influence, experienced as a student, I owe more than to any books, and of whom, while life lasts, I will always think with gratitude."* Assuredly, an Englishman would have written. "shall always think." Why would he? Not because he wrote more correctly, but because he expressed a different idea. Mr. Masson speaks direct from the feelings engendered by the kindness and services of the former teachers. He speaks from his own mind, so that he not only gives us their action on himself but his own reaction on them. He might, however, have done differently. He might have spoken from the simple action of them, keeping the reaction of his own mind in the background. An English writer would have done so, and have said shall accordingly. The grammar of both is good— for grammar only tells us how to express our thoughts in language. It does not tell us what to think. Now the Englishman and Scotchman in the matter of shall and will think differently. Why they do so is another matter. The Englishman subordinates himself to the circumstances that determine his actions. The Scotchman subordinates the circumstances to himself. The one carries the line of causality through his own mind before he takes it up. The other takes it up before his mind has re-acted on it. Without asking whether will or shall be the better reading in the following extract, let us ask what each means. Pity, kind gentlefolks, friends of humanity! Keen blows the wind and the night's coming on, Give me some food for my mother and charity; Give me some food and then I S will be shall gone. Here Will be gone means I will trouble you no more. * Lecture delivered at University College, London.-October, 1854. CHAPTER XXV. THE SYNTAX OF ADVERBS. § 522. THE syntax of the adverb is comparatively simple. Adverbs have no concord. Neither have they any government. They seem, indeed, to have it, when they are in the comparative or superlative degree; but it is merely apparent. In this is better than that, the word that is governed neither by better nor by than. It is not governed at all. It is a nominative case; the subject of a separate proposition. This is better (i. e. more good) than that is good. Even if we admit such an expression as he is stronger than me to be good English, there is no adverbial government. Than, if it govern me at all, governs it as a preposition. The position of an adverb is, in respect to matters of syntax, pre-eminently parenthetic; i. e. it may be omitted without injuring the construction. He is fighting-now ; he was fighting-then; he fights-bravely; I am—almost— tired, &c. By referring to the chapter on the Adverbs, we shall find that the neuter adjective is frequently converted into an adverb by deflection. As any neuter adjective may be so deflected, we may justify such expressions as full (for fully) as conspicuous, and peculiar (for peculiarly) bad grace, &c. We are not, however, bound to imitate everything that we can justify. § 523. The termination -ly was originally adjectival. At present it is a derivational syllable by which we can convert an adjective into an adverb: brave, brave-ly. When, however, the adjective ends in -ly already, the formation is awkward. I eat my daily bread is unexceptionable English; I eat my bread daily is exceptionable. One of two things must here take place: the two syllables -ly are packed into one (the full expression being dai-li-ly) or else the construction is that of a neuter adjective deflected. Adverbs are convertible. The then men = oi viv ẞpórol, &c. § 524. From whence, from thence.—This is an expression which, if it have not taken root in our language, is likely to do So. It is an instance of excess of expression in the way of syntax; inasmuch as the -ce denotes direction from a place, and the preposition does the same. It is not so important to determine what this construction is, as to suggest what it is not. It is not an instance of an adverb governed by a preposition. If the two words be dealt with as logically separate, whence (or thence) must be a noun which place (or that place); just as from then till now = from that time to this. But if the two words be dealt with as one, the preposition from has lost its natural power, and become the element of an adverb. This latter view is the better; in which case the construction gives us an improper compound. CHAPTER XXVI. ON PREPOSITIONS. § 525. ALL prepositions govern an oblique case. If a word cease to do this, it ceases to be a preposition. In the first of the two following sentences the word up is a preposition, in the second an adverb. 1. I climbed up the tree. All prepositions in English precede the noun which they govern. I climbed up the tree, never I climbed the tree up. This is a matter not of government, but of collocation. It is the case in most languages; and, from the frequency of its occurrence, the term pre-position (or prefix) has originated. Nevertheless, it is by no means a philological necessity. In many languages the prepositions are post-positive, following their noun. case. No preposition, in the present English, governs a genitive This remark is made, because expressions like the part of the body pars corporis,—a piece of the bread = portio panis, make it appear as if the preposition of did so. The true expression is, that the preposition of, followed by an objective case, is equivalent, in many instances, to the genitive case of the classical languages. The writer, however, of a paper on English præterites and genitives, in the "Philological Museum" (vol. ii. p. 261) objects to the current doctrine concerning such constructions as, this is a picture of the king's. Instead of considering the sentence elliptic, and equivalent to this is a picture of the king's pictures, he confesses that he feels "some doubt whether this phrase is VOL. II. E E indeed to be regarded as elliptical, that is, whether the phrase in room of which it is said to stand, was ever actually in use. It has sometimes struck me," he continues, "that this may be a relict of the old practice of using the genitive after nouns as well as before them, only with the insertion of the preposition of. One of the passages quoted above from Arnold's Chronicle,' supplies an instance of a genitive so situated; and one cannot help thinking that it was the notion that of governed the genitive, that led the old translators of Virgil to call his poem The Booke of Eneidos, as it is termed by Phaer, and Gawin Douglas, and in the translation printed by Caxton. Hence it may be that we put the genitive after the noun in such cases, in order to express those relations which are most appropriately expressed by the genitive preceding it. A picture of the king's is something very different from the king's picture and so many other relations are designated by of with the objective noun, that if we wish to denote possession thereby, it leaves an ambiguity: so, for this purpose, when we want to subjoin the name of the possessor to the thing possest, we have recourse to the genitive, by prefixing which we are wont to express the same idea. At all events as, if we were askt whose castle Alnwick is, we should answer, The Duke of Northumberland's; so we should also say, What a grand castle that is of the Duke of Northumberland's! without at all taking into account whether he had other castles besides : and our expression would be equally appropriate, whether he had or not." : Again, Mr. Guest quotes, amongst other passages, the following: Suffice this hill of ours— They fought two houres of the nightes— It may also niean of Nightes may mean of Yet neither class of examples is conclusive. Ours does not necessarily mean of us. our hills, i. e. of the hills of our choice. the night's hours. In the expression, what a grand castle, &c., it is submitted to the reader that we do take into our account other castles, which the Duke of Northumberland may or may not have. The Booke of Eneidos is a mistaken Latinism. As |