“Silence, my muse! make not these jewels cheap,
    Exposing to the world too large an heap.”—­Waller, p. 113.

CHAPTER III.—­NOUNS.

A Noun is the name of any person, place, or thing, that can be known or mentioned:  as, George, York, man, apple, truth.

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.—­All words and signs taken technically, (that is, independently of their meaning, and merely as things spoken of,) are nouns; or, rather, are things read and construed as nouns; because, in such a use, they temporarily assume the syntax of nouns:  as, “For this reason, I prefer contemporary to cotemporary.”—­Campbell’s Rhet., p. 175; Murray’s Gram., i, p. 368.  “I and J were formerly expressed by the same character; as were U and V.”—­W.  Allen’s Gram., p. 3. “Us is a personal pronoun.”—­Murray. “Th has two sounds.”—­Ib. “The ’s cannot be a contraction of his, because ’s is put to female [feminine] nouns; as, Woman’s beauty, the Virgin’s delicacy.”—­Dr. Johnson’s Gram. “Their and theirs are the possessives likewise of they, when they is the plural of it.”—­Ib. “Let B be a now or instant.”—­Harris’s Hermes, p. 103.  “In such case, I say that the instant B is the end of the time A B.”—­Ib., 103. “A is sometimes a noun:  as, a great A.”—­Todd’s Johnson.  “Formerly sp was cast in a piece, as st’s are now.”—­Hist. of Printing, 1770.  “I write to others than he will perhaps include in his we.”—­Barclay’s Works, Vol. iii, p. 455.  “Here are no fewer than eight ands in one sentence.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 112; Murray’s Gram., Vol. i, p. 319.  “Within this wooden O;” i. e., circle.—­Shak.

OBS. 2.—­In parsing, the learner must observe the sense and use of each word, and class it accordingly.  Many words commonly belonging to other parts of speech are occasionally used as nouns; and, since it is the manner of its use, that determines any word to be of one part of speech rather than of an other, whatever word is used directly as a noun, must of course be parsed as such.

1.  Adjectives made nouns:  “The Ancient of days did sit.”—­Bible.  “Of the ancients.”—­Swift.  “For such impertinents.”—­Steele.  “He is an ignorant in it.”—­Id. “In the luxuriance of an unbounded picturesque.”—­Jamieson.  “A source of the sublime;” i. e., of sublimity.—­Burke.  “The vast immense of space:”  i. e., immensity.—­Murray.  “There is none his like.”—­Job, xli, 33.  “A little more than a little, is by much too much.”—­Shakspeare.  “And gladly make much of that entertainment.”—­Sidney.  “A covetous man makes the most of what he has.”—­L’Estrange.  “It has done enough for me.”—­Pope.  “He had enough to do.”—­Bacon.