pted; first,
into two general classes, primary and secondary; then into "_seven species_
or parts of speech," the first two belonging to the former class, the other
five to the latter; thus: "1. Names or nouns; 2. Verbs; 3. Substitutes; 4.
Attributes; 5. Modifiers; 6. Prepositions; 7. Connectives." In his
"Improved Grammar of the English Language," published in 1831, the same
scheme is retained, but the usual names are preferred.

18. How many different schemes of classification this author invented, I
know not; but he might well have saved himself the trouble of inventing
any; for, so far as appears, none of his last three grammars ever came to a
second edition. In the sixth edition of his "Plain and Comprehensive
Grammar, grounded on the _true principles_ and idioms of the language," a
work which his last grammatical preface affirms to have been originally
fashioned "on the model of Lowth's," the parts of speech are reckoned
"_six_; nouns, articles, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and abbreviations or
particles." This work, which he says "was extensively used in the schools
of this country," and continued to be in demand, he voluntarily suppressed;
because, after a profitable experiment of four and twenty years, he found
it so far from being grounded on "true principles," that the whole scheme
then appeared to him incorrigibly bad. And, judging from this sixth
edition, printed in 1800, the only one which I have seen, I cannot but
concur with him in the opinion. More than one half of the volume is a loose
_Appendix_ composed chiefly of notes taken from Lowth and Priestley; and
there is a great want of method in what was meant for the body of the work.
I imagine his several editions must have been different grammars with the
same title; for such things are of no uncommon occurrence, and I cannot
otherwise account for the assertion that this book was compiled "on _the
model of Lowth's_, and on the same principles as [those on which] Murray
has constructed his."--_Advertisement in Webster's Quarto Dict., 1st Ed._

19. In a treatise on grammar, a bad scheme is necessarily attended with
inconveniences for which no merit in the execution can possibly compensate.
The first thing, therefore, which a skillful teacher will notice in a work
of this kind, is the arrangement. If he find any difficulty in discovering,
at sight, what it is, he will be sure it is bad; for a lucid order is what
he has a right to expect from him who pretend