naccuracy may be gross and obvious, but the
correction difficult or impossible. Because the sentence may require a
change throughout; and a total change is not properly a correction; it is a
substitution of something new, for what was, perhaps, in itself
incorrigible.

OBS. 3.--The notes which are above denominated _Critical_ or _General_, are
not all of them obviously different in kind from the other notes; but they
all are such as could not well have been placed in any of the earlier
chapters of the book. The _General Rule of Syntax_, since it is not a canon
to be used in parsing, but one that is to be applied only in the correcting
of false syntax, might seem perhaps to belong rather to this order of
notes; but I have chosen to treat it with some peculiar distinction,
because it is not only more comprehensive than any other rule or note, but
is in one respect more important; it is the rule which will be cited for
the correction of the greatest number and variety of errors. Being designed
to meet every possible form of inaccuracy in the mere construction of
sentences,--or, at least, every corrigible solecism by which any principle
of syntax can be violated,--it necessarily includes almost all the other
rules and notes. It is too broad to convey very definite instruction, and
therefore ought not in general to be applied where a more particular rule
or note is clearly applicable. A few examples, not properly fitting under
any other head, will serve to show its use and application: such examples
are given, in great abundance, in the false syntax below. If, in some of
the instances selected, this rule is applied to faults that might as well
have been corrected by some other, the choice, in such cases, is deemed of
little or no importance.

OBS. 4.--The imperfection of _ancient_ writing, especially in regard to
division and punctuation, has left the syntactical relation of words, and
also the sense of passages, in no few instances, uncertain; and has
consequently made, where the text has been thought worthy of it, an
abundance of difficult work for translators, critics, and commentators.
Rules of grammar, now made and observed, as they ought to be, may free the
compositions of this, or a future age, from similar embarrassments; and it
is both just and useful, to test our authors by them, criticising or
correcting their known blunders according to the present rules of accurate
writing. But the readers and expounders of what