ase maketh hoc, hac, and hoc,
A cock is a fowl-- but a fowl 's not a cock.
The nominative plural is hi, hae, and haec,
The Roman young ladies were dressed a la Grecque;
The genitive case horum, harum, and horum,
Silenus and Bacchus were fond of a jorum;
The dative in all the three genders is his,
At Actium his tip did Mark Antony miss:
The accusative 's hos, has, and haec in all grammars,
Herodotus told some American crammers;
The vocative here also-- caret-- 's no go,
As Milo found rending an oak-tree, you know;
And his, like the dative the ablative case is,
The Furies had most disagreeable faces.

Nouns declined with two articles, are called common. This word common
requires explanation-- it is not used in the same sense as that in which
we say, that quackery is common in medicine, knavery in the law, and
humbug everywhere-- pigeons at Crockford's, lame ducks at the Stock
Exchange, Jews at the ditto, and Royal ditto, and foreigners in
Leicester Square-- No; a common noun is one that is both masculine and
feminine; in one sense of the word therefore it is _uncommon_. Parens,
a parent, which may be declined both with hic, and haec, is, for obvious
reasons, a noun of this class; and so is fur, a thief; likewise miles,
a soldier, which will appear strange to those of our readers, who do not
call to mind the existence of the ancient amazons; the dashing white
sergeant being the only female soldier known in modern times. Nor have
we more than one authenticated instance of a female sailor, if we except
the heroine commemorated in the somewhat apocryphal narrative-- Billy
Taylor.

Nouns are called doubtful when declined with the article hic or haec--
whichever you please, as the showman said of the Duke of Wellington and
Napoleon Bonaparte. Anguis, a snake, is a doubtful noun. At all events
he is a doubtful customer.

[Illustration]

Epicene nouns are those which, though declined with one article only,
represent both sexes, as hic passer, a sparrow, haec aquila, an eagle,--
cock and hen. A sparrow, however, to say nothing of an eagle, must
appear a doubtful noun with regard to gender, to a cockney sportsman.

After all, there is no rule in the Latin language about gender so
comprehensive as that observed in Hampshire, where they call every thing
_he_ but a tom-cat, and that _she_.

+DECLENSION OF NOUNS SUBSTANTIVE.+

There are five declensions of substantives. As a pig is known by h