allen, I shall have space and time to point out only a _very small part_:
this text, too justly, may be taken as a pretty fair sample of their
scholarship!

[451] The "_idea_" which is here spoken of, Dr. Blair discovers in a
passage of Addison's Spectator. It is, in fact, as here "_brought out_" by
the critic, a bald and downright absurdity. Dr. Campbell has criticised,
under the name of _marvellous nonsense_, a different display of the same
"_idea_," cited from De Piles's Principles of Painting. The passage ends
thus: "In this sense it may be asserted, that in Rubens' pieces, Art is
above Nature, and Nature only a copy of that great master's works." Of this
the critic says: "When the expression is _stript_ of the _absurd meaning_,
there remains nothing but balderdash."--_Philosophy of Rhet._, p, 278.

[452] All his rules for the comma, Fisk appears to have taken unjustly from
Greenleaf. It is a _double shame_, for a grammarian to _steal_ what is so
_badly written_!--G. BROWN.

[453] Bad definitions may have other faults than to include or exclude what
they should not, but this is their great and peculiar vice. For example:
"_Person_ is _that property_ of _nouns_ and _pronouns_ which distinguishes
the speaker, the person or thing addressed, and the person or thing spoken
of."--_Wells's School Gram._, 1st Ed., p. 51; 113th Ed., p. 57. See nearly
the same words, in _Weld's English Gram._, p. 67; and in his _Abridgement_,
p. 49. The three persons of _verbs_ are all improperly excluded from this
definition; which absurdly takes "_person_" to be _one property that has
all the effect of all the persons_; so that each person, in its turn, since
each cannot have all this effect, is seen to be excluded also: that is, it
is not such a property as is described! Again: "An _intransitive verb_ is a
verb which _does not have_ a noun or pronoun for its object."--_Wells_, 1st
Ed., p. 76. According to Dr. Johnson, "_does not have_," is not a scholarly
phrase; but the adoption of a puerile expression is a trifling fault,
compared with that of including here all passive verbs, and some
transitives, which the author meant to exclude; to say nothing of the
inconsistency of excluding here the two classes of verbs which he absurdly
calls "intransitive," though he finds them "followed by objectives
depending upon them!"--_Id._, p. 145. Weld imitates these errors too, on
pp. 70 and 153.

[454] S. R. Hall thinks it necessary to recognize "_fo