s singular, might have been plural. But
the following couplet evidently requires a plural verb, and is therefore
correct as the poet wrote it; both because the latter noun is plural, and
because the conjunction _and_ is understood between the two. Yet a late
grammarian, perceiving no difference between the joys of sense and the
pleasure of reason, not only changes "_lie_" to "_lies_," but uses the
perversion for a _proof text_, under a rule which refers the verb to the
first noun only, and requires it to be singular. See _Oliver B. Peirce's
Gram._, p. 250.

"Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense.
_Lie_ in three words--health, peace, and competence."
--_Pope's Ess._, Ep. iv, l. 80.

OBS. 5.--When the speaker changes his nominative to take a stronger
expression, he commonly uses no conjunction; but, putting the verb in
agreement with the noun which is next to it, he leaves the other to an
implied concord with its proper form of the same verb: as, "The man whose
_designs_, whose _whole conduct, tends_ to reduce me to subjection, that
man is at war with me, though not a blow has yet been given, nor a sword
drawn."--_Blair's Rhet._, p. 265. "All _Greece_, all the barbarian _world,
is_ too narrow for this man's ambition."--_Ibid._ "This _self-command_,
this _exertion_ of reason in the midst of passion, _has_ a wonderful effect
both to please and to persuade."--_Ib._, p. 260. "In the mutual influence
of body and soul, there _is a wisdom_, a _wonderful wisdom_, which we
cannot fathom."--_Murray's Gram._, Vol. i, p. 150. If the principle here
stated is just, Murray has written the following models erroneously:
"Virtue, honour, nay, even self-interest, _conspire_ to recommend the
measure."--_Ib._, p. 150. "Patriotism, morality, every public and private
consideration, _demand_ our submission to just and lawful
government."--_Ibid._ In this latter instance, I should prefer the singular
verb _demands_; and in the former, the expression ought to be otherwise
altered, thus. "Virtue, honour, _and_ interest, all _conspire_ to recommend
the measure." Or thus: "Virtue, honour--nay, even self-interest,
_recommends_ the measure." On this principle, too, Thomson was right, and
this critic wrong, in the example cited at the close of the first
observation above. This construction is again recurred to by Murray, in the
second chapter of his Exercises; where he explicitly condemns the following
sentence because the verb