let _others_ excel you."--_Lacon_. All adjectives thus
taken substantively, become _nouns_, and ought to be parsed as such, unless
this word _others_ is to be made an exception, and called a "_pronoun_."

"Th' event is fear'd; should we again provoke
Our _stronger_, some worse way his wrath may find."
--_Milton, P. L._, B. ii, l. 82.

OBS. 3.--Murray says, "Perhaps the words _former_ and _latter_ may be
properly ranked amongst the demonstrative pronouns, _especially in many of
their applications_. The following sentence may serve as an example: 'It
was happy for the state, that Fabius continued in the command with
Minutius: the _former's_ phlegm was a check upon the _latter's_
vivacity.'"--_Gram._, 8vo, p. 57. This I take to be bad English. _Former_
and _latter_ ought to be adjectives only; except when _former_ means
_maker_. And, if not so, it is too easy a way of multiplying pronouns, to
manufacture two out of one single anonymous sentence. If it were said, "The
deliberation of _the former_ was a seasonable chock upon the fiery temper
of _the latter_" the words _former_ and _latter_ would seem to me not to be
pronouns, but adjectives, each relating to the noun _commander_ understood
after it.

OBS. 4.--The sense and relation of words in sentences, as well as their
particular form and meaning, must be considered in parsing, before the
learner can say, with certainty, to what class they belong. Other parts of
speech, and especially nouns and participles, by a change in their
construction, may become adjectives. Thus, to denote the material of which
a thing is formed, we very commonly make the name of the substantive an
adjective to that of the thing: as, A _gold chain_, a _silver spoon_, a
_glass pitcher_, a _tin basin_, an _oak plank_, a _basswood slab_, a
_whalebone rod_. This construction is in general correct, whenever the
former word may be predicated of the latter; as, "The chain is gold."--"The
spoon is silver." But we do not write _gold beater_ for _goldbeater_, or
_silver smith_ for _silversmith_; because the beater is not gold, nor is
the smith silver. This principle, however, is not universally observed; for
we write _snowball, whitewash_, and many similar compounds, though the ball
is snow and the wash is white; and _linseed oil_, or _Newark cider_, may be
a good phrase, though the former word cannot well be predicated of the
latter. So in the following examples: "Let these _conversation_ to