am I eased?"--_Job_, xvi, 6.
"_What_ advantageth it me?"--_1 Cor._, xv, 32. Here _what_, means _in what
degree? how much?_ or _wherein?_ "For _what_ knowest thou, O wife, whether
thou shalt save thy husband?"--_1 Cor._, vii, 16. Here _how_ would have
been better. "The enemy, having his country wasted, _what_ by himself and
_what_ by the soldiers, findeth succour in no place."--_Spenser_. Here
_what_ means _partly_;--"wasted _partly_ by himself and _partly_ by the
soldiers." This use of _what_ was formerly very common, but is now, I
think, obsolete. _What_ before an adjective seems sometimes to denote with
admiration the degree of the quality; and is called, by some, an adverb;
as, "_What partial_ judges are our love and hate!"--_Dryden_. But here I
take _what_ to be an _adjective_; as when we say, _such_ partial judges,
_some_ partial judges, &c. "_What_ need I be forward with Death, that calls
not on me?"--_Shakspeare_. Here _what_ seems to be improperly put in place
of _why_.

[174] Dr. Blair, in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, often uses
the phrase "_this much_;" but it is, I think, more common to say "_thus
much_," even when the term is used substantively.

[175] There seems to be no good reason for joining _an_ and _other_: on the
contrary, the phrase _an other_ is always as properly two words, as the
phrase _the other_, and more so. The latter, being long ago vulgarly
contracted into _t'other_, probably gave rise to the apparent contraction
_another_; which many people nowadays are ignorant enough to divide wrong,
and mispronounce. See _"a-no-ther"_ in _Murray's Spelling-Book_, p. 71; and
_"a-noth-er"_ in _Emerson's_, p. 76. _An_ here excludes any other article;
and both analogy and consistency require that the words be separated. Their
union, like that of the words _the_ and _other_, has led sometimes to an
improper repetition of the article: as, "_Another_ such _a_ man," for, "An
other such man."--"Bind my hair up. An 'twas yesterday? No, nor _the
t'other_ day."--BEN JONSON: _in Joh. Dict._ "He can not tell when he should
take _the tone_, and when _the tother_."--SIR T. MOORE: Tooke's D. P., Vol.
15, p. 448. That is--"when he should take _the one_ and when _the other_."
Besides, the word _other_ is declined, like a noun, and has the plural
_others_; but the compounding of _another_ constrains our grammarians to
say, that this word "has no plural." All these difficulties will be removed
by writing _