rb with its
nominative. In English we have _neither of these usages_; and plural nouns,
even when they denote no absolute plurality, (as _shears, scissors,
trowsers, pantaloons, tongs_,) require plural verbs or pronouns: as, "Your
_shears come_ too late, to clip the bird's wings."--SIDNEY: _Churchill's
Gram._, p. 30.

OBS. 2.--When a book that bears a plural title, is spoken of as one thing,
there is sometimes presented an _apparent exception_ to the foregoing rule;
as, "The _Pleasures_ of Memory _was published_ in the year 1792, and became
at once popular."--_Allan Cunningham_. "The '_Sentiments_ of a
Church-of-England Man' _is written_ with great coolness, moderation, ease,
and perspicuity."--_Johnson's Life of Swift_. "The '_Pleasures_ of Hope'
_is_ a splendid poem; _it_ was written for perpetuity."--_Samuel L. Knapp_.
In these instances, there is, I apprehend, either an agreement of the verb,
by the figure _syllepsis_, with the mental conception of the thing spoken
of; or an improper ellipsis of the common noun, with which each sentence
ought to commence; as, "The _poem_ entitled,"--"The _work_ entitled," &c.
But the plural title sometimes controls the form of the verb; as, "My Lives
are reprinting."--_Dr. Johnson_.

OBS. 3.--In the figurative use of the present tense for the past or
imperfect, the vulgar have a habit of putting the third person singular
with the pronoun _I_; as, "_Thinks I_ to myself."--_Rev. J. Marriott_. "O,
_says I_, Jacky, are you at that work?"--_Day's Sandford and Merton_.
"Huzza! huzza! Sir Condy Rackrent forever, was the first thing _I hears_ in
the morning."--_Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent_, p. 97. This vulgarism is to
be avoided, not by a simple omission of the terminational _s_, but rather
by the use of the literal preterit: as, "_Thought_ I to myself;"--"O,
_said_ I;"--"The first thing I _heard_." The same mode of correction is
also proper, when, under like circumstances, there occurs a disagreement in
number; as, "After the election was over, there _comes shoals_ of people
from all parts."--_Castle Rackrent_, p. 103. "Didn't ye hear it? _says
they_ that were looking on."--_Ib._, p. 147. Write, "there _came_,"--"_said
they_."

OBS. 4.--It has already been noticed, that the article _a_, or a singular
adjective, sometimes precedes an arithmetical number with a plural noun;
as, "_A thousand years_ in thy sight _are_ but as yesterday."--_Psalms_,
xc, 4. So we might say, "_One_ thousand year