, what all
the elements of the science are.

33. What does he know of grammar, who cannot directly and properly answer
such questions as these?--"What are numbers, in grammar? What is the
singular number? What is the plural number? What are persons, in grammar?
What is the first person? What is the second person? What is the third
person? What are genders, in grammar? What is the masculine gender? What is
the feminine gender? What is the neuter gender? What are cases, in grammar?
What is the nominative case? What is the possessive case? What is the
objective case?"--And yet the most complete acquaintance with every
sentence or word of Murray's tedious compilation, may leave the student at
a loss for a proper answer, not only to each of these questions, but also
to many others equally simple and elementary! A boy may learn by heart all
that Murray ever published on the subject of grammar, and still be left to
confound the numbers in grammar with numbers in arithmetic, or the persons
in grammar with persons in civil life! Nay, there are among the professed
_improvers_ of this system of grammar, _men_ who have actually confounded
these things, which are so totally different in their natures! In "Smith's
New Grammar on the Productive System," a work in which Murray is largely
copied and strangely metamorphosed, there is an abundance of such
confusion. For instance: "What is the meaning of the word _number_? Number
means _a sum that may be counted_."--_R. C. Smith's New Gram._, p. 7. From
this, by a tissue of half a dozen similar absurdities, called _inductions_,
the novice is brought to the conclusion that the numbers are _two_--as if
there were in nature but two sums that might be counted! There is no end to
the sickening detail of such blunders. How many grammars tell us, that,
"The first person is the _person who speaks_;" that, "The second person is
the _person spoken to_;" and that, "the third person is the _person spoken
of_!" As if the three persons of a verb, or other part of speech, were so
many _intelligent beings_! As if, by exhibiting a word in the three
persons, (as _go, goest, goes_,) we put it first _into the speaker_, then
_into the hearer_, and then _into somebody else_! Nothing can be more
abhorrent to grammar, or to sense, than such confusion. The things which
are identified in each of these three definitions, are as unlike as
Socrates and moonshine! The one is a thinking being; the other, a mere form
pecu