[349] It is remarkable, that Lindley Murray, with all his care in revising his work, did not see the inconsistency of his instructions in relation to phrases of this kind.  First he copies Lowth’s doctrine, literally and anonymously, from the Doctor’s 17th page, thus:  “When the thing to which another is said to belong, is expressed by a circumlocution, or by many terms, the sign of the possessive case is commonly added to the last term:  as, ‘The king of Great Britain’s dominions.’”—­Murray’s Gram., 8vo, p. 45.  Afterwards he condemns this:  “The word in the genitive case is frequently PLACED IMPROPERLY:  as, ’This fact appears from Dr. Pearson of Birmingham’s experiments.’ It should be, ’from the experiments of Dr. Pearson of Birmingham.’ “—­Ib., p. 175.  And again he makes it necessary:  “A phrase in which the words are so connected and dependent, as to admit of no pause before the conclusion, necessarily requires the genitive sign at or near the end of the phrase:  as, ’Whose prerogative is it?  It is the king of Great Britain’s;’ ’That is the duke of Bridgewater’s canal;’ " &c.—­Ib., p. 276.  Is there not contradiction in these instructions?

[350] A late grammarian tells us:  “In nouns ending in es and ss, the other s is not added; as, Charles’ hat, Goodness’ sake.”—­Wilcox’s Gram., p. 11.  He should rather have said, “To nouns ending in es or ss, the other s is not added.”  But his doctrine is worse than his syntax; and, what is remarkable, he himself forgets it in the course of a few minutes, thus:  “Decline Charles.  Nom. Charles, Poss. Charles’s, Obj. Charles.”—­Ib., p. 12.  See the like doctrine in Mulligan’s recent work on the “Structure of Language,” p. 182.

[351] VAUGELAS was a noted French critic, who died in 1650.  In Murray’s Grammar, the name is more than once mistaken.  On page 359th, of the edition above cited, it is printed “Vangelas”—­G.  BROWN.

[352] Nixon parses boy, as being “in the possessive case, governed by distress understood;” and girl’s, as being “coupled by nor to boy,” according to the Rule, “Conjunctions connect the same cases.”  Thus one word is written wrong; the other, parsed wrong:  and so of all his examples above.—­G.  BROWN.

[353] Wells, whose Grammar, in its first edition, divides verbs into “transitive, intransitive, and passive;” but whose late edition absurdly make all passives transitive; says, in his third edition, “A transitive verb is a verb that has some noun or pronoun for its object;” (p. 78;) adopts, in his syntax, the old dogma, “Transitive verbs govern the objective case;” (3d Ed., p. 154;) and to this rule subjoins a series of remarks, so singularly fit to puzzle or mislead the learner, and withal so successful in winning the approbation of committees and teachers, that it may be worth while to notice most of them here.