now convinced that it is best to add any; yet are
there three different modes of expression which might be plausibly
exhibited in that character. Two of these would concern only the parser;
and, for that reason, they seem not to be very important. The other
involves the approval or reprehension of a great multitude of very common
expressions, concerning which our ablest grammarians differ in opinion, and
our most popular digest plainly contradicts itself. These points are;
_first_, the apposition of possessives, and the supposed ellipses which may
affect that construction; _secondly_, the government of the possessive case
after _is, was_, &c., when the ownership of a thing is simply affirmed or
denied; _thirdly_, the government of the possessive by a participle, as
such--that is, while it retains the government and adjuncts of a
participle.

OBS. 2.--The apposition of one possessive with an other, (as, "For _David_
my _servant's_ sake,") might doubtless be consistently made a formal
exception to the direct government of the possessive by its controlling
noun. But this apposition is only a sameness of construction, so that what
governs the one, virtually governs the other. And if the case of any noun
or pronoun is known and determined by the rule or relation of apposition,
there can be no need of an exception to the foregoing rule for the purpose
of parsing it, since that purpose is already answered by rule third. If the
reader, by supposing an ellipsis which I should not, will resolve any given
instance of this kind into something else than apposition, I have already
shown him that some great grammarians have differed in the same way before.
Useless ellipses, however, should never be supposed; and such _perhaps_ is
the following: "At Mr. Smith's [_who is_] the bookseller."--See _Dr.
Priestley's Gram._, p. 71.

OBS. 3.--In all our Latin grammars, the verb _sum, fui, esse_, to be, is
said (though not with strict propriety) sometimes to _signify_ possession,
property, or duty, and in that sense to govern the genitive case: as, "_Est
regis_;"--"It is the king's."--"_Hominis est errare_;"--"It is man's to
err."--"_Pecus est Melibœi_;"--"The flock is Meliboeus's." And
sometimes, with like import, this verb, expressed or understood, may govern
the dative; as, "_Ego_ [sum] _dilecto meo, et dilectus meus_ [est]
_mihi_."--_Vulgate_. "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is
mine."--_Solomon's Song_, vi, 3. Here, as both the gen