y make use of _do_ AND _did_; as, 'Jack learns the English
language as fast as Henry _does_;' that is, 'as fast as Henry _learns_.' 'I
shall come if I can; but if I _do_ not, please to excuse me;' that is, 'if
I _come_ not.'"--_Gram. Simplified_, p. 27. Sanborn says, "_Do_ is also
used _instead of another verb_, and not unfrequently instead of both _the
verb and its object_; as, 'he _loves work_ as well as you _do_;' that is,
as well as you _love work_."--_Analyt. Gram._, p. 112. Now all these
interpretations are wrong; the word _do, dost_, or _does_, being simply an
auxiliary, after which the principal verb (with its object where it has
one) is _understood_. But the first example is _bad English_, and its
explanation is still worse. For, "_As he attends_, &c.," means, "As _he_
attends _to your studies!_" And what good sense is there in this? The
sentence ought to have been, "You do not attend to your studies, as he does
_to his_." That is--"as he does _attend_ to his _studies_." This plainly
shows that there is, in the text, no real substitution of _does_ for
_attends_. So of all other examples exhibited in our grammars, under this
head: there is nothing to the purpose, in any of them; the common principle
of _ellipsis_ resolves them all. Yet, strange to say, in the latest and
most learned of this sort of text-books, we find the same sham example,
fictitious and solecistical as it is, still blindly repeated, to show that
"_does_" is not in its own place, as an auxiliary, but "supplies the place
of another verb."--_Fowler's E. Gram._, 8vo. 1850. p. 265.

NOTES TO RULE XVII.

NOTE I.--When a verb has nominatives of different persons or numbers,[400]
connected by _or_ or _nor_, it must agree with the nearest, (unless an
other be the principal term,) and must be understood to the rest, in the
person and number required; as, "Neither you nor I _am_ concerned."--_W.
Allen_. "That neither they nor ye also _die_."--_Numb._, xviii, 3.

"But neither god, nor shrine, nor mystic rite,
Their city, nor her walls, his soul _delight_."
--_Rowe's Lucan_, B. x, l. 26.

NOTE II.--But, since all nominatives that require different forms of the
verb, virtually produce separate clauses or propositions, it is better to
complete the concord whenever we conveniently can, by expressing the verb
or its auxiliary in connexion with each of them; as, "Either thou _art_ to
blame, or I _am_."--_Comly's Gram._, p. 78. "Neither _were_