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and to maintain themselves in distinct and independent communities. -Ferguson's Hist. of Civil Society.

'Tis observable, that every one of the letters bear date after his banishment.-Bentley's Dissert. on Themistocles's Epistles.

Every invention known in the European art of war, as well as every precaution suggested by his long acquaintance with the Indian mode of fighting, were employed to ensure success.-Robertson's Hist. of America.

Here the distributive pronominal adjectives, each, either, neither, and every, are ungrammatically connected with verbs of the plural number.

None, which is a compound of no one, is manifestly singular; but is sometimes improperly connected with a plural verb.

No nation gives greater encouragements to learning than we do; yet at the same time none are so injudicious in the application.— Goldsmith on Polite Learning.

None were permitted to enter the holy precincts, without confessing, by their servile bonds and suppliant posture, the immediate presence of the sovereign deity.-Gibbon's Hist. of the Roman Empire.

The following instances of false concord require no special elucidation:

And Rebekah took goodly raiment of her eldest son Esau, which were with her in the house, and put them upon Jacob her youngest son.-Genesis.

The number of the names together were about an hundred and twenty.-Acts of the Apostles.

If the blood of bulls, and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ... purge your conscience from dead works?-St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews.

I have considered what have been said on both sides of the controversy.-Tillotson's Sermons.

One would think there was more sophists than one had a finger in this volume of letters.-Bentley's Dissert. on Socrates's Epistles.

There's two or three of us have seen strange sights.-Shakspeare. The undisciplined fury and unarmed courage of the Pisidians unable to check the progress of Alexander.-Gillies's Hist. of

Greece.

A false concord in person frequently occurs when the subject of the sentence is the second person singular of the personal pronoun.

Thou great First Cause, least understood.

Who all my sense confin'd

To know but this, that thou art good,

And that myself am blind;

Yet gave me, in this dark estate,

To see the good from ill;

And, binding Nature fast in fate,

Left free the human will.-Pope.

O thou my lips inspire

Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire.--Pope.
Nor thou, lord Arthur, shalt escape;

To thee I often call'd in vain,

Against that assassin in crape;

Yet thou could'st tamely see me slain;
Nor, when I felt the dreadful blow,

Or chid the dean, or pinch'd his spouse.-Swift.

To correspond with the pronoun thou, all these verbs ought to have been in the second person singular; instead of which, they are in the second person plural, as if they corresponded with the pronoun you. Writers generally have recourse to this mode of expression, that they may avoid harsh terminations.-The distinct forms of thou and you are often used promiscuously:

Base ungrateful boy! miserable as I am, yet I cannot cease to love thee. My love even now speaks in my resentment. I am still your father, nor can your usage form my heart anew.-Goldsmith's Essays.

Though the ministers of a tryant's wrath, to thee they are faithful, and but too willing to execute the orders which you unjustly imposed upon them.-Orford's Castle of Otranto.

The past participle should not be used instead of the past tense.

From liberty each nobler science sprung,
A Bacon brighten'd, and a Spenser sung.

-Savage's Wanderer.

And with my years my soul begun to pant
With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain.

-Byron's Lament of Tasso.

The imperfect tense should not be used for the perfect tense. Thus we may say,

"I wrote to him

last year," but not "I have written to him last year."

"When the time spoken of is connected with the present, in some manner either expressed or implied, then the perfect tense should be used. . . When the time spoken of is past, and there is nothing either expressed or implied to connect it with the present, the imperfect tense should be used."-(Breen's Modern Literature and its Defects). These rules are violated in the following examples :

You may do what you have done a century ago, make the Catholics worse than Helots.-Sydney Smith's Essays.

It is now four hundred years since the art of multiplying books has been discovered.-Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature.

During the last century no prime minister, however powerful, has become rich in office.-Macaulay's Hist. of England.

The auxiliaries shall and will should be carefully discriminated. The following old rule will be found useful for this purpose :—

In the first person simply shall foretells;
In will a threat or else a promise dwells.

Shall in the second and the third does threat;
Will simply then foretells the future feat.

A similar caution should be observed in the use of would and should.

Correct syntax is violated in the following examples:

Without having attended to this, we will be at a loss, in understanding several passages in the classics.-Blair's Lectures.

