find a
diphthong, or a triphthong, be pleased to point them out too."--_Bucke's
Classical Gram._, p. 16. "And if you can find a diphthong, or a triphthong,
a trissyllable, or a polysyllable, point them respectively out."--_Ib._, p.
25. "The false refuges in which the atheist or the sceptic have intrenched
themselves."--_Christian Spect._, viii, 185. "While the man or woman thus
assisted by art expects their charms will be imputed to nature
alone."--_Opie_, 141. "When you press a watch, or pull a clock, they answer
your question with precision; for they repeat exactly the hour of the day,
and tell you neither more nor less than you desire to know."--_Bolingbroke,
on History_, p. 102.

"Not the Mogul, or Czar of Muscovy,
Not Prester John, or Cham of Tartary,
Are in their houses Monarch more than I."
--KING: _Brit. Poets_, Vol. iii, p. 613.

CHAPTER VI.--VERBS.

In this work, the syntax of Verbs is embraced in six consecutive rules,
with the necessary exceptions, notes, and observations, under them; hence
this chapter extends from the fourteenth to the twentieth rule in the
series.

RULE XIV.--FINITE VERBS.

Every finite Verb must agree with its subject, or nominative, in person and
number: as, "I _know_; thou _knowst_, or _knowest_; he _knows_, or
_knoweth_"--"The bird _flies_; the birds _fly_."

"Our fathers' fertile _fields_ by slaves _are till'd_,
And _Rome_ with dregs of foreign lands _is fill'd_."
--_Rowe's Lucan_, B. vii, l. 600.

OBSERVATIONS ON RULE XIV.

OBS. 1.--To this general rule for the verb, there are properly _no
exceptions_;[385] and all the special rules that follow, which prescribe
the concord of verbs in particular instances, virtually accord with it.
Every _finite verb_, (that is, every verb _not in the infinitive mood_,)
must have some noun, pronoun, or phrase equivalent, known as the _subject_
of the being, action, or passion;[386] and with this subject, whether
expressed or understood, the verb must agree in person and number. The
infinitive mood, as it does not unite with a nominative to form an
assertion, is of course exempt from any such agreement. These may be
considered principles of Universal Grammar. The Greeks, however, had a
strange custom of using a plural noun of the neuter gender, with a verb of
the third person singular; and in both Greek and Latin, the infinitive mood
with an accusative before it was often equivalent to a finite ve