[15] I am sorry to observe that the gentleman, Phrenologist, as he professes to be, has so little reverence in his crown.  He could not read the foregoing suggestion without scoffing at it.  Biblical truth is not powerless, though the scornful may refuse its correction.—­G.  B. 1838.

[16] Every schoolboy is familiar with the following lines, and rightly understands the words “evil” and “good” to be nouns, and not adjectives.

   “The evil that men do, lives after them;
    The good is oft interred with their bones.”—­SHAKSPEARE.

    Julius Caesar, Act 3:  Antony’s Funeral Oration over Caesar’s Body.

Kirkham has vehemently censured me for omitting the brackets in which he encloses the words that be supposes to be understood in this couplet.  But he forgets two important circumstances:  First, that I was quoting, not the bard, but the grammatist; Second, that a writer uses brackets, to distinguish his own amendments of what he quotes, and not those of an other man.  Hence the marks which he has used, would have been improper for me.  Their insertion does not make his reading of the passage good English, and, consequently, does not avert the point of my criticism.

The foregoing Review of Kirkham’s Grammar, was published as an extract from my manuscript, by the editors of the Knickerbocker, in their number for June, 1837.  Four months afterwards, with friendships changed, they gave, him the “justice” of appearing in their pages, in a long and virulent article against me and my works, representing me, “with emphatic force,” as “a knave, a liar, and a pedant.”  The enmity of that effusion I forgave; because I bore him no personal ill-will, and was not selfish enough to quarrel for my own sake.  Its imbecility clearly proved, that in this critique there is nothing with which he could justly find fault.  Perceiving that no point of this argument could be broken, he changed the ground, and satisfied himself with despising, upbraiding, and vilifying the writer.  Of what use this was, others may judge.

This extraordinary grammarian survived the publication of my criticism about ten years, and, it is charitably hoped, died happily; while I have had, for a period somewhat longer, all the benefits which his earnest “castigation” was fit to confer.  It is not perceived, that what was written before these events, should now be altered or suppressed by reason of them.  With his pretended “defence,” I shall now concern myself no further than simply to deny one remarkable assertion contained in it; which is this—­that I, Goold Brown, “at the funeral of Aaron Ely,” in 1830, “praised, and highly praised, this self-same Grammar, and declared it to be ‘A GOOD WORK!’”—­KIRKHAM, in the Knickerbocker, Oct., 1837, p. 362.  I treated him always courteously, and, on this solemn occasion, walked with him without disputing on grammar; but, if this statement of his has any reasonable foundation, I know not what it is.—­G.  B. in 1850.