marian should
fail to detect, and together such a knot of blunders, as ought to be
wondered at, even in the Compiler's humblest copyist. In the following
text, there is neither preposition nor ellipsis:

"Above, below, without, within, around,
Confus'd, unnumber'd multitudes are found."--_Pope, on Fame_.

OBS. 6.--It comports with the name and design of this work, which is a
broad synopsis of grammatical criticism, to notice here one other
absurdity; namely, the doctrine of "_sentential nouns_." There is something
of this in several late grammars: as, "The prepositions, after, before,
ere, since, till, and until, frequently govern _sentential_ nouns; and
after, before, since, notwithstanding, and some others, frequently govern a
noun or pronoun _understood_. A preposition governing a sentential noun,
is, by Murray and others, considered a _conjunction_; and a preposition
governing a noun understood, an _adverb_."--J. L. PARKHURST: _in Sanborn's
Gram._, p. 123. "Example: 'He will, _before he dies_, sway the sceptre.'
_He dies_ is a sentential noun, third person, singular number; and is
governed by _before_; _before he dies_, being equivalent in meaning to
_before his death_."--_Sanborn, Gram._, p. 176. "'_After they had waited_ a
long time, they departed.' After _waiting_."--_Ib._ This last solution
supposes the phrase, "_waiting a long time_," or at least the participle
_waiting_, to be a _noun_; for, upon the author's principle of equivalence,
"_they had waited_," will otherwise be a "_sentential_" _participle_--a
thing however as good and as classical as the other!

OBS. 7.--If a preposition can ever be justly said to take a sentence for
its object, it is chiefly in certain ancient expressions, like the
following: "For _in that_ he died, he died unto sin once; but _in that_ he
liveth, he liveth unto God."--_Rom._, vi, 10. "My Spirit shall not always
strive with man, _for that_ he also is flesh."--_Gen._, vi, 3. "For, _after
that_, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased
God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe."--_1 Cor._,
i, 21. Here, _in, for_, and _after_, are all followed by the word _that_;
which Tooke, Webster, Frazee, and some others, will have to be "a
substitute," or "pronoun," representing the sentence which follows it, and
governed by the preposition. But _that_, in this sense, is usually, and
perhaps more properly, reckoned a conjunction. And if we ta