your character, which I, or any other writer, may now value ourselves by (upon) drawing."--SWIFT: Lowth's Gram., p. 96. "Either you or I will be in our place in due time."--Coopers Gram., p. 127. But different pronouns may be so connected as to refer to such antecedents taken separately; as, "By requiring greater labour from such slave or slaves, than he or she or they are able to perform."--Prince's Digest. Or, if the gender only be different, the masculine may involve the feminine by implication; as, "If a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish, he shall let him go free for his eye's sake."--Exodus, xxi, 26.

OBS. 3.--It is however very common to resort to the plural number in such instances as the foregoing, because our plural pronouns are alike in all the genders; as, "When either man or woman shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite."--Numbers, vi, 2. "Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman unto thy gates, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die."--Deut., xvii, 5. "Not on outward charms could he or she build their pretensions to please."--Opie, on Lying, p. 148. "Complimenting either man or woman on agreeable qualities which they do not possess, in hopes of imposing on their credulity."--Ib., p. 108. "Avidien, or his wife, (no matter which,) sell their presented partridges and fruits."--Pope, Sat. ii, l. 50. "Beginning with Latin or Greek hexameter, which are the same."--''Kames, El. of Crit.'', i, 79.

"Did ever Proteus, Merlin, any witch,   Transform themselves so strangely as the rich?" --Pope, Ep. i, l. 152.

OBS. 4.--From the observations and examples above, it may be perceived, that whenever there is a difference of person, number, or gender, in antecedents connected disjunctively, there is an inherent difficulty respecting the form of the pronoun personal. The best mode of meeting this inconvenience, or of avoiding it by a change of the phraseology, may be different on different occasions. The disjunctive connexion of explicit pronouns is the most correct, but it savours too much of legal precision and wordiness to be always eligible. Commonly an ingenious mind may invent some better expression, and yet avoid any syntactical anomaly. In Latin, when nouns are connected by the conjunctions which correspond to or or nor, the pronoun or verb is so often made plural, that no such principle as that of the foregoing Rule, or of Rule 17th, is taught by the common grammars of that language. How such usage can be logically right, however, it is difficult to imagine. Lowth, Murray, Webster, and most other English grammarians, teach, that, "The conjunction disjunctive has an effect contrary to that of the copulative; and, as the verb, noun, or pronoun, is referred to the preceding terms taken separately, it must be in the singular number."--Lowth's Gram., p. 75; L. Murray's, 151; Churchill's, 142; W. Allen's, 133; Lennie's, 83; and many others. If there is any allowable exception to this principle, it is for the adoption of the plural when the concord cannot be made by any one pronoun singular; as, "If I value my friend's wife or son upon account of their connexion with him."--''Kames, El. of Crit.'', i, 73. "Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation."--Levit., x, 8. These examples, though they do not accord with the preceding rule, seem not to be susceptible of any change for the better. There are also some other modes of expression, in which nouns that are connected disjunctively, may afterwards be represented together; as "Foppery is a sort of folly much more contagious THAN pedantry; but as they result alike from affectation, they deserve alike to be proscribed."--Campbell's Rhet., p. 217.