[161] There is the same reason for doubling the t in cittess, as for doubling the d in goddess.  See Rule 3d for Spelling.  Yet Johnson, Todd, Webster, Bolles, Worcester, and others, spell it citess, with one t.

   “Cits and citesses raise a joyful strain.”—­DRYDEN:  Joh.  Dict.

[162] “But in the English we have no Genders, as has been seen in the foregoing Notes.  The same may be said of Cases.”—­Brightland’s Gram., Seventh Edition, Lond., 1746, p. 85.

[163] The Rev. David Blair so palpably contradicts himself in respect to this matter, that I know not which he favours most, two cases or three.  In his main text, he adopts no objective, but says:  “According to the sense or relation in which nouns are used, they are in the NOMINATIVE or [the] POSSESSIVE CASE, thus, nom. man; poss. man’s.”  To this he adds the following marginal note:  “In the English language, the distinction of the objective case is observable only in the pronouns. Cases being nothing but inflections, where inflections do not exist, there can be no grammatical distinction of cases, for the terms inflection and case are perfectly synonymous and convertible.  As the English noun has only one change of termination, so no other case is here adopted.  The objective case is noticed in the pronouns; and in parsing nouns it is easy to distinguish subjects from objects.  A noun which governs the verb may be described as in the nominative case, and one governed by the verb, or following a preposition, as in the objective case.”—­Blair’s Practical Gram., Seventh Edition, London, 1815, p. 11.  The terms inflection and case are not practically synonymous, and never were so in the grammars of the language from which they are derived.  The man who rejects the objective case of English nouns, because it has not a form peculiar to itself alone, must reject the accusative and the vocative of all neuter nouns in Latin, for the same reason; and the ablative, too, must in general be discarded on the same principle.  In some other parts of his book, Blair speaks of the objective case of nouns as familiarly as do other authors!

[164] This author says, “We choose to use the term subjective rather than nominative, because it is shorter, and because it conveys its meaning by its sound, whereas the latter word means, indeed, little or nothing in itself.”—­Text-Book, p. 88.  This appears to me a foolish innovation, too much in the spirit of Oliver B. Peirce, who also adopts it.  The person who knows not the meaning of the word nominative, will not be very likely to find out what is meant by subjective; especially as some learned grammarians, even such men as Dr. Crombie and Professor Bullions, often erroneously call the word which is governed by the verb its subject.  Besides, if we say subjective and objective, in stead of nominative and objective, we shall inevitably change the accent of both, and give them a pronunciation hitherto unknown to the words.—­G.  BROWN.