se approve of "_Ah him!_" because they assume that the
interjection _ah_ "_requires_" or "_governs_" the objective case of the
third person. Others must condemn the expression, because they teach that
_ah_ requires the nominative case of this person. Thus Greenleaf sets down
for false syntax, "O! happy _them_, surrounded with so many
blessings!"--_Gram. Simplified_, p. 47. Here, undoubtedly, the word should
be _they_; and, by analogy, (if indeed the instances are analogous,) it
would seem more proper to say, "Ah _he!_" the nominative being our only
case absolute. But if any will insist that "_Ah him!_" is good English,
they must suppose that _him_ is governed by something understood; as, "Ah!
I _lament_ him;" or, "Ah! _I mourn for_ him." And possibly, on this
principle, the example referred to may be most correct as it stands, with
the pronoun in the objective case: "_Ah Him!_ the first great martyr in
this great cause."--D. WEBSTER: _Peirce's Gram._, p. 199.

OBS. 11.--If we turn to the Latin syntax, to determine by analogy what case
is used, or ought to be used, after our English interjections, in stead of
finding a "perfect accordance" between that syntax and the rule for which
such accordance has been claimed, we see at once an utter repugnance, and
that the pretence of their agreement is only a sample of Kirkham's
unconscionable pedantry. The rule, in all its modifications, is based on
the principle, that the choice of _cases_ depends on the distinction of
_persons_--a principle plainly contrary to the usage of the Latin classics,
and altogether untrue. In Latin, some interjections are construed with the
nominative, the accusative, or the vocative; some, only with the dative;
some, only with the vocative. But, in English, these four cases are all
included in two, the nominative and the objective; and, the case
independent or absolute being necessarily the nominative, it follows that
the objective, if it occur after an interjection, must be the object of
something which is capable of governing it. If any disputant, by supposing
ellipses, will make objectives of what I call nominatives absolute, so be
it; but I insist that interjections, in fact, never "require" or "govern"
one case more than an other. So Peirce, and Kirkham, and Ingersoll, with
pointed self-contradiction, may continue to make "the independent case,"
whether vocative or merely exclamatory, the subject of a verb, expressed or
understood; but I will cont