[330] “The grammatical predicate is a verb.”—­Butler’s Pract.  Gram., 1845, p. 135, “The grammatical predicate is a finite verb.”—­Wells’s School Gram., 1850, p. 185.  “The grammatical predicate is either a verb alone, or the copula sum [some part of the verb be] with a noun or adjective.”—­Andrews and Stoddard’s Lat.  Gram., p. 163.  “The predicate consists of two parts,—­the verb, or copula, and that which is asserted by it, called the attribute; as ‘Snow is white.’”—­Greene’s Analysis. p. 15.  “The grammatical predicate consists of the attribute and copula not modified by other word.”—­Bullions, Analyt, and Pract.  Gram., P. 129.  “The logical predicate is the grammatical, with all the words or phrases that modify it.” Ib. p. 130.  “The Grammatical predicate is the word or words containing the simple affirmation, made respecting the subject.”—­Bullions, Latin Gram., p. 269.  “Every proposition necessarily consists of these three parts:  [the subject, the predicate, and the copula;] but then it is not alike needful, that they be all severally expressed in words; because the copula is often included in the term of the predicate; as when we say, he sits, which imports the same as, he is sitting.”—­Duncan’s Logic, p 105.  In respect to this Third Method of Analysis.  It is questionable, whether a noun or an adjective which follows the verb and forms part of the assertion, is to be included in “the grammatical predicate” or not.  Wells says, No:  “It would destroy at once all distinction between the grammatical and the logical predicate.”—­School Gram., p. 185.  An other question is, whether the copula (is, was or the like,) which the logicians discriminate, should be included as part of the logical predicate, when it occurs as a distinct word.  The prevalent practice of the grammatical analyzers is, so to include it,—­a practice which in itself is not very “logical.”  The distinction of subjects and predicates as “grammatical and logical,” is but a recent one.  In some grammars, the partition used in logic is copied without change, except perhaps of words:  as “There are, in sentences, a subject, a predicate and a copula.”  JOS.  R. CHANDLER, Gram. of 1821, p. 105; Gram. of 1847, p. 116.  The logicians, however, and those who copy them, may have been hitherto at fault in recognizing and specifying their “copula.”  Mulligan forcibly argues that the verb of being is no more entitled to this name than is every other verb. (See his Exposition,” Sec.46.) If he is right in this, the “copula” of the logicians (an in my opinion, his own also) is a mere figment of the brain, there being nothing that answers to the definition of the thing or to the true use of the word.