The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown (free ebook reader .txt) 📕

OBS. 8.—The agreement of pronouns with their antecedents, it is necessary to observe, is liable to be controlled or affected by several of the figures of rhetoric. A noun used figuratively often suggests two different senses, the one literal, and the other tropical; and the agreement of the pronoun must be sometimes with this, and sometimes with that, according to the nature of the trope. If the reader be unacquainted with tropes and figures, he should turn to the explanation of them in Part Fourth of this work; but almost every one knows something about them, and such as must here be named, will perhaps be made sufficiently intelligible by the examples. There seems to be no occasion to introduce under this head more than four; namely, personification, metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche.

OBS. 9.—When a pronoun represents the name of an inanimate object personified, it agrees with its antecedent in the figurative, and not in the literal sense; as, "There were others whose crime it was rather to neglect Reason than to disobey her."—Dr. Johnson. "Penance dreams her life away."—Rogers. "Grim Darkness furls his leaden shroud."—Id. Here if the pronoun were made neuter, the personification would be destroyed; as, "By the progress which England had already made in navigation and commerce, it was now prepared for advancing farther."—Robertson's America, Vol. ii, p. 341. If the pronoun it was here intended to represent England, the feminine she would have been much better; and, if such was not the author's meaning, the sentence has some worse fault than the agreement of a pronoun with its noun in a wrong sense.

OBS. 10.—When the antecedent is applied metaphorically, the pronoun usually agrees with it in its literal, and not in its figurative sense; as, "Pitt was the pillar which upheld the state."—"The monarch of mountains rears his snowy head."—"The stone which the builders rejected."—Matt., xxi, 42. According to this rule, which would be better than whom, in the following text: "I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them an other little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots."—Daniel, vii, 8. In Rom., ix, 33, there is something similar: "Behold, I lay in Sion a stumbling-stone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed." Here the stone or rock is a metaphor for Christ, and the pronoun him may be referred to the sixth exception above; but the construction is not agreeable, because it is not regular: it would be more grammatical, to change on him to thereon. In the following example, the noun "wolves," which literally requires which, and not who, is used metaphorically for selfish priests; and, in the relative, the figurative or personal sense is allowed to prevail:

   "Wolves shall succeed for teachers, grievous wolves,
    Who all the sacred mysteries of Heaven
    To their own vile advantages shall turn."
        —Milton, P. L., B. xii, l. 508.

This seems to me somewhat forced and catachrestical. So too, and worse, the following; which makes a star rise and speak:

   "So spake our Morning Star then in his rise,
    And looking round on every side beheld
    A pathless desert, dusk with horrid shades."
        —Id., P. R., B. i, l. 294.

OBS. 11.—When the antecedent is put by metonymy for a noun of different properties, the pronoun sometimes agrees with it in the figurative, and sometimes in the literal sense; as, "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. As they called them, so they went from them: [i. e., When Moses and the prophets called the Israelites, they often refused to hear:] they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burnt incense to graven images. I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them."—Hosea, xi, 1, 2, 3. The mixture and obscurity which are here, ought not to be imitated. The name of a man, put for the nation or tribe of his descendants, may have a pronoun of either number, and a nation may be figuratively represented as feminine; but a mingling of different genders or numbers ought to be avoided: as, "Moab is spoiled, and gone up out of her cities, and his chosen young men are gone down to the slaughter."—Jeremiah, xlviii, 15.

   "The wolf, who [say that] from the nightly fold,
    Fierce drags the bleating prey, ne'er drunk her milk,
    Nor wore her warming fleece."—Thomson's Seasons.

    "That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heaven,
    Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
    A hero perish or a sparrow fall."—Pope's Essay on Man.

"And heaven behold its image in his breast."—Ib.

"Such fate to suffering worth is given, Who long with wants and woes has striven."—Burns.

OBS. 12.—When the antecedent is put by synecdoche for more or less than it literally signifies, the pronoun agrees with it in the figurative, and not in the literal sense; as,

"A dauntless soul erect, who smiled on death."—Thomson

    "But to the generous still improving mind,
    That gives the hopeless heart to sing for joy,
    To him the long review of ordered life
    Is inward rapture only to be felt."—Id. Seasons.

OBS. 13.—Pronouns usually follow the words which they represent; but this order is sometimes reversed: as, "Whom the cap fits, let him put it on."—"Hark! they whisper; angels say," &c.—Pope. "Thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion."—Old Test. And in some cases of apposition, the pronoun naturally comes first; as, "I Tertius"—"Ye lawyers." The pronoun it, likewise, very often precedes the clause or phrase which it represents; as, "Is it not manifest, that the generality of people speak and write very badly?"—Campbell's Rhet., p. 160; Murray's Gram., i, 358. This arrangement is too natural to be called a transposition. The most common form of the real inversion is that of the antecedent and relative in poetry; as,

   "Who stops to plunder at this signal hour,
    The birds shall tear him, and the dogs devour."
        —POPE: Iliad, xv, 400.

