Avidien_, or his _wife_, (no matter which,) _sell their_ presented
partridges and fruits."--_Pope_, Sat. ii, l. 50. "Beginning with Latin _or_
Greek hexameter, _which are_ the same."--_Kames, El. of Crit._, i, 79.

"Did ever _Proteus, Merlin_, any _witch_,
Transform _themselves_ so strangely as the rich?"
--_Pope_, Ep. i, l. 152.

OBS. 4.--From the observations and examples above, it may be perceived,
that whenever there is a difference of person, number, or gender, in
antecedents connected disjunctively, there is an inherent difficulty
respecting the form of the pronoun personal. The best mode of meeting this
inconvenience, or of avoiding it by a change of the phraseology, may be
different on different occasions. The disjunctive connexion of explicit
pronouns is the most correct, but it savours too much of legal precision
and wordiness to be always eligible. Commonly an ingenious mind may invent
some better expression, and yet avoid any syntactical anomaly. In Latin,
when nouns are connected by the conjunctions which correspond to _or_ or
_nor_, the pronoun or verb is so often made plural, that no such principle
as that of the foregoing Rule, or of Rule 17th, is taught by the common
grammars of that language. How such usage can be logically right, however,
it is difficult to imagine. Lowth, Murray, Webster, and most other English
grammarians, teach, that, "The conjunction disjunctive has an effect
contrary to that of the copulative; and, as the verb, noun, or pronoun, is
referred to the preceding terms taken separately, it must be in the
singular number."--_Lowth's Gram._, p. 75; _L. Murray's_, 151;
_Churchill's_, 142; _W. Allen's_, 133; _Lennie's_, 83; _and many others_.
If there is any allowable exception to this principle, it is for the
adoption of the plural when the concord cannot be made by any one pronoun
singular; as, "If I value my friend's _wife or son_ upon account of _their_
connexion with him."--_Kames, El. of Crit._, i, 73. "Do not drink wine nor
strong drink, _thou nor thy sons_ with thee, when _ye_ go into the
tabernacle of the congregation."--_Levit._, x, 8. These examples, though
they do not accord with the preceding rule, seem not to be susceptible of
any change for the better. There are also some other modes of expression,
in which nouns that are connected disjunctively, may afterwards be
represented together; as "_Foppery_ is a sort of folly much more contagious
THAN _pedantry_; but