rmance is, so far as the end could be reached, the
fulfillment of a design, formed about twenty-seven years ago, of one day
presenting to the world, if I might, something like a complete grammar of
the English language;--not a mere work of criticism, nor yet a work too
tame, indecisive, and uncritical; for, in books of either of these sorts,
our libraries already abound;--not a mere philosophical investigation of
what is general or universal in grammar, nor yet a minute detail of what
forms only a part of our own philology; for either of these plans falls
very far short of such a purpose;--not a mere grammatical compend,
abstract, or compilation, sorting with other works already before the
public; for, in the production of school grammars, the author had early
performed his part; and, of small treatises on this subject, we have long
had a superabundance rather than a lack.

After about fifteen years devoted chiefly to grammatical studies and
exercises, during most of which time I had been alternately instructing
youth in four different languages, thinking it practicable to effect some
improvement upon the manuals which explain our own, I prepared and
published, for the use of schools, a duodecimo volume of about three
hundred pages; which, upon the presumption that its principles were
conformable to the best usage, and well established thereby, I entitled,
"The Institutes of English Grammar." Of this work, which, it is believed,
has been gradually gaining in reputation and demand ever since its first
publication, there is no occasion to say more here, than that it was the
result of diligent study, and that it is, essentially, the nucleus, or the
groundwork, of the present volume.

With much additional labour, the principles contained in the Institutes of
English Grammar, have here been not only reaffirmed and rewritten, but
occasionally improved in expression, or amplified in their details. New
topics, new definitions, new rules, have also been added; and all parts of
the subject have been illustrated by a multiplicity of new examples and
exercises, which it has required a long time to amass and arrange. To the
main doctrines, also, are here subjoined many new observations and
criticisms, which are the results of no inconsiderable reading and
reflection.

Regarding it as my business and calling, to work out the above-mentioned
purpose as circumstances might permit, I have laid no claim to genius, none
to infallibility