Is Burns also wrong, about "_miss's fine
lunardi_," and "_miss's bonnet?_"--_Poems_, p. 44. Or did Scott write
inaccurately, whose guide "Led slowly through the _pass's_ jaws?"--_Lady of
the Lake_, p. 121. So much for the _ss_; nor is the rule for the
termination _ence_, or (as Smith has it) _nce_, more true. _Prince's_ and
_dunce's_ are as good possessives as any; and so are the following:

"That vice should triumph, virtue vice obey;
This sprung some doubt of _Providence's_ sway."--_Parnell_.

"And sweet _Benevolence's_ mild command."--_Lord Lyttleton_.

"I heard the _lance's_ shivering crash,
As when the whirlwind rends the ash."--_Sir Walter Scott_.

OBS. 30.--The most common rule now in use for the construction of the
possessive case, is a shred from the old code of Latin grammar: "One
substantive governs _another_, signifying a different thing, _in_ the
possessive or genitive case."--_L. Murray's Rule X_. This canon not only
leaves occasion for an additional one respecting pronouns of the possessive
case, but it is also obscure in its phraseology, and too negligent of the
various modes in which nouns may come together in English. All nouns used
adjectively, and many that are compounded together, seem to form exceptions
to it. But who can limit or enumerate these _exceptions?_ Different
combinations of nouns have so often little or no difference of meaning, or
of relation to each other, and so frequently is the very same vocal
expression written variously by our best scholars, and ablest
lexicographers, that in many ordinary instances it seems scarcely possible
to determine who or what is right. Thus, on the authority of Johnson, one
might write, _a stone's cast_, or _stone's throw_; but Webster has it,
_stones-cast_, or _stones-throw_; Maunder, _stonecast, stonethrow_;
Chalmers, _stonescast_; Worcester, _stone's-cast_. So Johnson and Chalmers
write _stonesmickle_, a bird; Webster has it, _stone's-mickle_; yet, all
three refer to Ainsworth as their authority, and his word is
_stone-smickle_: Littleton has it _stone-smich_. Johnson and Chalmers
write, _popeseye_ and _sheep's eye_; Walker, Maunder, and Worcester,
_popeseye_ and _sheep's-eye_; Scott has _pope's-eye_ and _sheepseye_;
Webster, _pope's-eye_ and _sheep's-eye, bird-eye_, and _birds-eye._
Ainsworth has _goats beard_, for the name of a plant; Johnson, _goatbeard_;
Webster, _goat-beard_ and _goats-beard._ Ainsworth has _prince's feather_