[329] What “the Series of Grammars, English, Latin, and Greek, ON THE SAME PLAN,” will ultimately be,—­how many treatises for each or any of the languages it will probably contain,—­what uniformity will be found in the distribution of their several sorts and sizes,—­or what sameness they will have, except that which is bestowed by the binders,—­cannot yet be stated with any certainty.  It appears now, in 1850, that the scheme has thus far resulted in the production of three remarkably different grammars, for the English part of the series, and two more, a Latin grammar and a Greek, which resemble each other, or any of these, as little.  In these works, abound changes and discrepances, sometimes indicating a great unsettlement of “principles” or “plan,” and often exciting our wonder at the extraordinary variety of teaching, which has been claimed to be, “as nearly in the same words as the as the genius of the languages would permit!” In what should have been uniform, and easily might have been so, these grammars are rather remarkably diverse!  Uniformity in the order, number, or phraseology of the Rules of Syntax, even for our own language, seems scarcely yet to have entered this “SAME PLAN” at all!  The “onward progress of English grammar,” or, rather, of the author’s studies therein, has already, within “fifteen years,” greatly varied, from the first model of the “Series,” his own idea of a good grammar; and, though such changes bar consistency, a future progress, real or imaginary, may likewise, with as good reason, vary it yet as much more.  In the preface to the work of 1840, it is said:  “This, though not essentially different from the former, is yet in some respects a new work.  It has been almost entirely rewritten.”  And again:  “The Syntax is much fuller than in the former work; and though the rules are not different, they are arranged in a different order.”  So it is proved, that the model needed remodelling; and that the Syntax, especially, was defective, in matter as well as in order.  The suggestions, that “the rules are not different,” and the works, "not essentially” so, will sound best to those who shall never compare them.  The old code has thirty-four chief, and twenty-two “special rules;” the new has twenty chief, thirty-six “special,” and one “general rule.”  Among all these, we shall scarcely find exact sameness preserved in so many as half a dozen instances.  Of the old thirty-four, fourteen only were judged worthy to remain as principal rules; and two of these have no claim at all to such rank, one of them being quite useless.  Of the twenty now made chief, five are new to “the Series of Grammars,” and three of these exceedingly resemble as many of mine; five are slightly altered, and five greatly, from their predecessors among the old:  one is the first half of an old rule; one is an old subordinate rule, altered and elevated; and three are as they were before, their numbers and relative positions excepted!