rve for all, _yourself is
starving_." But he wrote erroneously, and his meaning is doubtful: probably
he meant, "To carve for all, is, _to starve yourself_." The compound
personals, when they are nominatives before the verb, are commonly
associated with the simple; as, "I _myself_ also _am_ a man."--_Acts_, x,
16. "That _thou thyself art_ a guide."--_Rom._, ii, 19. "If it stand, as
_you yourself_ still _do_"--_Shakspeare_. "That _you yourself_ are much
condemned."--_Id._ And, if the simple pronoun be omitted, the compound
still requires the same form of the verb; as, "Which way I fly is Hell;
_myself am_ Hell."--_Milton_. The following example is different: "I love
mankind; and in a monarchy myself _is_ all that I _can_ love."--_Life of
Schiller, Follen's Pref._, p. x. Dr. Follen objects to the British version,
"Myself _were_ all that I _could_ love;" and, if his own is good English,
the verb _is_ agrees with _all_, and not with _myself_. _Is_ is of the
third person: hence, "_myself is_" or, "_yourself is_," cannot be good
syntax; nor does any one say, "_yourself art_," or, "_ourself am_," but
rather, "_yourself are_:" as, "Captain, _yourself are_ the
fittest."--_Dryden_. But to call this a "_concord_," is to turn a third
part of the language upsidedown; because, by analogy, it confounds, to such
extent at least, the plural number with the singular through all our verbs;
that is, if _ourself_ and _yourself_ are singulars, and not rather plurals
put for singulars by a figure of syntax. But the words are, in some few
instances, written separately; and then both the meaning and the
construction are different; as, "Your _self_ is sacred, profane _it_
not."--_The Dial_, Vol. i, p. 86. Perhaps the word _myself_ above ought
rather to have been two words; thus, "And, in a monarchy, _my self is all_
that I can love." The two words here differ in person and case, perhaps
also in gender; and, in the preceding instance, they differ in person,
number, gender, and case. But the compound always follows the person,
number, and gender of its first part, and only the case of its last. The
notion of some grammarians, (to wit, of Wells, and the sixty-eight others
whom he cites for it,) that _you_ and _your_ are actually made singular by
usage, is demonstrably untrue. Do _we, our_, and _us_, become actually
singular, as often as a king or a critic applies them to himself? No: for
nothing can be worse syntax than, _we am, we was_, or _you was_,