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

Brier's Analogy, p. xvi. "Neither of these are fix'd to a Word of a general Signification, or proper Name."—Brightland's Gram., p. 95. "Of which a few of the opening lines is all I shall give."—Moore's Life of Byron. "The riches we had in England was the slow result of long industry and wisdom."—DAVENANT: Webster's Imp. Gram., p. 21; Phil. Gram., 29. "The following expression appears to be correct:—'Much publick thanks is due.'"—Wright's Gram., p. 201. "He hath been enabled to correct many mistakes."—Lowth's Gram., p. x. "Which road takest thou here?"—Ingersoll's Gram., p. 106. "Learnest thou thy lesson?"—Ib., p. 105. "Learned they their pieces perfectly?"—Ibid. "Thou learnedst thy task well."—Ibid. "There are some can't relish the town, and others can't away with the country."—WAY OF THE WORLD: Kames, El. of Crit., i, 304. "If thou meetest them, thou must put on an intrepid mien."—Neef's Method of Ed., p. 201. "Struck with terror, as if Philip was something more than human."—Blair's Rhet., p. 265. "If the personification of the form of Satan was admissible, it should certainly have been masculine."—Jamieson's Rhet., p. 176. "If only one follow, there seems to be a defect in the sentence."—Priestley's Gram., p. 104. "Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him."—John, xx, 15. "Blessed be the people that know the joyful sound."—Psalms, lxxxix, 15. "Every auditory take in good part those marks of respect and awe, which are paid them by one who addresses them."—Blair's Rhet., p. 308. "Private causes were still pleaded [in the forum]: but the public was no longer interested; nor any general attention drawn to what passed there."—Ib., p. 249. "Nay, what evidence can be brought to show, that the Inflection of the Classic tongues were not originally formed out of obsolete auxiliary words?"—Murray's Gram., i, p. 112. "If the student reflects, that the principal and the auxiliary forms but one verb, he will have little or no difficulty, in the proper application of the present rule."—Ib., p. 183. "For the sword of the enemy and fear is on every side."—Jeremiah, vi, 26. "Even the Stoics agree that nature and certainty is very hard to come at."—Collier's Antoninus, p. 71. "His politeness and obliging behaviour was changed."—Priestley's Gram., p. 186. "His politeness and obliging behaviour were changed."—Hume's Hist., Vol. vi, p. 14. "War and its honours was their employment and ambition."—Goldsmith. "Does a and an mean the same thing?"—R. W. Green's Gram., p. 15. "When a number of words come in between the discordant parts, the ear does not detect the error."—Cobbett's Gram., ¶ 185. "The sentence should be, 'When a number of words comes in,' &c."—Wright's Gram., p. 170. "The nature of our language, the accent and pronunciation of it, inclines us to contract even all our regular verbs."—Lowth's Gram., p. 45. "The nature of our language, together with the accent and pronunciation of it, incline us to contract even all our Regular Verbs."—Hiley's Gram., p. 45. "Prompt aid, and not promises, are what we ought to give."—Author. "The position of the several organs therefore, as well as their functions are ascertained."—Medical Magazine, 1833, p. 5. "Every private company, and almost every public assembly, afford opportunities of remarking the difference between a just and graceful, and a faulty and unnatural elocution."—Enfield's Speaker, p. 9. "Such submission, together with the active principle of obedience, make up the temper and character in us which answers to his sovereignty."— Butler's Analogy, p. 126. "In happiness, as in other things, there is a false and a true, an imaginary and a real."—Fuller, on the Gospel, p. 134. "To confound things that differ, and to make a distinction where there is no difference, is equally unphilosophical."—Author.

   "I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
    Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows."—Beaut. of Shak., p. 51.

LESSON VI.—VERBS.

