30. "On board of which _embarked_ upwards of
three hundred passengers."--_Robertson's Amer._, ii, 419. The propriety of
using _above_ or _upwards of_ for _more than_, is questionable, but the
practice is not uncommon. When there is a preposition before what seems at
first to be the subject of the verb, as in the foregoing instances, I
imagine there is an ellipsis of the word _number, amount, sum_ or
_quantity_; the first of which words is a collective noun and may have a
verb either singular or plural: as, "In a sermon, there may be _any number_
from three to five or six heads." This is awkward, to be sure; but what
does the Doctor's sentence _mean_, unless it is, that there _may be an
optional number_ of heads, varying from three to six?

OBS. 13.--Dr. Webster says, "When an aggregate amount is expressed by the
plural names of the particulars composing that amount, the verb may be in
the singular number; as, 'There _was_ more than a hundred and fifty
thousand pounds sterling.' _Mavor's Voyages_." To this he adds, "However
repugnant to the principles of grammar this may seem at first view, the
practice is correct; for the affirmation is not made of the individual
parts or divisions named, the _pounds_, but of the entire sum or
amount."--_Philosophical Gram._, p. 146; _Improved Gram._, p. 100. The fact
is, that the Doctor here, as in some other instances, deduces a false rule
from a correct usage. It is plain that either the word _more_, taken
substantively, or the noun to which it relates as an adjective, is the only
nominative to the verb _was_. Mavor does not affirm that there _were_ a
hundred and fitly thousand pounds; but that there _was more_--i.e., more
_money_ than so many pounds _are_, or _amount to_. Oliver B. Peirce, too.
falls into a multitude of strange errors respecting the nature of _more
than_, and the construction of other words that accompany these. See his
"Analytical Rules," and the manner in which he applies them, in "_The
Grammar_," p. 195 _et seq._

OBS. 14.--Among certain educationists,--grammarians, arithmeticians,
schoolmasters, and others,--there has been of late not a little dispute
concerning the syntax of the phraseology which we use, or should use, in
expressing _multiplication_, or in speaking of _abstract numbers_. For
example: is it better to say, "Twice one _is_ two," or, "Twice one _are_
two?"--"Two times one _is_ two," or, "Two times one _are_ two?"--"Twice two
_is_ four," or, "Twice