ive or the ablative case; but the Latin word for
_partake_ is _participo_, and not "_participio_."--G. BROWN.

[11] This sentence is manifestly bad English: either the singular verb
"_appears_" should be made plural, or the plural noun "_investigations_"
should be made singular.--G. BROWN.

[12] "What! a book have _no merit_, and yet be called for at the rate of
_sixty thousand copies a year_! What a slander is this upon the public
taste! What an insult to the understanding and discrimination of the good
people of these United States! According to this reasoning, all the
inhabitants of our land must be fools, except one man, and that man is
GOOLD BROWN!"--KIRKHAM, _in the Knickerbocker_, Oct. 1837, p. 361.

Well may the honest critic expect to be called a slanderer of "the public
taste," and an insulter of the nation's "understanding," if both the merit
of this vaunted book and the wisdom of its purchasers are to be measured
and proved by the author's profits, or the publisher's account of sales!
But, possibly, between the intrinsic merit and the market value of some
books there may be a difference. Lord Byron, it is said, received from
Murray his bookseller, nearly ten dollars a line for the Fourth Canto of
Childe Harold, or about as much for every two lines as Milton obtained for
the whole of Paradise Lost. Is this the true ratio of the merit of these
authors, or of the wisdom of the different ages in which they lived?

[13] Kirkham's real opinion of Murray cannot be known from this passage
only. How able is that writer who is chargeable with the _greatest want_ of
taste and discernment? "In regard to the application of the final pause in
reading blank verse, _nothing can betray a greater want of rhetorical taste
and philosophical acumen_, than the directions of Mr. Murray."--_Kirkham's
Elocution_, p. 145. Kirkham is indeed no judge either of the merits, or of
the demerits, of Murray's writings; nor is it probable that this criticism
originated with himself. But, since it appears in his name, let him have
the credit of it, and of representing the compiler whom he calls "_that
able writer_" and "_that eminent philologist_," as an untasteful dunce, and
a teacher of _nonsense_: "To say that, unless we 'make every _line_
sensible to the ear,' we mar the melody, and suppress the numbers of the
poet, is _all nonsense_."--_Ibid._ See Murray's Grammar, on "Poetical
Pauses;" 8vo, p. 260; 12mo, 210.

[14] "Now, in these inst