diligis me _plus his_?" Wherefore Beza expressed it differently: "Simon
_fili Jonae_, diligis me plus _quam hi_?" The French Bible has it: "Simon,
fils de Jona, m'aimes-tu plus que _ne font_ ceux-ci?" And the expression in
English should rather have been, "Lovest thou me more than _do_ these?"

OBS. 18.--The comparative degree, in Greek, is said to govern the genitive
case; in Latin, the ablative: that is, the genitive or the ablative is
sometimes put after this degree without any connecting particle
corresponding to _than_, and without producing a compound sentence. We have
examples in the phrases, "[Greek: pleion touton]" and "_plus his_," above.
Of such a construction our language admits no real example; that is, no
exact parallel. But we have an imitation of it in the phrase _than whom_,
as in this hackneyed example from Milton:

"Which, when Beelzebub perceived, _than whom_,
Satan except, none higher sat," &c.--_Paradise Lost_, B. ii, l. 300.

The objective, _whom_, is here preferred to the nominative, _who_, because
the Latin ablative is commonly rendered by the former case, rather than by
the latter: but this phrase is no more explicable according to the usual
principles of English grammar, than the error of putting the objective case
for a version of the ablative absolute. If the imitation is to be judged
allowable, it is to us _a figure of syntax_--an obvious example of
_Enallage_, and of that form of Enallage, which is commonly called
_Antiptosis_, or the putting of one case for an other.

OBS. 19.--This use of _whom_ after _than_ has greatly puzzled and misled
our grammarians; many of whom have thence concluded that _than_ must needs
be, at least in this instance, a _preposition_,[435] and some have extended
the principle beyond this, so as to include _than which, than whose_ with
its following noun, and other nominatives which they will have to be
objectives; as, "I should seem guilty of ingratitude, _than which_ nothing
is more shameful." See _Russell's Gram._, p. 104. "Washington, _than whose
fame_ naught earthly can be purer."--_Peirce's Gram._, p. 204. "You have
given him more than _I_. You have sent her as much as _he_."--_Buchanan's
Eng. Syntax_, p. 116. These last two sentences are erroneously called by
their author, "_false syntax_;" not indeed with a notion that _than_ and
_as_ are prepositions, but on the false supposition that the preposition
_to_ must necessarily be understood between t