aginings, to invest it with any
artificial or extraneous importance.

2. I shall not follow the footsteps of _Neef_, who avers that, "Grammar and
incongruity are identical things," and who, under pretence of reaching the
same end by better means, scornfully rejects as nonsense every thing that
others have taught under that name; because I am convinced, that, of all
methods of teaching, none goes farther than his, to prove the reproachful
assertion true. Nor shall I imitate the declamation of _Cardell_; who, at
the commencement of his Essay, recommends the general study of language on
earth, from the consideration that, "The faculty of speech is the medium of
social bliss for superior intelligences in an eternal world;" [51] and who,
when he has exhausted censure in condemning the practical instruction of
others, thus lavishes praise, in both his grammars, upon that formless,
void, and incomprehensible theory of his own: "This application of words,"
says he, "in their endless use, by one plain rule, to all things which
nouns can name, instead of being the fit subject of blind cavil, _is the
most sublime theme presented to the intellect on earth. It is the practical
intercourse of the soul at once with its God, and with all parts of his
works!_"--_Cardell's Gram._, 12mo, p. 87; _Gram._, 18mo, p. 49.

3. Here, indeed, a wide prospect opens before us; but he who traces
science, and teaches what is practically useful, must check imagination,
and be content with sober truth.

"For apt the mind or fancy is to rove
Uncheck'd, and of her roving is no end."--MILTON.

Restricted within its proper limits, and viewed in its true light, the
practical science of grammar has an intrinsic dignity and merit sufficient
to throw back upon any man who dares openly assail it, the lasting stigma
of folly and self-conceit. It is true, the judgements of men are fallible,
and many opinions are liable to be reversed by better knowledge: but what
has been long established by the unanimous concurrence of the learned, it
can hardly be the part of a wise instructor now to dispute. The literary
reformer who, with the last named gentleman, imagines "that the persons to
whom the civilized world have looked up to for instruction in language were
all wrong alike in the main points," [52] intends no middle course of
reformation, and must needs be a man either of great merit, or of little
modesty.

4. The English language may now be regarded as t