ote which will show them
_all_ to be so. The author, however, after presenting these uncouth
fictions, which show nothing but his own deficiency in grammar, has done
the world the favour not to pronounce them very _convenient_ phrases; for
he continues the paragraph as follows: "The rules which _we_ have
endeavoured to elucidate, will prevent the _inconveniences_ of both these
modes of expression; and they appear to be _simple, perspicuous_, and
_consistent_ with the idiom of the language.'--_Ib._ This undeserved praise
of his own rules, he might as well have left to some other hand. They have
had the fortune, however, to please sundry critics, and to become the prey
of many thieves; but are certainly very deficient in the three qualities
here named; and, taken together with their illustrations, they form little
else than a tissue of errors, partly his own, and partly copied from Lowth
and Priestley.

Dr. Latham, too, and Prof. Child, whose erroneous teaching on this point is
still more marvellous, not only inculcate the idea that possessives in form
may be in apposition, but seem to suppose that two possessive endings are
essential to the relation. Forgetting all such English as we have in the
phrases, "_John the Baptist's head_,"--"_For Jacob my servant's
sake_,"--"_Julius Caesar's Commentaries_,"--they invent sham expressions,
too awkward ever to have come to their knowledge from any actual use,--such
as, "_John's the farmer's wife_,"--"_Oliver's the spy's evidence_,"--and
then end their section with the general truth, "For words to be in
apposition with each other, they must be in the same case."--_Elementary
Grammar, Revised Edition_, p. 152. What sort of scholarship is that in
which _fictitious examples_ mislead even their inventors?

[345] In Professor Fowler's recent and copious work, "The English Language
in its Elements and Forms," our present _Reciprocals_ are called, not
_Pronominal Adjectives_, but "_Pronouns_," and are spoken of, in the first
instance, thus: "Sec.248. A RECIPROCAL PRONOUN is _one_ that implies the
mutual action of different agents. EACH OTHER, and ONE ANOTHER, are our
reciprocal forms, _which are treated exactly as if they were compound
pronouns_, taking for their genitives, _each other's, one another's_. _Each
other_ is properly used of _two_, and _one another_ of _more_." The
definition here given takes for granted what is at least disputable, that
"_each other_," or "_one another_," is