s_ collected."--_Ib._, p. 153. But this
doctrine he sometimes forgot or disregarded; as, "But if _a number_ of
interrogative or exclamatory sentences _are thrown_ into one general
group."--_Ib._, p. 284; _Comly_, 166; _Fisk_, 160; _Ingersoll_, 295.

OBS. 17.--Cobbett, in a long paragraph, (the 245th of his English Grammar,)
stoutly denies that any _relative pronoun_ can ever be the nominative to a
verb; and, to maintain this absurdity, he will have the relative and its
antecedent to be always alike in _case_, the only thing in which they are
always independent of each other. To prove his point, he first frames these
examples: "The men _who are_ here, the man _who is_ here; the cocks _that
crow_, the cock _that crows_;" and then asks, "Now, if the relative be the
nominative, why do the verbs _change_, seeing that here is no change in the
relative?" He seems ignorant of the axiom, that two things severally equal
to a third, are also equal to each other: and accordingly, to answer his
own question, resorts to a new principle: "The verb is continually varying.
Why does it vary? Because it _disregards the relative_ and goes and finds
the antecedent, and accommodates its number to that."--_Ibid._ To this wild
doctrine, one erratic Irishman yields a full assent; and, in one American
grammatist, we find a partial and unintentional concurrence with it.[389]
But the fact is, the relative agrees with the antecedent, and the verb
agrees with the relative: hence all three of the words are alike in person
and number. But between the case of the relative and that of the antededent
[sic--KTH], there never is, or can be, in our language, any sort of
connexion or interference. The words belong to different clauses; and, if
both be nominatives, they must be the subjects of different verbs: or, if
the noun be sometimes put absolute in the nominative, the pronoun is still
left to its own verb. But Cobbett concludes his observation thus: "You will
observe, therefore, that, when I, in the etymology and syntax as relating
to relative pronouns, speak of relatives as being in the nominative case, I
mean, that they relate to nouns or to personal pronouns, _which are in that
case_. The same observation applies _to the other cases_."--_Ib._, 245.
This suggestion betrays in the critic an unaccountable ignorance of his
subject.

OBS. 18.--Nothing is more certain, than that the relatives, _who, which,
what, that_, and _as_, are often nominatives, and