INFLECTION OF PRONOUNS.

129. The Pronoun is varied by Gender, Number, Person, and Case.

The Personal Pronouns are thus declined :

130. By inspecting the two following lines, the student will understand what we meant by saying that the Possessive Pronouns, or, as we prefer calling them, Pronominal Adjectives, were derived from and corresponded with the personal pronouns.

Personal Pron., I thou he she it we you they Possessive Case, Mine thine his hers its ours yours theirs Pronom. Adjec., My thy his her its our your their 131. The Relative and Interrogative Pronouns who and which are alike in both numbers, and are thus declined :

That and as are indeclinable. That is generally preferred to who or which when the correlative has an adjectiveespecially if in the superlative-joined to it. "Solomon was the wisest king that ever sat on the throne of Israel.” "This is the strangest story that we read of.”

132. Dr Lowth has asserted that which is indeclinable as well as that, but, though up to his time there may have been some grounds for such an assertion, a sufficient number of reputable authors have used whose as the possessive of which, to justify grammarians of the present day in declining it as we have done. Before Lowth's time, the use of the pronouns was not definitely fixed, who and he being sometimes applied to things, while which was not unfrequently

applied to persons, as we find in the Lord's Prayer; but now that the application of each is quite settled, we find whose representing of which among the poets almost as often as it represents of whom, and among prose writers not unfrequently.

Nor could Claudius think of indulging any private resentment, till he had saved an empire, whose impending ruin would crush both the army and the people.-Gibbon.

How much do we prize the words of great men, which enable us to look, as it were, into the very nature of that mind, whose distant effects we know to be so marvellous !—Arnold.

They agreed, in the main, in regarding the national voice, whose independence they maintained, as expressed by the national sovereign, in recognising the king or queen as the head of the church. -Arnold.

The tribunal of public opinion is one whose decisions it is not easy to despise.-Hall.

It remains, then, with you to decide whether that freedom at whose voice, &c.-Hall.

133. It will be observed that the pronouns are very irregular; I, for example, bearing no sort of etymological relation to the word set down as its objective, me. The probability is, that both words were originally indeclinable, and used at different times or in different places both as nominative and objective. This is proved by the variety of dialects which prevail in different parts of the country; but, however they have come into use, and however anomalous they may be, the pronouns are now declined as we have represented them, nor is their present form or use likely to be again disturbed.

134. Mr Harris has remarked it as curious, that we have only one pronoun to express both the masculine and feminine of the first person, and one for the second, while we have three separate forms for the third. The reason is, he thinks, that when the first or second is used the sex is obvious, whereas when the third is used it can only be inferred from the language. That it is a convenient arrangement we may conclude from the number of languages in which it exists; and yet the want of a third personal pronoun to signify an individual, without suggesting the sex, must have occurred to every one who has paid the least attention to

language. There are other deficiencies in the list of our pronouns; as, for instance, you signifies equally the person or persons addressed by themselves, or including others; and we may signify the person speaking along with others whose sentiments he is expressing; or, in addition to these, the persons addressed, with any indefinite number besides. In other words, you thou thou, or thou + he; while we = I + I, or I + thou, or I + thou + he, &c. It is curious that some of the Polynesian languages have distinct pronouns to represent these distinct ideas, while no trace of them is to be found in any European tongue.

EXERCISE XVI.

1. How are pronouns varied? State the objective of all the pronouns. From what are the pronominal adjectives derived? Can the pronoun whose be properly used referring to nouns neuter? Is it more common in prose or poetry? What account has Mr Harris given of the fact that the third personal pronoun has three genders? What ambiguity exists in such pronouns as you and we? Does this ambiguity exist in all languages?

2. Point out pronouns and state to what they refer.

A good boy is dutiful to his parents. I wish to instruct you a little more on this point. The trees are shorn of their foliage. Winter is a season in which we should feel gratitude for our comforts. We have houses to defend us. Here is the picture of thy life. I saw thee in thy beauty.

