posed compounds the signification of a pronoun and its
governing noun, reassumes, in parsing them, the very principle of error, on
which he condemns their common classification. He says, "They should be
parsed _as two words_." He also supposes them to represent the nouns _which
govern them_--nouns with which they do not agree in any respect! Thus is he
wrong in almost every thing he says about them. See _Kirkham's Gram._, p.
99, p. 101, and p. 104. Goodenow, too, a still later writer, adopts the
major part of all this absurdity. He will have _my, thy, his, her, its,
our, your, their_, for the possessive case of his personal pronouns; but
_mine, thine, hers, ours, yours, theirs_, he calls "_compound possessive
pronouns_, in the subjective or [the] objective case."--_Text-Book of E.
Gram._, p. 33. Thus he introduces a new class, unknown to his primary
division of the pronouns, and not included in his scheme of their
declension. Fuller, too, in a grammar produced at Plymouth, Mass., in 1822,
did nearly the same thing. He called _I, thou, he, she_, and _it_, with
their plurals, "_antecedent_ pronouns;" took _my, thy, his, her_, &c., for
their _only_ possessive forms in his declension; and, having passed from
them by the space of just half his book, added: "Sometimes, to prevent the
repetition of the same word, an _antecedent pronoun in the possessive
case_, is made to represent, both the pronoun and a noun; as, 'That book is
_mine_'--i. e. '_my book_.' MINE is a _compound antecedent pronoun_, and is
equivalent to _my_ book. Then parse _my_, and _book_, as though they were
both expressed."--_Fuller's Gram._, p. 71.

OBS. 11.--Amidst all this diversity of doctrine at the very centre of
grammar, who shall so fix its principles that our schoolmasters and
schoolmistresses may know _what to believe and teach_? Not he that
speculates without regard to other men's views; nor yet he that makes it a
merit to follow implicitly "the footsteps of" _one only_. The true
principles of grammar are with the learned; and that man is in the wrong,
with whom the _most_ learned will not, in general, coincide. Contradiction
of falsities, is necessary to the maintenance of truth; correction of
errors, to the success of science. But not every man's errors can be so
considerable as to deserve correction from other hands than his own.
Misinstruction in grammar has for this reason generally escaped censure. I
do not wish any one to coincide with me mere