Book Description

Excerpt from English Grammar, in Familiar Lectures: Embracing a New Systematic Order of Parsing, a New System of Punctuation, Exercises in False Syntax, and a System of Philosophical Grammar Content to be useful, instead of being brilliant, the writer of these pages has endeavoured to shun the path of those whose aim appears to have been to dazzle, rather than to instruct. As he has a'uned not so much at originality as utility, he has adopted the thoughts of his prede cessors whose labours have become public stock, whenever he could not, in his opinion, furnish better and brighter of itis own. Aware that there is, in the public mind, a strong predilection for the doctrines contained in Mr. Murray's grammar, he has thought proper, not merely from motives of policy, but from choice, to select his principles chiefly from that work; and, moreover, to adopt, as far as consistent with his own views, the lan guage of that eminent philologist. In no instance has he varied from him, unless he conceived that, in so doing, some practical advantage would be gained. He h0pes, therefore, to escape the censure so frequent ly and so justly awarded to those unfortunate innovators who have not scrupled to alter, mutilate, and torture the text of that able writer, merely to gratify an itching propensity to figure in the world as authors, and gain an ephemeral popularity, by arrogating to themselves the credit due to another. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.