OBS. 14.—A pronoun sometimes represents a phrase or a sentence; and in this case the pronoun is always in the third person singular neuter: as, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not."—Gen., xxviii, 10. "Yet men can go on to vilify or disregard Christianity; which is to talk and act as if they had a demonstration of its falsehood."—Butler's Analogy, p. 269. "When it is asked wherein personal identity consists, the answer should be the same as if it were asked, wherein consists similitude or equality."—Ib., p. 270. "Also, that the soul be without knowledge, it is not good."—Prov., xix, 2. In this last example, the pronoun is not really necessary. "That the soul be without knowledge, is not good."—Jenks's Prayers, p. 144. Sometimes an infinitive verb is taken as an antecedent; as, "He will not be able to think, without which it is impertinent to read; nor to act, without which it is impertinent to think."—Bolingbroke, on History, p. 103.

OBS. 15.—When a pronoun follows two words, having a neuter verb between them, and both referring to the same thing, it may represent either of them, but not often with the same meaning: as, 1. "I am the man, who command." Here, who command belongs to the subject I, and the meaning is, "I who command, am the man." (The latter expression places the relative nearer to its antecedent, and is therefore preferable.) 2. "I am the man who commands." Here, who commands belongs to the predicate man, and the meaning is, "I am the commander." Again: "I perceive thou art a pupil, who possessest good talents."—Cooper's Pl. and Pract. Gram., p. 136. Here the construction corresponds not to the perception, which is, of the pupil's talents. Say, therefore, "I perceive thou art a pupil possessing (or, who possesses) good talents."

OBS. 16.—After the expletive it, which may be employed to introduce a noun or a pronoun of any person, number, or gender, the above-mentioned distinction is generally disregarded; and the relative is most commonly made to agree with the latter word, especially if this word be of the first or the second person: as, "It is no more I that do it."—Rom., vii, 20. "For it is not ye that speak."—Matt., x, 20. The propriety of this construction is questionable. In the following examples, the relative agrees with the it, and not with the subsequent nouns: "It is the combined excellencies of all the denominations that gives to her her winning beauty and her powerful charms."—Bible Society's Report, 1838, p. 89. "It is purity and neatness of expression which is chiefly to be studied."—Blair's Rhet., p. 271. "It is not the difficulty of the language, but on the contrary the simplicity and facility of it, that occasions this neglect."—Lowth's Gram., p. vi. "It is a wise head and a good heart that constitutes a great man."—Child's Instructor, p. 22.

OBS. 17.—The pronoun it very frequently refers to something mentioned subsequently in the sentence; as, "It is useless to complain of what is irremediable." This pronoun is a necessary expletive at the commencement of any sentence in which the verb is followed by a phrase or a clause which, by transposition, might be made the subject of the verb; as, "It is impossible to please every one."—W. Allen's Gram. "It was requisite that the papers should be sent."—Ib. The following example is censured by the Rev. Matt. Harrison: "It is really curious, the course which balls will sometimes take."—Abernethy's Lectures. "This awkward expression," says the critic, "might have been avoided by saying, 'The course which balls will sometimes take is really curious.'"—Harrison, on the English Language, p. 147. If the construction is objectionable, it may, in this instance, be altered thus: "It is really curious, to observe the course which balls will sometimes take!" So, it appears, we may avoid a pleonasm by an addition. But he finds a worse example: saying, "Again, in an article from the 'New Monthly,' No. 103, we meet with the same form of expression, but with an aggravated aspect:—'It is incredible, the number of apothecaries' shops, presenting themselves.' It would be quite as easy to say, 'The number of apothecaries' shops, presenting themselves, is incredible.' "—Ib., p. 147. This, too, may take an infinitive, "to tell," or "to behold;" for there is no more extravagance in doubting one's eyes, than in declaring one's own statement "incredible." But I am not sure that the original form is not allowable. In the following line, we seem to have something like it:

"It curled not Tweed alone, that breeze."—Sir W. Scott.

OBS. 18.—Relative and interrogative pronouns are placed at or near the beginning of their own clauses; and the learner must observe that, through all their cases, they almost invariably retain this situation in the sentence, and are found before their verbs even when the order of the construction would reverse this arrangement: as, "He who preserves me, to whom I owe my being, whose I am, and whom I serve, is eternal."—Murray, p. 159. "He whom you seek."—Lowth.

   "The good must merit God's peculiar care;
    But who, but God, can tell us who they are?"—Pope.

OBS. 19.—A relative pronoun, being the representative of some antecedent word or phrase, derives from this relation its person, number, and gender, but not its case. By taking an other relation of case, it helps to form an other clause; and, by retaining the essential meaning of its antecedent, serves to connect this clause to that in which the antecedent is found. No relative, therefore, can ever be used in an independent simple sentence, or be made the subject of a subjunctive verb, or be put in apposition with any noun or pronoun; but, like other connectives, this pronoun belongs at the head of a clause in a compound sentence, and excludes conjunctions, except when two such clauses are to be joined together, as in the following example: "I should be glad, at least, of an easy companion, who may tell me his thoughts, and to whom I may communicate mine."—Goldsmith's Essays, p. 196.

OBS. 20.—The two special rules commonly given by the grammarians, for the construction of relatives, are not only unnecessary,[382] but faulty. I shall notice them only to show my reasons for discarding them. With whom they originated, it is difficult to say. Paul's Accidence has them, and if Dean Colet, the