ace some sort of plurality: thus our ideas
of _all bodies_ and _classes of things_ are said to be complex or compound.
_Simple ideas_ are those in which the mind discovers no parts or plurality:
such are the ideas of _heat, cold, blueness, redness, pleasure, pain,
volition_, &c. But some writers have contended, that the _composition of
ideas_ is a fiction; and that all the complexity, in any case, consists
only in the use of a _general term_ in lieu of many particular ones. Locke
is on one side of this debate, Horne Tooke, on the other.

[66] Dilworth appears to have had a true _idea_ of the thing, but he does
not express it as a definition; "Q. Is _an_ Unit of one, a Number? A. _An_
Unit is a number, _because it may properly answer the question how
many!_"--_Schoolmaster's Assistant_, p. 2. A number in arithmetic, and a
number in grammar, are totally different things. The _plural_ number, as
_men_ or _horses_, does not tell _how many_; nor does the word _singular_
mean _one_, as the author of a recent grammar says it does. The _plural_
number is _one_ number, but it is not _the singular_. "The _Productive
System_" teaches thus: "What does the word _singular_ mean? It means
_one_."--Smith's New Gram., p. 7.

[67] It is truly astonishing that so great a majority of our grammarians
could have been so blindly misled, as they have been, in this matter; and
the more so, because a very good definition of a Letter was both published
and republished, about the time at which Lowth's first appeared: viz.,
"What is a letter? A Letter is the Sign, Mark, or Character of a simple or
uncompounded Sound. Are Letters Sounds? No. Letters are only the Signs or
Symbols of Sounds, not the Sounds themselves."--_The British Grammar_, p.
3. See the very same words on the second page of _Buchanan's "English
Syntax_," a work which was published as early as 1767.

[68] In Murray's octavo Grammar, this word is _the_ in the first chapter,
and _their_ in the second; in the duodecimo, it is _their_ in both places.

[69] "The _definitions_ and the _rules_ throughout the Grammar, are
expressed with neatness and perspicuity. They are as short and
comprehensive as the nature of the subject would admit: and they are well
adapted both to the understanding and the memory of young persons."--_Life
of L. Murray_, p. 245. "It may truly be said that the language in every
part of the work, is simple, correct, and perspicuous."--_Ib._, p. 246.

[70] For this d