om a _new compilation_, besides a careful selection of the
most useful matter, and some degree of improvement in the mode of adapting
it to the understanding, and the gradual progress of learners."--_Introd.
to L. Murray's Gram._; 8vo, p. 5; 12mo, p. 3. As if, to be master of his
own art--to think and write well himself, were no part of a grammarian's
business! And again, as if the jewels of scholarship, thus carefully
selected, could need a burnish or a foil from other hands than those which
fashioned them!

8. Murray's general idea of the doctrines of grammar was judicious. He
attempted no broad innovation on what had been previously taught; for he
had neither the vanity to suppose he could give currency to novelties, nor
the folly to waste his time in labours utterly nugatory. By turning his own
abilities to their best account, he seems to have done much to promote and
facilitate the study of our language. But his notion of grammatical
authorship, cuts off from it all pretence to literary merit, for the sake
of doing good; and, taken in any other sense than as a forced apology for
his own assumptions, his language on this point is highly injurious towards
the very authors whom he copied. To justify himself, he ungenerously places
them, in common with others, under a degrading necessity which no able
grammarian ever felt, and which every man of genius or learning must
repudiate. If none of our older grammars disprove his assertion, it is time
to have a new one that will; for, to expect the perfection of grammar from
him who cannot treat the subject in a style at once original and pure, is
absurd. He says, "The greater part of an English grammar _must necessarily
be a compilation _;" and adds, with reference to his own, "originality
belongs to but a small portion of it. This I have acknowledged; and I trust
_this acknowledgement_ will protect me from all attacks, grounded on any
supposed unjust and irregular assumptions." This quotation is from a letter
addressed by Murray to his American publishers, in 1811, after they had
informed him of certain complaints respecting the liberties which he had
taken in his work. See "_The Friend_," Vol. iii, p. 34.

9. The acknowledgement on which he thus relies, does not appear to have
been made, till his grammar had gone through several editions. It was,
however, at some period, introduced into his short preface, or
"Introduction," in the following well-meant but singularly sophisti