me:"--"He will accompany me.
_Grant_--_give_ that [fact] I will go." For the purpose of
ascertaining the _primitive_ meaning of this word, I have no
objection to such a resolution; but, by it, do we get the exact
meaning and force of _if_ as it is applied in our modern, refined
state of the language? I _trow_ not. But, admitting we do, does this
prove that such a mode of resolving sentences can be advantageously
adopted by learners in common schools? I presume it can not be
denied, that instead of teaching the learner to express himself
correctly in modern English, such a resolution is merely making him
familiar with an ancient and barbarous construction which modern
refinement has rejected. Our forefathers, I admit, who were governed
by those laws of necessity which compel all nations in the early and
rude state of their language, to express themselves in short,
detached sentences, employed _if_ as a verb when they used the
following circumlocution: "My son will reform. _Give that fact_. I
will forgive him." But in the present, improved state of our
language, by using _if_ as a _conjunction_, (for I maintain that it
is one,) we express the same thought more briefly; and our modern
mode of expression has, too, a decisive advantage over the ancient,
not only in point of elegance, but also in perspicuity and force. In
Scotland and the north of England, some people still make use of
_gin_, a contraction of _given:_ thus, "I will pardon my son, _gin_
he reform." But who will contend, that they speak pure English?

But perhaps the advocates of what _they_ call a philosophical
development of language, will say, that by their resolution of
sentences, they merely supply an ellipsis. If, by an ellipsis, they
mean such a one as is necessary, to the grammatical construction, I
cannot accede to their assumption. In teaching grammar, as well as
in other things, we ought to avoid extremes:--we ought neither to
pass superficially over an ellipsis necessary to the sense of a
phrase, nor to put modern English to the blush, by adopting a mode
of resolving sentences that would entirely change the character of
our language, and carry the learner back to the Vandalic age.

_But_ comes from the Saxon verb, _beon-utan_, to be-out. "All were
well _but (be-out, leave-out)_ the stranger." "Man is _but_ a re