[338] Churchill rashly condemns this construction, and still more rashly proposes to make the noun singular without repeating the article.  See his New Gram., p. 311.  But he sometimes happily forgets his own doctrine; as, “In fact, the second and fourth lines here stamp the character of the measure.”—­Ib., p. 391.  O. B. Peirce says, “’Joram’s second and third daughters,’ must mean, if it means any thing, his second daughters and third daughters; and, ‘the first and second verses.’ if it means any thing, must represent the first verses and the second verses.”—­ Peirce’s English Gram., p. 263.  According to my notion, this interpretation is as false and hypercritical, as is the rule by which the author professes to show what is right.  He might have been better employed in explaining some of his own phraseology, such as, “the indefinite-past and present of the declarative mode.”—­Ib., p. 100.  The critic who writes such stuff as this, may well be a misinterpreter of good common English.  It is plain, that the two examples which he thus distorts, are neither obscure nor inelegant.  But, in an alternative of single things, the article must be repeated, and a plural noun is improper; as, “But they do not receive the Nicene or the Athanasian creeds.”—­Adam’s Religious World, Vol. ii, p. 105.  Say, “creed.”  So in an enumeration; as, “There are three participles:  the present, the perfect, and the compound perfect participles”—­Ingersoll’s Gram., p. 42.  Expunge this last word, “participles.”  Sometimes a sentence is wrong, not as being in itself a solecism, but as being unadapted to the author’s thought.  Example:  “Other tendencies will be noticed in the Etymological and Syntactical part.”—­Fowler’s E. Gram., N. Y., 1850, p. 75.  This implies, what appears not to be true, that the author meant to treat Etymology and Syntax together in a single part of his work.  Had he put an s to the noun “part,” he might have been understood in either of two other ways, but not in this.  To make sure of his meaning, therefore, he should have said—­“in the Etymological Part and the Syntactical.”

[339] Oliver B. Peirce, in his new theory of grammar, not only adopts Ingersoll’s error, but adds others to it.  He supposes no ellipsis, and declares it grossly improper ever to insert the pronoun.  According to him, the following text is wrong:  “My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord.”—­Heb., xii, 5.  See Peirce’s Gram., p. 255.  Of this gentleman’s book I shall say the less, because its faults are so many and so obvious.  Yet this is “The Grammar of the English Language,” and claims to be the only work which is worthy to be called an English Grammar.  “The first and only Grammar of the English Language!”—­Ib.,