If we look within the rough and awkward outside, we will be richly rewarded by its perusal.-Gilfillan's Literary Portraits. I will be drowned and nobody shall see me.

We know to what cause our past reverses have been owing, and we will have ourselves to blame, if they are again incurred. Alison's Hist. of Europe.

If I would declare them, and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.-Psalms xl., 5.

This man was taken of the Jews and should have been killed of them.-Acts xxiii., 27.

If I should declare them and speak of them, they should be more than I am able to express.-Psalms xl., 6, Prayer Book version.

The perfect infinitive should not be used for the imperfect.

Gray might perhaps have been able to have rendered him more temperate in his political views.-Southey's The Doctor.

Those who would gladly have seen the Anglo-Saxon to have predominated over the Latin elements of our language.-Trench's English Past and Present.

That he was willing to have made his peace with Walpole is admitted by Mr. Scott.-Jeffrey's Essays.

In the foregoing examples, to render, to predominate, to make, should be substituted for the words in italics.

The tense in a subordinate clause should be consistent with that employed in the principal sentence. We may say, "Ye will not come unto me that ye may have life," or "Ye would not come unto me that ye might have life," but not " Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.-(See Rushton's Rules and Cautions in English Grammar.

The sequence of tenses is incorrect in the following examples :

Friend to my life, which did not you prolong,
The world had granted many an idle song.

-Pope's Epistle to Arbuthnot.

Some, who the depths of eloquence have found,

In that unnavigable stream were drowned.—Dryden's Journal. The present participle should not be used, as it is in the following example, for the infinitive mood:

It is easy distinguishing the rude fragment of a rock from the splinter of a statue.-Gilfillan's Literary Portrails.

Grammatical Errors in the Use of Participles.

Among the number of grammatical errors, may we be permitted to reckon the use of the past tense active, as the participle perfect passive.

I had no sooner drank, but (than) I found a pimple rising in my forehead.-Addison, Tatler.

Notwithstanding the prophetical predictions of this critic, I do not find that any science hath throve among us of late, so much as the minute philosophy.-Berkeley's Minute Philospher.

Had he wrote English poetry in so unenlightened a period, the world would have lost his refined diction and harmonious versification. Warton's Observations on Spenser.

Every book ought to be read with the same spirit, and in the same manner as it is writ.-Fielding's Tom Jones.

In this respect, the seeds of future divisions were sow'd abundantly.-Bolingbroke's Dissertation on Parties.

The court of Augustus had not wore off the manners of the republic.-Hume's Essays.

A free constitution, when it has been shook by the iniquity of former adminstrations.-Bolingbroke's Idea of a Patriot King.

He is God in his friendship, as well as his nature, and therefore we sinful creatures are not took upon advantages, nor consumed in our provocations.-Souths' Sermons.

Which some philosophers, not considering so well as I, have mistook to be different in their causes.-Swift's Tale of a Tub.

The greater regard was show'd, and the expectations rais'd higher, as these were of a base nature, or of a more noble, thriving, or innocent quality.-Arbuthnot's Congress of Bees.

And now the years a numerous train have ran,

The blooming boy is ripened into man.-Pope's Odyssey. Moses tells us, that the fountains of the earth were broke open, or clove asunder.-Burnet's Theory of the Earth.

I easily forsee, that, as soon as I lay down my pen, this nimble operator will have stole it.-Swift's Tale of a Tub.

By this expedient, the public peace of libraries might certainly have been preserved, if a new species of controversial books had not arose of late years.-Swift's Battle of the Books.

The steps which lead to perfection are many; and we are at a loss on whom to bestow the greatest share of our praise; on the first or on the last who may have bore a part in the progress.Ferguson's Hist. of Civil Society.

In these examples, the past tense active is used instead of the perfect participle. This confusion should upon every occasion be scrupulously avoided. The English language does not admit of any great variety of termination, but of such as it does admit, we ought duly to avail ourselves. It is certainly of advantage that the different modifications of verbs should be properly distinguished from each other.

Grammatical Errors in the Use of Adjectives.

Adjectives which have a comparative or superlative

*The following adjectives, from their meaning, exclude the possibility of comparison, e.g.:

almighty
chief

circular

extreme

eternal everlasting infinite perpetual perfect

square

supreme

triangular
universal

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