[358] Not unfrequently the conjunction as intervenes between these “same cases,” as it may also between words in apposition; as, “He then is as the head, and we as the members; he the vine, and we the branches.”—­Barclay’s Works, Vol. ii, p. 189.

[359] “‘Whose house is that?’ This sentence, before it is parsed, should be transposed; thus, ‘Whose is that house?’ The same observation applies to every sentence of a similar construction.”—­Chandler’s old Gram., p. 93.  This instruction is worse than nonsense; for it teaches the pupil to parse every word in the sentence wrong!  The author proceeds to explain Whose, as “qualifying house, understood;” is, as agreeing “with its nominative, house;” that, as “qualifying house;” and house, as “nominative case to the verb, is.”  Nothing of this is true of the original question.  For, in that, Whose is governed by house; house is nominative after is; is agrees with house understood; and that relates to house understood.  The meaning is, “Whose house is that house?” or, in the order of a declarative sentence, “That house is whose house?”

[360] 1:  In Latin, the accusative case is used after such a verb, because an other word in the same case is understood before it; as, “Facere quae libet, ID est [hominem] esse regem.”—­SALLUST.  “To do what he pleases, THAT is [for a man] to be a king.”  If Professor Bullions had understood Latin, or Greek, or English, as well as his commenders imagine, he might have discovered what construction of cases we have in the following instances:  “It is an honour [for a man] to be the author of such a work.”—­Bullions’s Eng.  Gram., p. 82.  “To be surety for a stranger [,] is dangerous.”—­Ib. “Not to know what happened before you were born, is to be always a child.”—­Ib. “Nescire quid acciderit antequam natus es, est semper esse puerum.”—­Ib. “[Greek:  Esti tion aischron ...topon, hon haemen pote kurioi phainesthai proiemenous].”  “It is a shame to be seen giving up countries of which we were once masters.”—­DEMOSTHENES:  ib. What support these examples give to this grammarian’s new notion of “the objective indefinite” or to his still later seizure of Greene’s doctrine of “the predicate-nominative” the learned reader may judge.  All the Latin and Greek grammarians suppose an ellipsis, in such instances; but some moderns are careless enough of that, and of the analogy of General Grammar in this case, to have seconded the Doctor in his absurdity.  See Farnum’s Practical Gram., p. 23; and S.  W. Clark’s, p. 149.