[Sidenote:  With few or little.]

196.  The adjectives few and little have the negative meaning of not much, not many, without the article; but when a is put before them, they have the positive meaning of some.  Notice the contrast in the following sentences:—­

     Of the country beyond the Mississippi little more was known
     than of the heart of Africa.—­MCMASTER

To both must I of necessity cling, supported always by the hope that when a little time, a few years, shall have tried me more fully in their esteem, I may be able to bring them together.—­Keats’s Letters.

     Few of the great characters of history have been so differently
     judged as Alexander.—­SMITH, History of Greece

[Sidenote:  With adjectives, changed to nouns.]

197.  When the is used before adjectives with no substantive following (Sec. 181 and note), these words are adjectives used as nouns, or pure nouns; but when an or a precedes such words, they are always nouns, having the regular use and inflections of nouns; for example,—­

     Such are the words a brave should use.—­COOPER.

     In the great society of wits, John Gay deserves to be a
     favorite, and to have a good place.—­THACKERAY

     Only the name of one obscure epigrammatist has been embalmed for
     use in the verses of a rival.—­PEARSON.

Exercise.—­Bring up sentences with five uses of the indefinite article.

HOW TO PARSE ARTICLES.

198.  In parsing the article, tell—­

(1) What word it limits.

(2) Which of the above uses it has.

Exercise.

Parse the articles in the following:—­

     1.  It is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or bottling
     a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the whole
     atmosphere are ours.

     2.  Aristeides landed on the island with a body of Hoplites,
     defeated the Persians and cut them to pieces to a man.

     3.  The wild fire that lit the eye of an Achilles can gleam no
     more.

     4.  But it is not merely the neighborhood of the cathedral that is
     mediaeval; the whole city is of a piece.

     5.  To the herdsman among his cattle in remote woods, to the
     craftsman in his rude workshop, to the great and to the little, a
     new light has arisen.

     6.  When the manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid become
     intelligent, and the wavering, determined.

     7.  The student is to read history actively, and not passively.

     8.  This resistance was the labor of his life.

     9.  There was always a hope, even in the darkest hour.