ich we would leave the time indefinite and make
the action hypothetical; because they are commonly understood to fix the
time of the verb to the present or the past, and to assume the action as
either doing or done. For this reason, our best writers have always omitted
those terminations, when they intended to represent the action as being
doubtful and contingent as well as conditional. And this omission
constitutes the whole _formal_ difference between the indicative and the
subjunctive mood. The _essential_ difference has, by almost all
grammarians, been conceived to extend somewhat further; for, if it were
confined strictly within the limits of the literal variation, the
subjunctive mood would embrace only two or three words in the whole
formation of each verb. After the example of Priestley, Dr. Murray, A.
Murray, Harrison, Alexander, and others, I have given to it all the persons
of the two simple tenses, singular and plural; and, for various reasons, I
am decidedly of the opinion, that these are its most proper limits. The
perfect and pluperfect tenses, being past, cannot express what is really
contingent or uncertain; and since, in expressing conditionally what may or
may not happen, we use the subjunctive present as embracing the future
indefinitely, there is no need of any formal futures for this mood. The
comprehensive brevity of this form of the verb, is what chiefly commends
it. It is not an elliptical form of the future, as some affirm it to be;
nor equivalent to the indicative present, as others will have it; but a
_true subjunctive_, though its distinctive parts are chiefly confined to
the second and third persons singular of the simple verb: as, "Though _thou
wash_ thee with nitre."--_Jer._, ii, 22. "It is just, O great king! that a
_murderer perish_."--_Corneille_. "This single _crime_, in my judgment,
_were_ sufficient to condemn him."--_Duncan's Cicero_, p. 82. "Beware that
_thou bring_ not my son thither."--BIBLE: _Ward's Gram._, p. 128. "See
[that] _thou tell_ no man."--_Id., ib._ These examples can hardly be
resolved into any thing else than the subjunctive mood.

NOTES TO RULE XIV.

NOTE I.--When the nominative is a relative pronoun, the verb must agree
with it in person and number, according to the pronoun's agreement with its
true antecedent or antecedents. Example of error: "The second book [of the
AEneid] is one of the greatest masterpieces _that ever was executed_ by any
hand."--_Blair's Rh