You may say, as many young people would, that all this order and method is very troublesome and only fit for dull people. Chesterfield.

It is by an analogous principle that Mrs. Barbauld writes our time, our labour, our ingenuity, is so much ready money which we are to lay out to the best advantage. Here, it is true, there are three things; but, as they must act in concert, it is quite logical to consider them as one agent, and to put the verb in the singular.

Nominatives connected by a comparative adverb govern the verb disjointly; the agreement taking place with the first nominative, the verb of the second being understood:

The strength of the mind, no less than that of the body, is the fruit of temperance.

In closing this chapter on agreement, let us remark that some of its rules are occasionally infringed by writers; but, though licences are tolerated in them, it is not in this respect that they are to be imitated.

OF THE PRONOUN

WHEN the pronoun of the third person is used, care should be taken that there be no doubt as to what object is meant. This caution is especially necessary when two or more objects have been introduced. As this is a point of grammar where writers are often found at fault, we shall give here a few instances of such oversights:

There are but few who know how to be idle and innocent; every diversion they take is at the expense of some one virtue or other. Addison.

By they, the author means, not the few he has mentioned, but most men, whom he has in view.

The scholar whose knowledge allows no man to think he instructs him. Rambler.

Here it is a puzzle to find out that him means the scholar, and he the other man. Such a sentence requires recasting altogether.

For more examples, see the relative pronouns.

He, they, are used indefinitely with a relative in the sense of whoever :

He that can only be useful on great occasions may die without exerting his abilities. Rambler.

It is by no means necessary that they who engage in husbandry should contract a coarseness of manner or a vulgarity of sentiment. Knox.

They is also used to mean people in general: they say.

It can be used to represent a proposition:

I heard the poor gentleman say his prayers last night, or I could not have believed it (that he said them).

Sterne.

The noble genders are sometimes assigned by fancy to objects without sex, or whose sex is usually disregarded:

pleasant the sun,

When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams.

Milton.

The moon herself is lost in heaven. Macpherson.

Now had night measured, with her shadowy cone,
Half way up hill, this vast sublunar vault.

This desert soil

Milton.

Wants not her hidden lustre, gems and gold. Milton.

How can America trust you, with the bayonet at her breast?

how can she suppose that you mean less than bondage or death. Chatham.

His whispering stream.

There Ilissus rolls

Milton.

A brute arrives at a point of perfection that he can never pass in a few years he has all the endowments he is capable of; and, were he to live ten thousand more, would be the same thing he is at present. Spectator.

Go to the ant thou sluggard, consider her ways. Old Testa

ment.

Who provideth for the raven his food? Old Testament.

And like an eagle o'er his aiery towers.

Shakspeare.

In the morning of life, when the soul first makes her entrance into the world, all things look fresh and gay. Guardian.

But, when fancy thus turns the genders to account, she should be consistent, and not use in a sentence a noble and a mean gender alternately, while speaking of the same object:

Was a human soul thus at a stand in her accomplishments, were her faculties to be full blown and incapable of further enlargements, I could imagine it might fall away insensibly, and drop at once into a state of annihilation. But can we believe a thinking being, that is in a perpetual progress of improvements, and travelling on from perfection to perfection, after having just looked abroad into the works of its creator, and made a few discoveries of his infinite goodness, wisdom, and power, must perish at her first setting out, and in the very beginning of her enquiries. Spectator.

We also make of the feminine, as a term of endearment, a peculiar use which constitutes an anglicism : the sailor says she of his ship, and, being a nautical nation, we have adopted his figure; some husbandmen speak in the same way of their plough, and so does the cricketer of his ball.

But fancy does not limit here her sport with the genders. Disregarding the sex of an infant or a child, we sometimes use the neuter pronoun :

while it (the babe) was smiling in my face.

Shakspeare.

It (the child of a poor woman) has come to be a woman before it was a child. Charles Lamb.

The second person plural is commonly used by civility instead of the second singular, which, however, simplicity preserves in the talk of the homely in some districts, and in the language of poetry and prayer.

We is also used instead of I by writers; whether to swell themselves into a plurality, or to avoid the impertinence of I, when speaking to the world, we cannot say; perhaps for both reasons.

The accusative can only be governed by an active verb or by a preposition: I see him, her; he sees me; they came to us; we went to them.

I give heaven thanks I was not like to thee. Shakspeare.