To us who dwell on its surface, the earth is by far the most extensive orb that our eyes can anywhere behold.-Addison.

The prince, having considered his sister's observations, told her that she had surveyed life with prejudice, and supposed misery where she did not find it.-Johnson.

The student of modern history, especially, needs a knowledge of geography, because, as I have said, his inquiries will lead him first or last to every quarter of the globe. But let us consider what a knowledge of geography is. First, I grant it is a knowledge, &c.— Arnold.

The poets, in their elegies and songs

Lamenting the departed, call the groves,

They call upon the hills and streams to mourn,
And senseless rocks; nor idly; for they speak,
In these their invocations, with a voice
Obedient to the strong creative power

Of human passion.

Wordsworth.

INFLECTION OF VERBS.

135. The Verb is varied in four ways-Number, Person, Mood, and Tense.

136. There are two Numbers, Singular and Plural, as in the case of the noun; and three Persons, as in the pronouns. 137. Neither number nor person, however, is deeply impressed on the form of the English verb. By comparing a Latin with an English verb, it will be seen that in the former every person has a distinct termination, in the latter there are only two or at most three.

138. We have to determine the person of the verb by observing its subject, and seeing we have gone so far in divesting the verb of the accident of person, it is perhaps to be regretted that any vestige of it has been retained. It is clearly a superfluity, for I love, thou love, he love, &c., would have served all the purposes of speech, as well as ego amo-tu amas-ille amat, &c., and the same principle which led to an uninflected adjective, as far as number, gender, and case are concerned, would have led, if consistently applied, to a complete disregard of the distinction of number and person in verbs.

139. Every part of the verb, as its definition implies, asserts, but the assertion was thought to be made in different manners, and this gave rise to the distinction of Moods.

140. The Moods are generally reckoned five in number,— the Indicative, the Subjunctive, the Potential, the Imperative, and the Infinitive. But it may well be questioned if there is any real ground for such distinction, as far at least as the Subjunctive and Potential are concerned. The Subjunctive, as it is called, is merely an elliptical mode of expression, except, perhaps, in the verb to be, where we find a subjunctive inflection. The Potential is made up of two or more verbs, and therefore it can with no propriety, if we are to follow the principle laid down (73.), that a change of form

is necessary to constitute an inflection, be called a part of any one of them.

141. This leaves us the Indicative, by which simple assertions are made; the Imperative, by which commands are issued; and the Infinitive, which is neither more nor less than the name of the verb, and in use corresponds exactly to a noun.

142. Judging by the same rule, we find that the Tenses are two in number,-the Present and the Past: the Future is not expressed by any inflection of the verb in English, as it is in Latin, French, and other languages, but by the help of another verb; and it is surely absurd to force a distinction upon the English verb, merely because it exists in Latin.

143. Our oldest grammarian, Wallis, an account of whose doctrine we find in Dr Crombie's "Etymology and Syntax," and our latest of any note, Mr Latham, agree in this point, though Lindley Murray and many other respectable authorities take a different view. The question as to how many moods ought to be reckoned is not of course to be settled by authority, but neither is authority to be altogether despised. We therefore give the opinions of Priestley and Latham in their own words. What Priestley says of the future tense, applies, a fortiori, more strongly to the others. "A little reflection may, I think, suffice to convince any person, that we have no more business with a future tense in our language than we have with the whole system of Latin moods and tenses; because we have no modification of our verbs to correspond to it; and if we had never heard of a future tense in some other language, we should no more have given a particular name to the combination of the verb with the auxiliary shall or will, than to those that are made with the auxiliaries do, have, can, must, or any other."-Rudiments of English Grammar.

144. Mr Latham is equally explicit. He says, "I strike, I struck. Of these words, the first implies an action taking place at the time of speaking, the second marks an action that has already taken place. These two notions of present and of past time, being expressed by a change of form, are true tenses. They are, however, the only true tenses in our