above.

[464] In punctuation, the grammar here cited is unaccountably defective.
This is the more strange, because many of its errors are mere perversions
of what was accurately pointed by an other hand. On the page above referred
to, Dr. Bullions, in copying from Lennie's syntactical exercises _a dozen
consecutive lines_, has omitted _nine needful commas_, which Lennie had
been careful to insert!

[465] Needless abbreviations, like most that occur in this example, are in
_bad taste_, and _ought to be avoided_. The great faultiness of this text
as a model for learners, compels me to vary the words considerably in
suggesting the correction. See the _Key_.--G. B.

[466] "To be, or not to be?--that's the question."--_Hallock's Gram._, p.
220. "To be, or not to be, that is the question."--_Singer's Shak._, ii.
488. "To be, or not to be; that is the Question."--_Ward's Gram._, p 160.
"To be, or not to be, that is the Question."--_Brightland's Gram._, p 209.
"To be, or not to be?"--_Mandeville's Course of Reading_, p. 141. "To be or
not to be! That is the question."--_Pinneo's Gram._, p. 176. "To _be_--or
_not_ to be--_that_ is the question--"--_Burgh's Speaker_, p. 179.

[467] In the works of some of our older poets, the apostrophe is sometimes
irregularly inserted, and perhaps needlessly, to mark a prosodial
synsaeresis, or synalepha, where no letter is cut off or left out; as,

"Retire, or taste thy _folly'_, and learn by proof,
Hell-born, not to contend with _spir'its_ of Heaven."
--_Milton, P. L._, ii, 686.

In the following example, it seems to denote nothing more than the open or
long sound of the preceding vowel _e_:

"That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour,
Even till a _lethe'd_ dulness."
--_Singer's Shakspeare_, Vol. ii, p. 280.

[468] The breve is properly a mark of _short quantity_, only when it is set
over an unaccented syllable or an unemphatic monosyllable, as it often is
in the scanning of verses. In the examples above, it marks the close or
short power of the _vowels_; but, _under the accent_, even this power may
become part of a _long syllable_; as it does in the word _raven_, where
the syllable _rav_, having twice the length of that which follows, must be
reckoned _long_. In poetry, _r=av-en_ and _r=a-ven_ are both _trochees_,
the former syllable in each being long, and the latter short.

[469] 1. The signs of long and short sounds, and especially of the forme