[310] Seldom is sometimes compared in this manner, though not frequently; as, “This kind of verse occurs the seldomest, but has a happy effect in diversifying the melody.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 385.  In former days, this word, as well as its correlative often, was sometimes used adjectively; as, “Thine often infirmities.”—­1 Tim., v, 23.  “I hope God’s Book hath not been my seldomest lectures.”—­Queen Elizabeth, 1585.  John Walker has regularly compared the adverb forward:  in describing the latter L, he speaks of the tip of the tongue as being “brought a little forwarder to the teeth.”—­Pron.  Dict., Principles, No. 55.

[311] A few instances of the regular inflection of adverbs ending in ly, may be met with in modern compositions, as in the following comparisons:  “As melodies will sometimes ring sweetlier in the echo.”—­The Dial, Vol. i, p. 6.  “I remember no poet whose writings would safelier stand the test.”—­Coleridge’s Biog.  Lit., Vol. ii, p. 53.

[312] De Sacy, in his Principles of General Grammar, calls the relative pronouns “Conjunctive Adjectives.”  See Fosdick’s Translation, p. 57.  He also says, “The words who, which, etc. are not the only words which connect the function of a Conjunction with another design.  There are Conjunctive Nouns and Adverbs, as well as Adjectives; and a characteristic of these words is, that we can substitute for them another form of expression in which shall be found the words who, which, etc.  Thus, when, where, what, how, as, and many others, are Conjunctive words:  [as,] ‘I shall finish when I please;’ that is, ’I shall finish at the time at which I please.’—­’I know not where I am;’ i.e.  ’I know not the place in which I am.’”—­Ib., p. 58.  In respect to the conjunctive adverbs, this is well enough, so far as it goes; but the word who appears to me to be a pronoun, and not an adjective; and of his “Conjunctive Nouns,” he ought to have given us some examples, if he knew of any.

[313] “Now the Definition of a CONJUNCTION is as follows—­a Part of Speech, void of Signification itself, but so formed as to help Signification by making TWO or more significant Sentences to be ONE significant Sentence.”—­Harris’s Hermes, 6th Edition, London, p. 238.

[314] Whether these, or any other conjunctions that come together, ought to ho parsed together, is doubtful.  I am not in favour of taking any words together, that can well be parsed separately.  Goodenow, who defines a phrase to be “the union of two or more words having the nature and construcion [sic—­KTH] of a single word,” finds an immense number of these unions, which he cannot, or does not, analyze.  As examples of “a conjunctional phrase,”