🔍With an introduction historical and critical; the whole methodically arranged and amply illustrated; with forms of correcting and of parsing, improprieties for correction, examples for parsing, questions for examination, exercises for writing, observations for the advanced student, decisions and proofs for the settlement of disputed points, occasional strictures and defences, an exhibition of the several methods of analysis, and a key to the oral exercises: to which are added four appendixes, pertaining separately to the four parts of grammar.

📚 Book Excerpt From Many Books____

osition, however, that I have made of the errors and defects of other writers, is only an incident, or underpart, of the scheme of this treatise. Nor have I anywhere exhibited blunders as one that takes delight in their discovery. My main design has been, to prepare a work which, by its own completeness and excellence, should deserve the title here chosen. But, a comprehensive code of false grammar being confessedly the most effectual means of teaching what is true, I have thought fit to supply this portion of my book, not from anonymous or uncertain sources, but from the actual text of other authors, and chiefly from the works of professed grammarians.

“In what regards the laws of grammatical purity,” says Dr. Campbell, “the violation is much more conspicuous than the observance.”–See Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 190. It therefore falls in with my main purpose, to present to the public, in the following ample work, a condensed mass of special criticism, such as is not elsewhere to be found in.

🧾PREFACE_______________________

The present performance is, so far as the end could be reached, the fulfillment of

a design, formed about twenty-seven years ago, of one day presenting to the

world, if I might, something like a complete grammar of the English language;—

not a mere work of criticism, nor yet a work too tame, indecisive, and uncritical;

for, in books of either of these sorts, our libraries already abound;—not a mere

philosophical investigation of what is general or universal in grammar, nor yet a

minute detail of what forms only a part of our own philology; for either of these

plans falls very far short of such a purpose;—not a mere grammatical compend,

abstract, or compilation, sorting with other works already before the public; for,

in the production of school grammars, the author had early performed his part;

and, of small treatises on this subject, we have long had a superabundance rather

than a lack.

After about fifteen years devoted chiefly to grammatical studies and exercises,

during most of which time I had been alternately instructing youth in four

different languages, thinking it practicable to effect some improvement upon the

manuals which explain our own, I prepared and published, for the use of schools,

a duodecimo volume of about three hundred pages; which, upon the presumption

that its principles were conformable to the best usage, and well established

thereby, I entitled, “The Institutes of English Grammar.” Of this work, which, it

is believed, has been gradually gaining in reputation and demand ever since its

first publication, there is no occasion to say more here, than that it was the result

of diligent study, and that it is, essentially, the nucleus, or the groundwork, of the

present volume.

With much additional labour, the principles contained in the Institutes of English

Grammar, have here been not only reaffirmed and rewritten, but occasionally

improved in expression, or amplified in their details. New topics, new

definitions, new rules, have also been added; and all parts of the subject have

been illustrated by a multiplicity of new examples and exercises, which it has

required a long time to amass and arrange. To the main doctrines, also, are here

subjoined many new observations and criticisms, which are the results of no

inconsiderable reading and reflection.

Regarding it as my business and calling, to work out the above-mentioned

purpose as circumstances might permit, I have laid no claim to genius, none to

infallibility; but I have endeavoured to be accurate, and aspired to be useful; and

it is a part of my plan, that the reader of this volume shall never, through my

fault, be left in doubt as to the origin of any thing it contains. It is but the duty of

an author, to give every needful facility for a fair estimate of his work; and,

whatever authority there may be for anonymous copying in works on grammar,

the precedent is always bad.

The success of other labours, answerable to moderate wishes, has enabled me to

pursue this task under favourable circumstances, and with an unselfish,

independent aim. Not with vainglorious pride, but with reverent gratitude to

God, I acknowledge this advantage, giving thanks for the signal mercy which

has upborne me to the long-continued effort. Had the case been otherwise,—had

the labours of the school-room been still demanded for my support,—the present

large volume would never have appeared. I had desired some leisure for the

completing of this design, and to it I scrupled not to sacrifice the profits of my

main employment, as soon as it could be done without hazard of adding another

chapter to “the Calamities of Authors.”

The nature and design of this treatise are perhaps sufficiently developed in

connexion with the various topics which are successively treated of in the

Introduction. 

That method of teaching, which I conceive to be the best, is also

there described. And, in the Grammar itself, there will be found occasional

directions concerning the manner of its use. I have hoped to facilitate the study

of the English language, not by abridging our grammatical code, or by rejecting

the common phraseolgy [sic—KTH] of its doctrines, but by extending the

former, improving the latter, and establishing both;—but still more, by

furnishing new illustrations of the subject, and arranging its vast number of

particulars in such order that every item may be readily found.

An other important purpose, which, in the preparation of this work, has been

borne constantly in mind, and judged worthy of very particular attention, was the

attempt to settle, so far as the most patient investigation and the fullest exhibition

of proofs could do it, the multitudinous and vexatious disputes which have.