And _Jay_, and _Laurens_ oped the rolls of fate;
_The Livingstons_, fair freedoms generous band,
_The Lees, the Houstons_, fathers of the land."--_Barlow_.

OBS. 8.--In prose, the definite article is always used before names of
rivers, unless the word _river_, be added; as, _The Delaware, the Hudson,
the Connecticut_. But if the word _river_ be added, the article becomes
needless; as, _Delaware river, Hudson river, Connecticut river_. Yet there
seems to be no impropriety in using both; as, _The Delaware river, the
Hudson river, the Connecticut river_. And if the common noun be placed
before the proper name, the article is again necessary; as, _The river
Delaware, the river Hudson, the river Connecticut_. In the first form of
expression, however, the article has not usually been resolved by
grammarians as relating to the proper name; but these examples, and others
of a similar character, have been supposed elliptical: as, "_The_ [river]
_Potomac_"--"_The_ [ship] _Constitution_,"--"_The_ [steamboat] _Fulton_."
Upon this supposition, the words in the first and fourth forms are to be
parsed alike; the article relating to the common noun, expressed or
understood, and the proper noun being in apposition with the appellative.
But in the second form, the apposition is reversed; and, in the third, the
proper name appears to be taken adjectively. Without the article, some
names of rivers could not be understood; as,

"No more _the Varus_ and _the Atax_ feel
The lordly burden of the Latian keel."--_Rowe's Lucan_, B. i. l. 722.

OBS. 9.--The definite article is often used by way of eminence, to
distinguish some particular individual emphatically, or to apply to him
some characteristic name or quality: as, "_The Stagirite_,"--that is,
Aristotle; "_The Psalmist_," that is, David; "_Alexander the Great_,"--that
is, (perhaps,) Alexander the Great _Monarch_, or Great _Hero_. So,
sometimes, when the phrase relates to a collective body of men: as, "_The
Honourable, the Legislature_,"--"_The Honourable, the Senate_;"--that is,
"The Honourable _Body_, the Legislature," &c. A similar application of the
article in the following sentences, makes a most beautiful and expressive
form of compliment: "These are the sacred feelings of thy heart, O
Lyttleton, _the friend_."--_Thomson_. "The pride of swains Palemon was,
_the generous_ and _the rich_."--_Id._ In this last example, the noun _man_
is understood after "_generous_," an