The Grammar of English Grammars. Goold Brown
prone is man to society, and so happy in it, that, to relish perpetual solitude, one must be an angel or a brute. In a solitary state, no creature is more timid than man; in society, none more bold. The number of offenders lessens the disgrace of the crime; for a common reproach is no reproach. A man is more unhappy in reproaching himself when guilty, than in being reproached by others when innocent. The pains of the mind are harder to bear than those of the body. Hope, in this mixed state of good and ill, is a blessing from heaven: the gift of prescience would be a curse. The first step towards vice, is to make a mystery of what is innocent: whoever loves to hide, will soon or late have reason to hide. A man who gives his children a habit of industry, provides for them better than by giving them a stock of money. Our good and evil proceed from ourselves: death appeared terrible to Cicero, indifferent to Socrates, desirable to Cato."—Home's Art of Thinking, pp. 26–53.
"O thou most high transcendent gift of age!
Youth from its folly thus to disengage."—Denham's Age.
LESSON III.—PARSING.
"Calm was the day, and the scene, delightful. We may expect a calm after a storm. To prevent passion is easier than to calm it."—Murray's Ex., p. 5. "Better is a little with content, than a great deal with anxiety. A little attention will rectify some errors. Unthinking persons care little for the future."—See ib. "Still waters are commonly deepest. He laboured to still the tumult. Though he is out of danger, he is still afraid."—Ib. "Damp air is unwholesome. Guilt often casts a damp over our sprightliest hours. Soft bodies damp the sound much more than hard ones."—Ib. "The hail was very destructive. Hail, virtue! source of every good. We hail you as friends."—Ib., p. 6. "Much money makes no man happy. Think much, and speak little. He has seen much of the world."—See ib. "Every being loves its like. We must make a like space between the lines. Behave like men. We are apt to like pernicious company."—Ib. "Give me more love, or more disdain."—Carew. "He loved Rachel more than Leah."—Genesis. "But how much that more is; he hath no distinct notion."—Locke.
"And my more having would be as a sauce
To make me hunger more."—Shakspeare.
CHAPTER II.—ARTICLES.
An Article is the word the, an, or a, which we put before nouns to limit their signification: as, The air, the stars; an island, a ship.
An and a, being equivalent in meaning, are commonly reckoned one and the same article. An is used in preference to a, whenever the following word begins with a vowel sound; as, An art, an end, an heir, an inch, an ounce, an hour, an urn. A is used in preference to an, whenever the following word begins with a consonant sound; as, A man, a house, a wonder, a one, a yew, a use, a ewer. Thus the consonant sounds of w and y, even when expressed by other letters, require a and not an before them.
A common noun, when taken in its widest sense, usually admits no article: as, "A candid temper is proper for man; that is, for all mankind."—Murray.
In English, nouns without any article, or other definitive, are often used in a sense indefinitely partitive: as, "He took bread, and gave thanks."—Acts. That is, "some bread." "To buy food are thy servants come."—Genesis. That is, "some food." "There are fishes that have wings, and are not strangers to the airy region."—Locke's Essay, p. 322. That is, "some fishes."
"Words in which nothing but the mere being of any thing is implied, are used without articles: as, 'This is not beer, but water;' 'This is not brass, but steel.'"—See Dr. Johnson's Gram., p. 5.
An or a before the genus, may refer to a whole species; and the before the species, may denote that whole species emphatically: as, "A certain bird is termed the cuckoo, from the sound which it emits."—Blair.
But an or a is commonly used to denote individuals as unknown, or as not specially distinguished from others: as, "I see an object pass by, which I never saw till now; and I say, 'There goes a beggar with a long beard.'"—Harris.
And the is commonly used to denote individuals as known, or as specially distinguished from others: as, "The man departs, and returns a week after; and I say, 'There goes the beggar with the long beard.'"—Id.
The article the is applied to nouns of cither number: as, "The man, the men;" "The good boy, the good boys."
The is commonly required before adjectives that are used by ellipsis as nouns: as, "The young are slaves to novelty; the old, to custom."—Ld. Kames.
The article an or a implies unity, or one, and of course belongs to nouns of the singular number only; as, A man—An old man—A good boy.
An or a, like one, sometimes gives a collective meaning to an adjective of number, when the noun following is plural; as, A few days—A hundred men—One hundred pounds sterling.
Articles should be inserted as often as the sense requires them; as, "Repeat the preterit and [the] perfect participle of the verb to abide."—Error in Merchant's American School Grammar, p. 66.
Needless articles should be omitted; they seldom fail to pervert the sense: as, "The Rhine, the Danube, the Tanais, the Po, the Wolga, the Ganges, like many hundreds of similar names, rose not from any obscure jargon or irrational dialect."—Error in Dr. Murray's Hist. of Europ. Lang., Vol. i, p. 327.
The articles can seldom be put one for the other, without gross impropriety; and of course either is to be preferred to the other, as it better suits the sense: as, "The violation of this rule never fails to hurt and displease a reader."—Error in Blair's Lectures, p. 107. Say, "A violation of this rule never fails to displease the reader."
CLASSES.
The articles are distinguished as the definite and the indefinite.
I. The definite article is the, which denotes some particular thing or things; as, The boy, the oranges.
II. The indefinite article is an or a, which denotes one thing of a kind, but not any particular one; as, A boy, an orange.
MODIFICATIONS.[133]
The English articles have no modifications, except that an is shortened into a before the sound of a consonant; as, "In an epic poem, or a poem upon an elevated subject, a writer ought to avoid raising a simile on a low image."—Ld. Kames.
OBSERVATIONS.
OBS. 1.—No other words are so often employed as the articles. And, by reason of the various and very frequent occasions on which these definitives are required, no words are oftener misapplied; none, oftener omitted or inserted erroneously. I shall therefore copiously illustrate both their uses and their abuses; with the hope that every reader of this volume will think it worth his while to gain that knowledge which is requisite to the true use of these small but important words. Some parts of the explanation, however, must be deferred till we come to Syntax.
OBS. 2.—With the attempts of Tooke, Dalton, Webster, Cardell,