wn words on the point: "There is great difficulty in
devising a correct classification of the several sorts of words; and
probably no classification that shall be simple and at the same time
philosophically correct, can be invented. There are some words that do not
strictly fall under any description of any class yet devised. Many attempts
have been made and are still making to remedy this evil; but such schemes
as I have seen, do not, in my apprehension, correct the defects of the old
schemes, nor simplify the subject. On the other hand, all that I have seen,
serve only to obscure and embarrass the subject, by substituting new
arrangements and new terms which are as incorrect as the old ones, and less
intelligible. I have attentively viewed these subjects, in all the lights
which my opportunities have afforded, and am convinced that the
distribution of words, most generally received, _is the best that can be
formed_, with some slight alterations adapted to the particular
construction of the English language."

17. This passage is taken from the advertisement, or preface, to the
Grammar which accompanies the author's edition of his great quarto
Dictionary. Now the several schemes which bear his own name, were doubtless
all of them among those which he had that he had "_seen_;" so that he here
condemns them all collectively, as he had previously condemned some of them
at each reformation. Nor is the last exempted. For although he here plainly
gives his vote for that common scheme which he first condemned, he does not
adopt it without "some slight alterations;" and in contriving these
alterations he is inconsistent with his own professions. He makes the parts
of speech _eight_, thus: "1. The name or noun; 2. The pronoun or
substitute; 3. The adjective, attribute, or attributive; 4. The verb; 5.
The adverb; 6. The preposition; 7. The connective or conjunction; 8. The
exclamation or interjection." In his Rudiments of English Grammar,
published in 1811, "to unfold the _true principles_ of the language," his
parts of speech were _seven_; "viz. 1. Names or nouns; 2. Substitutes or
pronouns; 3. Attributes or adjectives; 4. Verbs, with their participles; 5.
Modifiers or adverbs; 6. Prepositions; 7. Connectives or conjunctions." In
his Philosophical and Practical Grammar, published in 1807, a book which
professes to teach "the _only legitimate principles_, and established
usages," of the language, a twofold division of words is ado