bjective. Examples: "The dread of censure ought not to prevail _over
what is_ proper."--_Kames, El. of Crit._, Vol. i, p. 252. "The public ear
will not easily _bear what is_ slovenly and incorrect."--_Blair's Rhet._,
p. 12. "He who buys _what_ he does not need, will often need _what_ he
cannot buy."--_Student's Manual_, p. 290. "_What_ is just, is honest; and
again, _what_ is honest, is just."--_Cicero_. "He that hath an ear, let him
hear _what_ the Spirit saith unto the churches."--_Rev._, ii, 7, 11, 17,
29; iii, 6, 13, 22.

OBS. 9.--This pronoun, _what_, is usually of the singular number, though
sometimes plural: as, "I must turn to the faults, or _what appear_ such to
me."--_Byron_. "All distortions and mimicries, as such, are _what raise_
aversion instead of pleasure."--_Steele_. "Purified indeed from _what
appear_ to be its real defects."--_Wordsworth's Pref._, p. xix. "Every
single impression, made even by the same object, is distinguishable from
_what_ have gone before, and from _what_ succeed."--_Kames, El. of Crit._,
Vol. i, p. 107. "Sensible people express no thoughts but _what_ make some
figure."--_Ib._, Vol. i, p. 399. The following example, which makes _what_
both singular and plural at once, is a manifest solecism: "_What has_ since
followed _are_ but natural consequences."--J. C. CALHOUN, _Speech in U. S.
Senate_, March 4, 1850. Here _has_ should be _have_; or else the form
should be this: "What has since followed, _is_ but _a_ natural
_consequence_."

OBS. 10.--The common import of this remarkable pronoun, _what_, is, as we
see in the foregoing examples, twofold; but some instances occur, in which
it does not appear to have this double construction, but to be simply
declaratory; and many, in which the word is simply an adjective: as,
"_What_ a strange run of luck I have had to-day!"--_Columbian Orator_, p.
293. Here _what_ is a mere adjective; and, in the following examples, a
pronoun indefinite:--

"I tell thee _what_, corporal, I could tear her."--_Shak._

"He knows _what's what_, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly."--_Hudibras_.

OBS. 11.--_What_ is sometimes used both as an adjective and as a relative
at the same time, and is placed before the noun which it represents; being
equivalent to the adjective _any_ or _all_, and the simple relative _who,
which_[190] or _that_: as, "_What_ money we had, was taken away." That is,
"_All the_ money _that_ we had, was taken away." "_What