es, and connectives." But why
make the classes so numerous as four? Many of the ancients, Greeks,
Hebrews, and Arabians, according to Quintilian, made them _three_; and
these three, according to Vossius, were nouns, verbs, and particles.
"Veteres Arabes, Hebraei, et Graeci, tres, non amplius, classes faciebant; l.
Nomen, 2. Verbum, 3. Particula seu Dictio."--_Voss. de Anal._, Lib. i, Cap.
1.

21. Nor is this number, _three_, quite destitute of modern supporters;
though most of these come at it in an other way. D. St. Quentin, in his
Rudiments of General Grammar, published in 1812, divides words into the
"three general classes" last mentioned; viz., "1. Nouns, 2. Verbs, 3.
Particles."--P. 5. Booth, who published the second edition of his
etymological work in 1814, examining severally the ten parts of speech, and
finding what he supposed to be the true origin of all the words in some of
the classes, was led to throw one into an other, till he had destroyed
seven of them. Then, resolving that each word ought to be classed according
to the meaning which its etymology fixes upon it, he refers the number of
classes to _nature_, thus: "If, then, each [word] has a _meaning_, and is
capable of raising an idea in the mind, that idea must have its prototype
in nature. It must either denote an _exertion_, and is therefore a _verb_;
or a _quality_, and is, in that case, an _adjective_; or it must express an
_assemblage_ of qualities, such as is observed to belong to some individual
object, and is, on this supposition, the _name_ of such object, or a
_noun_. * * * We have thus given an account of the different divisions of
words, and have found that the whole may be classed under the three heads
of Names, Qualities, and Actions; or Nouns, Adjectives, and
Verbs."--_Introd. to Analyt. Dict._, p. 22.

22. This notion of the parts of speech, as the reader will presently see,
found an advocate also in the author of the popular little story of Jack
Halyard. It appears in his Philosophic Grammar published in Philadelphia in
1827. Whether the writer borrowed it from Booth, or was led into it by the
light of "nature," I am unable to say: he does not appear to have derived
it from the ancients. Now, if either he or the lexicographer has discovered
in "nature" a prototype for this scheme of grammar, the discovery is only
to be proved, and the schemes of all other grammarians, ancient or modern,
must give place to it. For the reader will observe