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PART I.

ENGLISH GRAMMAR.

INTRODUCTION.

WHEN a general is about to lead his army to battle, the first thing that is necessary is that he shall have his men in good order. However brave and loyal they may be, there will be little hope of victory if they form a confused and undisciplined mob, in which every man does that which seems best to himself, but in which there is no unity of action, no recognition of authority, no prescribed work given to each man to do. Order is the first element of success. A good general will arrange his men carefully into regiments and companies, and assign special duties to each. He will carefully train and exercise them, so that they shall not only know their work, but also shall be able to perform it. He will make himself thoroughly acquainted with the special strength of individual men, and then he will show his skill by endeavouring to assign to each the work which he is most fitted to perform.

Every man is a general with regard to the words of his language. He has become acquainted with them

B

one by one, as from his earliest childhood they have offered to him their services; and although he uses them and finds that they do his bidding, he at last begins to see that they would be much more serviceable to him if he arranged them into classes, ascertained the exact functions of each, and defined the work which each should perform. Our words have active and important services to do for us in life. They have to convey to others our thoughts and wishes; to their keeping we commit the most valuable truths of science; we employ them to fight many of our battles; they must be the guardians to whom we entrust our history, our literature, our laws. We find them willing servants, for they wear the various uniforms we choose to give them, and sometimes change their dress at our bidding. But they need to be looked after most jealously, lest perhaps some useful ones desert our service entirely, some take upon themselves to meddle with business that does not belong to them, and others leave honourable posts in which they were first placed, and degrade themselves to do more menial work.

This is the work which the study of grammar proposes to us. It enables us to look on our words as good generals look on the soldiers of their army.

In pursuing this study the greater part of our work will consist in classifying carefully and logically, in constructing accurate definitions of the terms we propose to employ, so that there may be no ambiguity or misunderstanding in our use of them, and in prescribing the exact functions of each class of words which we obtain.

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