rejected, because all its tenses are compound, and it has
been thought the words could as well be parsed separately. Neither of these
opinions is sufficiently prevalent, or sufficiently plausible, to deserve a
laboured refutation. On the other hand, James White, in his Essay on the
English Verb, (London, 1761,) divided this mood into the following five:
"the _Elective_," denoted by _may_ or _might_; "the _Potential_," by _can_
or _could_; "the _Determinative_" by _would_; "the _Obligative_," by
_should_; and "the _Compulsive_," by _must_. Such a distribution is
needlessly minute. Most of these can as well be spared as those other
"moods, _Interrogative, Optative, Promissive, Hortative, Precative_, &c.",
which Murray mentions only to reject. See his _Octavo Gram._, p. 68.

OBS. 4.--The _Subjunctive_ mood is so called because it is always
_subjoined_ to an other verb. It usually denotes some doubtful contingency,
or some supposition contrary to fact. The manner of its dependence is
commonly denoted by one of the following conjunctions; _if, that, though,
lest, unless_. The indicative and potential moods, in all their tenses, may
be used in the same dependent manner, to express any positive or potential
condition; but this seems not to be a sufficient reason for considering
them as parts of the subjunctive mood. In short, the idea of a "subjunctive
mood in the indicative form," (which is adopted by Chandler, Frazee, Fisk,
S. S. Greene, Comly, Ingersoll, R. C. Smith, Sanborn, Mack, Butler, Hart,
Weld, Pinneo, and others,) is utterly inconsistent with any just notion of
what a mood is; and the suggestion, which we frequently meet with, that the
regular indicative or potential mood may be _thrown into the subjunctive_
by merely prefixing a conjunction, is something worse than nonsense.
Indeed, no mood can ever be made _a part of an other_, without the grossest
confusion and absurdity. Yet, strange as it is, some celebrated authors,
misled by an _if_, have tangled together three of them, producing such a
snarl of tenses as never yet can have been understood without being thought
ridiculous. See _Murray's Grammar_, and others that agree with his late
editions.

OBS. 5.--In regard to the number and form of the tenses which should
constitute the _subjunctive mood_ in English, our grammarians are greatly
at variance; and some, supposing its distinctive parts to be but elliptical
forms of the indicative or the potential,[230] even