of the thing possessed, is given, and in obvious connexion with it.  And further, the matter affirmed is ownership, requiring different cases; and not the identity of something under different names, which must be put in the same case.  In the fourth place, to mistake regimen for possession, and thence speak of one word “as possessing” an other, a mode of expression occurring twice in the foregoing note, is not only unscholarlike, but positively absurd.  But, possibly, the author may have meant by it, to ridicule the choice phraseology of the following Rule:  “A noun or pronoun in the possessive case, is governed by the noun it possesses.”—­Kirkham’s Gram., p. 181; Frazee’s, 1844, p. 25.

[211] In respect to the numbers, the following text is an uncouth exception:  “Pass ye away, thou inhabitant of Saphir.”—­Micah, i, 11.  The singular and the plural are here strangely confounded.  Perhaps the reading should be, “Pass thou away, O inhabitant of Saphir.”  Nor is the Bible free from abrupt transitions from one number to the other, or from one person to an other, which are neither agreeable nor strictly grammatical; as, “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which [who] are spiritual, restore such an [a] one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.”—­Gal., vi, 1. “Ye that put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near; that lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches,” &c—­Amos, vi, 9.

[212] “The solemn style is used, chiefly, in the Bible and in prayer.  The Society of Friends retain it in common parlance.  It consists in using thou in the singular number, and ye in the plural, instead of using you in both numbers as in the familiar style. * * * The third person singular [of verbs] ends with th or eth, which affects only the present indicative, and hath of the perfect.  The second person, singular, ends with st, est, or t only.”—­Sanborn’s Gram., p. 58.  “In [the] solemn and poetic styles, mine, thine, and thy, are used; and THIS is the style adopted by the Friends’ society.  In common discourse it appears very stiff and affected.”—­Bartlett’s C. S. Man’l, Part II, p. 72.

[213] “And of the History of his being tost in a Blanket, he saith, ’Here, Scriblerus, thou lessest in what thou assertest concerning the blanket:  it was not a blanket, but a rug.—­Curlliad, p. 25.”—­Notes to Pope’s Dunciad, B. ii, verse 3.  A vulgar idea solemnly expressed, is ludicrous.  Uttered in familiar terms, it is simply vulgar:  as, “You lie, Scriblerus, in what you say about the blanket.”