t
accordingly."--_Same_. These quotations form Murray's fifth rule of syntax,
as it stands in his early editions.[196] In some of his revisings, the
author erased the word _person_ from the former sentence, and changed
_with_ to _as_ in the latter. But other pronouns than relatives, agree with
their nouns in person; so that his first alteration was not for the better,
though Ingersoll, Kirkham, Alger, Bacon, J. Greenleaf, and some others,
have been very careful to follow him in it. And why did he never discern,
that the above-named principles of his etymology are both of them
contradicted by this rule of his syntax, and one of them by his rule as it
now stands? It is manifest, that no two words can possibly _agree_ in any
property which belongs not to both. Else what _is_ agreement? Nay, no two
things in nature, can in any wise agree, accord, or be alike, but by having
some quality or accident in common. How strange a contradiction then is
this! And what a compliment to learning, that it is still found in
well-nigh all our grammars!

OBS. 4.--If there were truth in what Murray and others affirm, that "Gender
has respect only to the third person singular of the pronouns, _he, she,
it_," [197] no two words could ever agree in gender; because there can be
no such agreement between any two of the words here mentioned, and the
assertion is, that gender has respect to no others. But, admitting that
neither the author nor the numerous copiers of this false sentence ever
meant to deny that gender has respect to _nouns_, they do deny that it has
respect to any other _pronouns_ than these; whereas I affirm that it ought
to be recognized as a property of _all_ pronouns, as well as of all nouns.
Not that the gender of either is in all instances invariably fixed by the
_forms_ of the particular words; but there is in general, if not in every
possible case, some principle of grammar, on which the gender of any noun
or pronoun in a sentence may be readily ascertained. Is it not plain, that
if we know who speaks or writes, who hears or is addressed, we know also
the gender of the pronouns which are applied to these persons? The poet of
The Task looked upon his mother's picture, and expressed his tender
recollections of a deceased parent by way of _address_; and will any one
pretend, that the pronouns which he applied to himself and to her, are
either of the same gender, or of no gender? If we take neither of these
assumptions, must we n