ture, is briskly set forth at one of
its points in a queer wood-cut. The old man in his continental coat has
only gone as far as words, and the boy is just reaching out his arm for
the round apple near him. If another picture had been given, the old
man's coat would have been off and that boy would have been seen
slithering down the trunk of the tree; and in the third fable of the Fox
and the Swallow there is a phalanx-like arrangement of the tormenting
flies which appeals strongly to the imagination.

The second part of a Grammatical Institute was a grammar,--"a plain and
comprehensive grammar founded on the true principles and idioms of the
language." Webster had fallen upon Lowth's "Short Introduction to the
English Grammar," and upon the basis of that book drew up his grammar
for the use of American youth. But the principal result of his work
seems to have been the introduction of his own mind to the study. Six
years afterward he wrote: "The favorable reception of this prompted me
to extend my original plan, which led to a further investigation of the
principles of language. After all my reading and observation for the
course of ten years I have been able to unlearn a considerable part of
what I learnt in early life, and at thirty years of age can with
confidence affirm that our modern grammars have done much more hurt than
good. The authors have labored to prove what is obviously absurd,
namely, that our language is not made right; and in pursuance of this
idea have tried to make it over again, and persuade the English to speak
by Latin rules, or by arbitrary rules of their own. Hence they have
rejected many phrases of pure English, and substituted those which are
neither English nor sense. Writers and grammarians have attempted for
centuries to introduce a subjunctive mode into English, yet without
effect; the language requires none distinct from the indicative; and
therefore a subjunctive form stands in books only as a singularity, and
people in practice pay no regard to it. The people are right, and a
critical investigation of the subject warrants me in saying that common
practice, even among the unlearned, is generally defensible on the
principles of analogy and the structure of the language, and that very
few of the alterations recommended by Lowth and his followers can be
vindicated on any better principle than some Latin rule or his own
private opinion."

Accordingly, besides publishing some dissertations o