also, to supply the place of another verb, in order to avoid the repetition of it:  as, ’He loves not plays, As thou dost, Antony.’  SHAKS.”—­New Gram., p. 96.  Greenleaf says, “To prevent the repetition of one or more verbs, in the same, or [a] following sentence, we frequently make use of do AND did; as, ’Jack learns the English language as fast as Henry does;’ that is, ‘as fast as Henry learns.’  ’I shall come if I can; but if I do not, please to excuse me;’ that is, ’if I come not.’”—­Gram.  Simplified, p. 27.  Sanborn says, “Do is also used instead of another verb, and not unfrequently instead of both the verb and its object; as, ‘he loves work as well as you do;’ that is, as well as you love work.”—­Analyt.  Gram., p. 112.  Now all these interpretations are wrong; the word do, dost, or does, being simply an auxiliary, after which the principal verb (with its object where it has one) is understood.  But the first example is bad English, and its explanation is still worse.  For, “As he attends, &c.,” means, “As he attends to your studies!” And what good sense is there in this?  The sentence ought to have been, “You do not attend to your studies, as he does to his.”  That is—­“as he does attend to his studies.”  This plainly shows that there is, in the text, no real substitution of does for attends.  So of all other examples exhibited in our grammars, under this head:  there is nothing to the purpose, in any of them; the common principle of ellipsis resolves them all.  Yet, strange to say, in the latest and most learned of this sort of text-books, we find the same sham example, fictitious and solecistical as it is, still blindly repeated, to show that “does” is not in its own place, as an auxiliary, but “supplies the place of another verb.”—­Fowler’s E. Gram., 8vo. 1850. p. 265.

NOTES TO RULE XVII.

NOTE I.—­When a verb has nominatives of different persons or numbers,[400] connected by or or nor, it must agree with the nearest, (unless an other be the principal term,) and must be understood to the rest, in the person and number required; as, “Neither you nor I am concerned.”—­W.  Allen.  “That neither they nor ye also die.”—­Numb., xviii, 3.

   “But neither god, nor shrine, nor mystic rite,
    Their city, nor her walls, his soul delight.”
        —­Rowe’s Lucan, B. x, l. 26.

NOTE II.—­But, since all nominatives that require different forms of the verb, virtually produce separate clauses or propositions, it is better to complete the concord whenever we conveniently can, by expressing the verb or its auxiliary in connexion with each of them; as, “Either thou art to blame, or I am.”—­Comly’s Gram., p. 78.  “Neither were their numbers, nor was their destination, known.”—­W.  Allen’s Gram., p. 134.  So in clauses connected by and:  as, “But declamation is idle, and murmurs fruitless.”—­Webster’s Essays, p. 82.  Say,—­“and murmurs are fruitless.”