I have noticed in this volume the works
of unskillful grammarians. For men of sense have no natural inclination to
dwell upon palpable offences against taste and scholarship; nor can they be
easily persuaded to approve the course of an author who makes it his
business to criticise petty productions. And is it not a fact, that
grammatical authorship has sunk so low, that no man who is capable of
perceiving its multitudinous errors, dares now stoop to notice the most
flagrant of its abuses, or the most successful of its abuses? And, of the
quackery which is now so prevalent, what can be a more natural effect, than
a very general contempt for the study of grammar? My apology to the reader
therefore is, that, as the honour of our language demands correctness in
all the manuals prepared for schools, a just exposition of any that are
lacking in this point, is a service due to the study of English grammar, if
not to the authors in question.

The exposition, 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 any language.
And, if the littleness of the particulars to which the learner's attention
is called, be reckoned an objection, the author last quoted has furnished
for me, as well as for himself, a good apology. "The elements which enter
into the composition of the hugest bodies, are subtile and inconsiderable.
The rudiments of every art and science exhibit at first, to the learner,
the appearance of littleness and insignificancy. And it is by attending to
such reflections, as to a superfici