Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/912

904 "They are supported by industry."—Iidem. "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 cor. "Ourselves is a personal pronoun, of the first person plural."—Id. "Thee is a personal pronoun, of the second person singular."—Id. "Contentment is a common noun, of the third person singular."—Id. "Were is a neuter verb, of the indicative mood, imperfect tense."—Id.

"O thou Dispenser of life! thy mercies are boundless."—Allen cor. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"—: Gen., xviii, 25. "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."—: Gen., i, 2. "It is the gift of Him, who is the great Author of good, and the Father of mercies."—Murray cor. "This is thy God that brought thee up out of Egypt."—: Neh., ix, 18. "For the is our defence; and the Holy One of Israel is our King."—Psal.. lxxxix, 18. "By making him the responsible steward of Heaven's bounties."—''A. S. Mag. cor.'' "Which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day."—: 2 Tim., iv, 8. "The cries of them ... entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth."—ALGER, FRIENDS: 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."—G. Brown. "And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the : 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."—: Exod., vi, 2. "Thus saith the the King of Israel, and his Redeemer the of hosts; I am the First, and I am the Last; and besides me there is no God."—See Isa., xliv, 6.

"Islamism prescribes fasting during the month Ramadan."—Balbi cor. "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."—G. Brown. "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, Crates, 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 suspected, that, as the son of Jupiter and Alcmena has fathered the deeds of forty other Herculeses, so this unfathered son of Critheis, Themisto, or whatever dame—this Melesigenes, Mæonides, Homer—the blind schoolmaster, and poet, of Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos, Athens, or whatever place—has, by the help of Lycurgus, Solon, Pisistratus, and other learned ancients, been made up of many poets or Homers, and set so far aloft and aloof on old Parnassus, as to become a god in the eyes of all Greece, a wonder in those of all Christendom."—G. Brown.