an there really
is. For instance: 1. He classes the _articles_ with _adjectives_; and so
did Brightland, Tooke, Fisher, Dalton, and Webster. 2. He calls the
_participles, adjectives_; and so did Brightland and Tooke. 3. He make the
_pronouns_, either _nouns_ or _adjectives_; and so did Adam, Dalton, and
others. 4. He distributes the _conjunctions_ among the other parts of
speech; and so did Tooke. 5. He rejects the _interjections_; and so did
Valla, Sanctius, and Tooke. 6. He makes the _possessive case_ an
_adjective_; and so did Brightland. 7. He says our language has _no cases_;
and so did Harris. 8. He calls _case, position_; and so did James Brown. 9.
He reduces the adjectives to two classes, _defining_ and _describing_; and
so did Dalton. 10. He declares all _verbs_ to be _active_; and so did
Harris, (in his Hermes, Book i, Chap. ix,) though he admitted the
_expediency_ of the common division, and left to our author the absurdity
of contending about it. Fisher also rejected the class of _neuter verbs_,
and called them all _active_. 11. He reduces the _moods_ to _three_, and
the _tenses_ to _three_; and so did Dalton, in the very same words. Fisher
also made the _tenses three_, but said there _are no moods_ in English. 12.
He makes the _imperative mood_ always _future_; and so did Harris, in 1751.
Nor did the doctrine originate with him; for Brightland, a hundred years
ago, [about 1706,] ascribed it to some of his predecessors. 13. He reduces
the whole of our _syntax_ to about _thirty lines_; and two thirds of these
are useless; for Dr. Johnson expressed it quite as fully in _ten_. But
their explanations are both good for nothing; and Wallis, more wisely,
omitted it altogether."--_The Friend_, Vol. ii, p. 59.

26. Dr. Webster says, in a marginal note to the preface of his
Philosophical Grammar, "Since the days of _Wallis_, who published a Grammar
of the English Language, in Latin, in the reign of Charles II.[,] from
which Johnson and Lowth borrowed most of their rules, _little improvement_
has been made in English grammar. Lowth supplied some valuable criticisms,
most of which however respect obsolete phrases; but many of his criticisms
are extremely erroneous, and they have had an ill effect, in perverting the
true idioms of our language. Priestley furnished a number of new and useful
observations on the peculiar phrases of the English language. To which may
be added some good remarks of Blair and Campbell, intersper