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

that bears a plural title, is spoken of as one thing, there is sometimes presented an apparent exception to the foregoing rule; as, "The Pleasures of Memory was published in the year 1792, and became at once popular."—Allan Cunningham. "The 'Sentiments of a Church-of-England Man' is written with great coolness, moderation, ease, and perspicuity."—Johnson's Life of Swift. "The 'Pleasures of Hope' is a splendid poem; it was written for perpetuity."—Samuel L. Knapp. In these instances, there is, I apprehend, either an 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 seems to require no further explanation. See Obs. 2d under Rule 2d, and Obs. 2d under Rule 5th.

OBS. 8.—The infinitive mood, a phrase, or a sentence, (and, according to some authors, the participle in ing, or a phrase beginning with this participle,) is sometimes the proper subject of a verb, being equivalent to a nominative of the third person singular; as, "To play is pleasant."—Lowth's Gram., p. 80. "To write well, is difficult; to speak eloquently, is still more difficult."—Blair's Rhet., p. 81. "To take men off from prayer, tends to irreligiousness, is granted."—Barclay's Works, i, 214. "To educate a child perfectly, requires profounder thought, greater wisdom, than to govern a state."—Channing's Self-Culture, p. 30. "To determine these points, belongs to good sense."—Blair's Rhet., p. 321. "How far the change would contribute to his welfare, comes to be considered."—Id., Sermons. "That too much care does hurt in any of our tasks, is a doctrine so flattering to indolence, that we ought to receive it with extreme caution."—Life of Schiller, p. 148. "That there is no disputing about taste, is a saying so generally received as to have become a proverb."—Kames, El. of Crit., ii, 360. "For what purpose they embarked, is not yet known."—"To live in sin and yet to believe the forgiveness of sin, is utterly impossible."—Dr. J. Owen.

   "There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
    But drinking largely sobers us again."—Pope.

OBS. 9.—The same meaning will be expressed, if the pronoun it be placed before the verb, and the infinitive, phrase, or santance, after it; as, "It is pleasant to play,"—"It is difficult to write well;" &c. The construction of the following sentences is rendered defective by the omission of this pronoun: "Why do ye that which [it] is not lawful to do on the sabbath days?"—Luke, vi, 2. "The show-bread, which [it] is not lawful to eat, but for the priests only."—Ib., vi, 4. "We have done that which [it] was our duty to do."—Ib., xvii, 10. Here the relative which ought to be in the objective case, governed by the infinitives; but the omission of the word it makes this relative the nominative to is or was, and leaves to do and to eat without any regimen. This is not ellipsis, but error. It is an accidental gap into which a side piece falls, and leaves a breach elsewhere. The following is somewhat like it, though what falls in, appears to leave no chasm: "From this deduction, [it] may be easily seen how it comes to pass, that personification makes so great a figure."—Blair's Rhet., p. 155. "Whether the author had any meaning in this expression, or what it was, [it] is not easy to determine."—Murray's Gram., Vol. i, p. 298. "That warm climates should accelerate the growth of the human body, and shorten its duration, [it] is very reasonable to believe."—Ib., p. 144. These also need the pronoun, though Murray thought them complete without it.

OBS. 10.—When the infinitive mood is made the subject of a finite verb, it is most commonly used to express action or state in the abstract; as, "To be contents his natural desire."—Pope. Here to be stands for simple existence; or if for the existence of the Indian, of whom the author speaks, that relation is merely implied. "To define ridicule, has puzzled and vexed every critic."—Kames, El. of Crit., i, 300. Here "to define" expresses an action quite as distinct from any agent, as would the participial noun; as, "The defining of ridicule," &c. In connexion with the infinitive, a concrete quality may also be taken as an abstract; as, "To be good is to be happy." Here good and happy express the quality of goodness and the state of happiness considered abstractly; and therefore these adjectives do not relate to any particular noun. So also the passive infinitive, or a perfect participle taken in a passive sense; as, "To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom."—"To appear discouraged, is the way to become so." Here the satisfaction and the discouragement are considered abstractly, and without reference to any particular person. (See Obs. 12th and 13th on Rule 6th.) So too, apparently, the participles doing and suffering, as well as the adjective weak, in the following example:

"Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering."—Milton's Paradise Lost.

OBS. 11.—When the action or state is to be expressly limited to one class of beings, or to a particular person or thing, without making the verb finite; the noun or pronoun may be introduced before the infinitive by the preposition for: as, "For men to search their own glory, is not glory."—Prov., xxv, 27. "For a prince to be reduced by villany [sic—KTH] to my distressful circumstances, is calamity enough."—Translation of Sallust. "For holy persons to be humble, is as hard, as for a prince to submit himself to be guided by tutors."—TAYLOR: Priestley's Gram., p. 132; Murray's, 184. But such a limitation is sometimes implied, when the expression itself is general; as, "Not to know me, argues thyself unknown."—Milton. That is, "For thee not to know me." The phrase is put far, "Thy ignorance of me;" for an other's ignorance would be no argument in regard to the individual addressed. "I, to bear this, that never knew but better, is some burden."—Beauties of Shak., p. 327. Here the infinitive to bear, which is the subject of the verb is, is limited in sense by the pronoun I, which is put absolute in the nominative, though perhaps improperly; because, "For me to bear this," &c., will convey the same meaning, in a form much more common, and perhaps more grammatical. In the following couplet, there is an ellipsis of the infinitive; for the phrase, "fool with fool," means, "for fool to contend with fool," or, "for one fool to contend with an other:"

   "Blockheads with reason wicked wits abhor,
    But fool with fool is barb'rous civil war."
        —Pope, Dunciad, B. iii, l. 175.

OBS. 12.—The objective noun or pronoun thus introduced by for before the infinitive, was erroneously called by Priestley, "the subject of the affirmation;" (Gram., p. 132;) and Murray, Ingersoll, and others, have blindly copied the blunder. See Murray's Gram., p. 184; Ingersoll's, 244. Again, Ingersoll says, "The infinitive mood, or part of a sentence, is sometimes the subject of a verb, and is, therefore, its NOMINATIVE."—Conversations on English Gram., p. 246. To this erroneous deduction, the phraseology used by Murray and others too plainly gives countenance: "The infinitive