"Whose business or profession prevent their attendance in the morning."—Ogilby. "And no church or officer have power over one another."—LECHFORD: in Hutchinson's Hist., i, 373. "While neither reason nor experience are sufficiently matured to protect them."—Woodbridge. "Among the Greeks and Romans, every syllable, or the far greatest number at least, was known to have a fixed and determined quantity."—Blair's Rhet., p. 383. "Among the Greeks and Romans, every syllable, or at least by far the greatest number of syllables, was known to have a fixed and determined quantity."—Jamieson's Rhet., p. 303. "Their vanity is awakened and their passions exalted by the irritation, which their self-love receives from contradiction."—Influence of Literature, Vol. ii. p. 218. "I and he was neither of us any great swimmer."—Anon. "Virtue, honour, nay, even self-interest, conspire to recommend the measure."—Murray's Gram., Vol. i, p. 150. "A correct plainness, and elegant simplicity, is the proper character of an introduction."—Blair's Rhet., p. 308. "In syntax there is what grammarians call concord or agreement, and government."—Infant School Gram., p. 128. "People find themselves able without much study to write and speak the English intelligibly, and thus have been led to think rules of no utility."— Webster's Essays, p. 6. "But the writer must be one who has studied to inform himself well, who has pondered his subject with care, and addresses himself to our judgment, rather than to our imagination."—Blair's Rhet., p. 353. "But practice hath determined it otherwise; and has, in all the languages with which we are much acquainted, supplied the place of an interrogative mode, either by particles of interrogation, or by a peculiar order of the words in the sentence."—Lowth's Gram., p. 84. "If the Lord have stirred thee up against me, let him accept an offering."—1 Sam., xxvi, 19. "But if the priest's daughter be a widow, or divorced, and have no child, and is returned unto her father's house, as in her youth, she shall eat of her father's meat."—Levit., xxii, 13. "Since we never have, nor ever shall study your sublime productions."—Neef's Sketch, p. 62. "Enabling us to form more distinct images of objects, than can be done with the utmost attention where these particulars are not found."—Kames, El. of Crit., Vol. i, p. 174. "I hope you will consider what is spoke comes from my love."—Shak., Othello. "We will then perceive how the designs of emphasis may be marred,"—Rush, on the Voice, p. 406. "I knew it was Crab, and goes me to the fellow that whips the dogs."—SHAK: Joh. Dict., w. ALE. "The youth was being consumed by a slow malady."—Wright's Gram., p. 192. "If all men thought, spoke, and wrote alike, something resembling a perfect adjustment of these points may be accomplished."— Ib., p. 240. "If you will replace what has been long since expunged from the language."—Campbell's Rhet., p. 167; Murray's Gram., i, 364. "As in all those faulty instances, I have now been giving."—Blair's Rhet., p. 149. "This mood has also been improperly used in the following places."—Murray's Gram., i, 184. "He [Milton] seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know what it was that nature had bestowed upon him."—Johnson's Life of Milton. "Of which I already gave one instance, the worst, indeed, that occurs in all the poem."—Blair's Rhet., p. 395. "It is strange he never commanded you to have done it."—Anon. "History painters would have found it difficult, to have invented such a species of beings."—ADDISON: see Lowth's Gram., p. 87. "Universal Grammar cannot be taught abstractedly, it must be done with reference to some language already known."—Lowth's Preface, p. viii. "And we might imagine, that if verbs had been so contrived, as simply to express these, no more was needful."—Blair's Rhet., p. 82. "To a writer of such a genius as Dean Swift, the plain style was most admirably fitted."—Ib., p. 181. "Please excuse my son's absence."—Inst., p. 188. "Bid the boys to come in immediately."—Ib.

   "Gives us the secrets of his Pagan hell,
    Where ghost with ghost in sad communion dwell."
        —Crabbe's Bor., p. 306.

    "Alas! nor faith, nor valour now remain;
    Sighs are but wind, and I must bear my chain."
        —Walpole's Catal., p. 11.

LESSON VII.—PARTICIPLES.

