Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/579

 agreement of the verb, by the figure syllepsis, with the mental conception of the thing spoken of; or an improper ellipsis of the common noun, with which each sentence ought to commence; as, "The poem entitled,"--"The work entitled," &c. But the plural title sometimes controls the form of the verb; as, "My Lives are reprinting."--Dr. Johnson.

OBS. 3.--In the figurative use of the present tense for the past or imperfect, the vulgar have a habit of putting the third person singular with the pronoun I; as, "Thinks I to myself."--Rev. J. Marriott. "O, says I, Jacky, are you at that work?"--Day's Sandford and Merton. "Huzza! huzza! Sir Condy Rackrent forever, was the first thing I hears in the morning."--Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, p. 97. This vulgarism is to be avoided, not by a simple omission of the terminational s, but rather by the use of the literal preterit: as, "Thought I to myself;"--"O, said I;"--"The first thing I heard." The same mode of correction is also proper, when, under like circumstances, there occurs a disagreement in number; as, "After the election was over, there comes shoals of people from all parts."--Castle Rackrent, p. 103. "Didn't ye hear it? says they that were looking on."--Ib., p. 147. Write, "there came,"--"said they."

OBS. 4.--It has already been noticed, that the article a, or a singular adjective, sometimes precedes an arithmetical number with a plural noun; as, "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday."--Psalms, xc, 4. So we might say, "One thousand years are,"--"Each thousand years are"--"Every thousand years are," &c. But it would not be proper to say, "A thousand years is," or, "Every thousand years is;" because the noun years is plainly plural, and the anomaly of putting a singular verb after it, is both needless and unauthorized. Yet, to this general rule for the verb, the author of a certain "English Grammar on the Productive System," (a strange perversion of Murray's compilation, and a mere catch-penny work, now extensively used in New England,) is endeavouring to establish, by his own bare word, the following exception: "Every is sometimes associated with a plural noun, in which case the verb must be singular; as, 'Every hundred years constitutes a century.'"--Smith's New Gram., p. 103. His reason is this; that the phrase containing the nominative, "signifies a single period of time, and is, therefore, in reality singular."--Ib. Cutler also, a more recent writer, seems to have imbibed the same notion; for he gives the following sentence as an example of "false construction: Every hundred years are called a century."--Cutler's Grammar and Parser, p. 145. But, according to this argument, no plural verb could ever be used with any ''definite number'' of the parts of time; for any three years, forty years, or threescore years and ten, are as single a period of time, as "every hundred years," "every four years," or "every twenty-four hours." Nor is it true, that, "Every is sometimes associated with a plural noun;" for "every years" or "every hours," would be worse than nonsense. I, therefore, acknowledge no such exception; but, discarding the principle of the note, put this author's pretended corrections among my quotations of ''false syntax''.

OBS. 5.--Different verbs always have different subjects, expressed or understood; except when two or more verbs are connected in the same construction, or when the same word is repeated for the sake of emphasis. But let not the reader believe the common doctrine of our grammarians, respecting either the ellipsis of nominatives or the ellipsis of verbs. In the text, "The man was old and crafty," Murray sees no connexion of the ideas of age and craftiness, but thinks the text a compound sentence, containing two nominatives and two verbs; i.e., "The man was old, and the man was crafty." [387] And all his other instances of "the ellipsis of the verb" are equally fanciful! See his Octavo Gram., p. 219; Duodecimo, 175. In the text, "God loves, protects, supports, and rewards the rights," there are four verbs in the same construction, agreeing with the same nominative, and governing the same object; but Buchanan and others expound it, "God loves, and God protects, and God supports, and God rewards the righteous."--English Syntax, p. 76; British Gram., 192. This also is fanciful and inconsistent. If the nominative is here "elegantly understood to each verb," so is the objective, which they do not repeat. "And again," they immediately add, "the verb is often understood to its noun or nouns; as, He dreams of gibbets, halters, racks, daggers, &c. i.e. He dreams of gibbets, and he dreams of halters, &c."--''Same works and places''. In none of these examples is there any occasion to suppose an ellipsis, if we admit that two or more words can be connected in the same construction!

OBS. 6.--Verbs in the imperative mood commonly agree with the pronoun thou, ye, or you, understood after them; as, "Heal [ye] the sick, cleanse [ye] the lepers, raise [ye] the dead, cast [ye] out devils."--Matt., x, 8. "Trust God and be doing, and leave the rest with him."--Dr. Sibs. When the doer of a thing must first proceed to the place of action, we sometimes use go or come before an other verb, without any conjunction between the two; as, "Son, go work to-day in my vineyard."--Matt., xxi, 28. "Come see a man who [has] told me all things that ever I did."--John, iv, 29. "He ordered his soldiers to go murder every child about Bethlehem, or near it."--''Wood's Dict. of Bible, w. Herod''. "Take a present in thine hand, and go meet the man of God."--2 Kings, viii, 8. "I will go see if he be at home."--Walker's Particles, p. 169.

OBS. 7.--The place of the verb has reference mainly to that of the subject with which it agrees, and that of the object which it governs; and as the arrangement of these, with the instances in which they come before or after the verb, has already been noticed, the position of the latter