liar to certain words. But Chandler, of Philadelphia, ("the Grammar
King," forsooth!) without mistaking the grammatical persons for rational
souls, has contrived to crowd into his definition of _person_ more errors
of conception and of language,--more insult to common sense,--than one
could have believed it possible to put together in such space. And this
ridiculous old twaddle, after six and twenty years, he has deliberately
re-written and lately republished as something "adapted to the schools of
America." It stands thus: "_Person is a distinction which is made in a noun
between its representation of its object, either as spoken to, or spoken
of_."--Chandler's E. Grammar; Edition of 1821, p. 16; Ed. 1847, p. 21.

34. Grammarians have often failed in their definitions, because it is
impossible to define certain terms in the way in which the description has
been commonly attempted. He who undertakes what is impossible must
necessarily fail; and fail too, to the discredit of his ingenuity. It is
manifest that whenever a generic name in the singular number is to be
defined, the definition must be founded upon some property or properties
common to all the particular things included under the term. Thus, if I
would define a _globe_, a _wheel_, or a _pyramid_, my description must be
taken, not from what is peculiar to one or an other of these things, but
from those properties only which are common to all globes, all wheels, or
all pyramids. But what property has _unity_ in common with _plurality_, on
which a definition of _number_ may be founded? What common property have
the _three cases_, by which we can clearly define _case_? What have the
_three persons_ in common, which, in a definition of _person_, could be
made evident to a child? Thus all the great classes of grammatical
modifications, namely, _persons, numbers, genders, cases, moods_, and
_tenses_, though they admit of easy, accurate, and obvious definitions in
the plural, can scarcely be defined at all in the singular. I do not say,
that the terms _person, number, gender, case, mood_, and _tense_, ia their
technical application to grammar, are all of them equally and absolutely
undefinable in the singular; but I say, that no definition, just in sense
and suitable for a child, can ever be framed for any one of them. Among the
thousand varied attempts of grammarians to explain them so, there are a
hundred gross solecisms for every tolerable definition. For this, as I ha