"Of which the Author considers himself, in compiling the present work, as merely laying of the foundation-stone."—Blair's Gram., p. ix. "On the raising such lively and distinct images as are here described."—Kames, El. of Crit., i, 89. "They are necessary to the avoiding Ambiguities."— Brightland's Gram., p. 95. "There is no neglecting it without falling into a dangerous error."—Burlamaqui, on Law, p. 41. "The contest resembles Don Quixote's fighting windmills."—Webster's Essays, p. 67. "That these verbs associate with verbs in all the tenses, is no proof of their having no particular time of their own."—Murray's Gram., i, 190. "To justify my not following the tract of the ancient rhetoricians."— Blair's Rhet., p. 122. "The putting letters together, so as to make words, is called spelling."—Infant School Gram., p. 11. "What is the putting vowels and consonants together called?"—Ib., p. 12. "Nobody knows of their being charitable but themselves."—Fuller, on the Gospel, p. 29. "Payment was at length made, but no reason assigned for its having been so long postponed."—Murray's Gram., i, 186; Kirkham's, 194; Ingersoll's, 254. "Which will bear being brought into comparison with any composition of the kind."—Blair's Rhet., p. 396. "To render vice ridiculous, is doing real service to the world."—Ib., p. 476. "It is copying directly from nature; giving a plain rehearsal of what passed, or was supposed to pass, in conversation."—Ib., p. 433. "Propriety of pronunciation is giving to every word that sound, which the most polite usage of the language appropriates to it."—Murray's Key, 8vo, p. 200. "To occupy the mind, and prevent our regretting the insipidity of an uniform plain."—Kames, El. of Crit., Vol. ii, p. 329. "There are a hundred ways of any thing happening."—Steele. "Tell me, signor, what was the cause of Antonio's sending Claudio to Venice, yesterday."—Bucke's Gram., p 90. "Looking about for an outlet, some rich prospect unexpectedly opens to view."—Kames, El. of Crit., ii, 334. "A hundred volumes of modern novels may be read, without acquiring a new idea"—Webster's Essays, p. 29. "Poetry admits of greater latitude than prose, with respect to coining, or, at least, new compounding words."—Blair's Rhet., p. 93. "When laws were wrote on brazen tablets enforced by the sword."—Notes to the Dunciad. "A pronoun, which saves the naming a person or thing a second time, ought to be placed as near as possible to the name of that person or thing."—Kames, El. of Crit., ii, 49. "The using a preposition in this case, is not always a matter of choice."—Ib., ii, 37. "To save multiplying words, I would be understood to comprehend both circumstances."—Ib., i, 219. "Immoderate grief is mute: complaining is struggling for consolation."—Ib., i, 398. "On the other hand, the accelerating or retarding the natural course, excites a pain."—Ib., i, 259. "Human affairs require the distributing our attention."—Ib., i, 264. "By neglecting this circumstance, the following example is defective in neatness."—Ib., ii, 29. "And therefore the suppressing copulatives must animate a description."—Ib., ii, 32. "If the laying aside copulatives give force and liveliness, a redundancy of them must render the period languid."—Ib., ii, 33. "It skills not asking my leave, said Richard."—Scott's Crusaders. "To redeem his credit, he proposed being sent once more to Sparta."—Goldsmith's Greece, i, 129. "Dumas relates his having given drink to a dog."—Dr. Stone, on the Stomach, p. 24. "Both are, in a like way, instruments of our receiving such ideas from external objects."—Butler's Analogy, p. 66. "In order to your proper handling such a subject."—Spectator, No. 533. "For I do not recollect its being preceded by an open vowel."—Knight, on the Greek Alphabet, p. 56. "Such is setting up the form above the power of godliness."—Barclay's Works, i, 72. "I remember walking once with my young acquaintance."— Hunt's Byron, p 27. "He [Lord Byron] did not like paying a debt."—Ib., p. 74. "I do not remember seeing Coleridge when I was a child."—Ib., p. 318. "In consequence of the dry rot's having been discovered, the mansion has undergone a thorough repair."—Maunder's Gram., p. 17. "I would not advise the following entirely the German system."—DR. LIEBER: Lit. Conv., p. 66. "Would it not be making the students judges of the professors?"—Id., ib., p. 4. "Little time should intervene between their being proposed and decided upon."—PROF. VETHAKE: ib., p. 39. "It would be nothing less than finding fault with the Creator."—Ib., p. 116. "Having once been friends is a powerful reason, both of prudence and conscience, to restrain us from ever becoming enemies."—Secker. "By using the word as a conjunction, the ambiguity is prevented."—Murray's Gram., i, 216.

   "He forms his schemes the flood of vice to stem,
    But preaching Jesus is not one of them."—J. Taylor.

LESSON VIII.—ADVERBS.

"Auxiliaries cannot only be inserted, but are really understood,"—Wright's Gram., p 209. "He was since a hired Scribbler in the Daily Courant."—Notes to the Dunciad, ii, 299. "In gardening, luckily, relative beauty need never stand in opposition to intrinsic beauty."—Kames, El. of Crit., ii, 330. "I doubt much of the propriety of the following examples."—Lowth's Gram., p. 44. "And [we see] how far they have spread one of