o be an adverb of time, and not
to relate to _so_, which is an adverb of degree; saying, "'Be it _never_ so
true,' is resolvable into, 'Be it so true, _as never any thing was_.'[431]
'I have had _never_ so much trouble on this occasion,' may be resolved
into, 'I _have never had_ so much trouble, _as_ on this occasion:' while,
'I have had _ever_ so much trouble on this occasion, cannot be resolved,
without supplying some very harsh and unprecedented ellipsis indeed."--_New
Gram._, p. 337, Why not? I see no occasion at all for supposing any
ellipsis. _Ever_ is here an adverb of degree, and relates to _so_; or, if
we take _everso_ as one word, this too is an adverb of degree, and relates
to _much_: because the meaning is--"_everso much_ trouble." But the other
phraseology, even as it stands in Churchill's explanations, is a solecism
still; nor can any resolution which supposes _never_ to be here an adverb
of time, be otherwise. We cannot call that a grammatical resolution, which
makes a different sense from that which the writer intended: as, "A slave
would not have been admitted into that society, had he _never_ had such
opportunities." This would be Churchill's interpretation, but it is very
unlike what Bentley says above. So, 'I have _never had so much_ trouble,'
and, 'I have had _everso much_ trouble,' are very different assertions.

OBS. 24.--On the word _never_, Dr. Johnson remarks thus: "It seems in some
phrases to have the sense of an _adjective_, [meaning,] _not any_; but in
reality it is _not ever_: [as,] 'He answered him to _never_ a word.'
MATTHEW, xxvii, 14."--_Quarto Dict._ This mode of expression was formerly
very common, and a contracted form of it is still frequently heard among
the vulgar: as, "Because he'd _ne'er_ an other tub."--_Hudibras_, p. 102.
That is, "Because he had _no_ other tub." "Letter nor line know I _never_ a
one."--_Scott's Lay of L. M._, p. 27. This is what the common people
pronounce "_ne'er a one_," and use in stead of _neither_ or _no one_. In
like manner they contract _ever a one_ into "_e'er a one_;" by which they
mean _either_ or _any one_. These phrases are the same that somebody--(I
believe it is _Smith_, in his Inductive Grammar--) has ignorantly written
"_ary one_" and "_nary one_" calling them vulgarisms.[432] Under this mode
of spelling, the critic had an undoubted right to think the terms
unauthorized! In the compounds of _whoever_ or _whoe'er, whichever_ or
_whiche'er, whatev