uthors do
prefer, "_but him_," and "_save him_," where ten times as many would say,
"_but he_," "_save he_?" Is it therefore difficult to determine which
party is right? Or is it proper for a grammarian to name sundry authorities
on both sides, excite doubt in the mind of his reader, and leave the matter
_unsettled_? "The use of _but_ as a preposition," he also states, "is
_discountenanced_ by G. Brown, Sanborn, Murray, S. Oliver, and several
other grammarians. (See also an able article in the Mass. Common School
Journal, Vol. ii, p. 19.)"--_School Gram._, p. 178.

OBS. 16.--Wells passes no censure on the use of nominatives after _but_ and
_save_; does not intimate which case is fittest to follow these words;
gives no false syntax under his rule for the regimen of prepositions; but
inserts there the following brief remarks and examples:

"REM. 3.--The word _save_ is frequently used to perform the office of a
preposition; as, 'And all desisted, all _save him_ alone.'--_Wordsworth_."

"REM. 4.--_But_ is sometimes employed as a preposition, in the sense of
_except_; as, 'The boy stood on the burning deck, Whence all _but him_ had
fled.'--_Hemans_."--_Ib._, p. 167.

Now, "BUT," says Worcester, as well as Tooke and others, was "originally
_bot_, contracted from _be out_;" and, if this notion of its etymology is
just, it must certainly be followed by the nominative case, rather than by
the objective; for the imperative _be_ or _be out_ governs no case, admits
no additional term but a nominative--an obvious and important fact, quite
overlooked by those who call _but_ a preposition. According to Allen H.
Weld, _but_ and _save_ "are _commonly_ considered _prepositions_," but "are
_more commonly_ termed _conjunctions_!" This author repeats Wells's
examples of "_save him_," and "_but him_," as being _right_; and mixes them
with opposite examples of "_save he_," "_but he_," "_save I_," which he
thinks to be _more right_!--_Weld's Gram._, p. 187.

OBS. 17.--Professor Fowler, too, an other author remarkable for a facility
of embracing incompatibles, contraries, or dubieties, not only condemns as
"false syntax" the use of _save_ for an exceptive conjunction. (Sec.587. 28,)
but cites approvingly from Latham the following very strange absurdity:
"One and the same word, in one and the same sentence, may be a Conjunction
or [a] Preposition, as the case may be: [as] All fled _but_
John."--_Fowler's E. Gram._, 8vo, 1850, Sec. 555. This i