a fruitful source of error in respect to English syntax. The
achievement, however, is not altogether impossible, if a man of competent
learning will devote to it a sufficient degree of labour. But the mere
revising or altering of some one grammar in each language, can scarcely
amount to any thing more than a pretence of improvement. Waiving the
pettiness of compiling upon the basis of an other man's compilation, the
foundation of a good grammar for any language, must be both deeper and
broader than all the works which Professor Bullions has selected to build
upon: for the Greek, than Dr. Moor's "_Elementa Linguae, Graecae_;" for the
Latin, than Dr. Adam's "_Rudiments of Latin and English Grammar_;" for the
English, than Murray's "_English Grammar_," or Lennie's "_Principles of
English Grammar_;" which last work, in fact, the learned gentleman
preferred, though he pretends to have mended the code of Murray. But,
certainly, Lennie never supposed himself a copyist of Murray; nor was he
to much extent an imitator of him, either in method or in style.

OBS. 14.--We have, then, in this new American form of "_The Principles of
English Grammar_," Lennie's very compact little book, altered, enlarged,
and bearing on its title-page (which is otherwise in the very words of
Lennie) an other author's name, and, in its early editions, the false and
self-accusing inscription, "(ON THE PLAN OF MURRAY'S GRAMMAR.)" And this
work, claiming to have been approved "by the most competent judges," now
challenges the praise not only of being "better adapted to the use of
academies and schools _than any yet published_" but of so presenting "_the
rules and principles of general grammar_, as that they may apply to, and be
in perfect harmony with, _the grammars of the dead languages_"--
_Recommendations_, p. iv. These are admirable professions for a critical
author to publish; especially, as every rule or principle of General
Grammar, condemning as it must whoever violates it, cannot but "be in
_perfect harmony_ with" every thing that is true. In this model for all
grammars, Latin, Greek, &c., the doctrines of punctuation, of
abbreviations, and of capital letters, and also sections on the rhetorical
divisions of a discourse, the different kinds of composition, the different
kinds of prose composition, and the different kinds of poetry, are made
_parts of the Syntax_; while his hints for correct and elegant writing, and
his section on the composition