“And earthly power doth then show likest God’s,
    When mercy seasons justice.”—­Beauties of Shakspeare, p. 45.

[368] Wright’s notion of this construction is positively absurd and self-contradictory.  In the sentence, “My cane is worth a shilling,” he takes the word worth to be a noun “in apposition to the word shilling.”  And to prove it so, he puts the sentence successively into these four forms:  “My cane is worth or value for a shilling;”—­“The worth or value of my cane is a shilling;”—­“My cane is a shilling’s worth;”—­“My cane is the worth of a shilling.”—­Philosophical Gram., p. 150.  In all these transmutations, worth is unquestionably a noun; but, in none of them, is it in apposition with the word shilling; and he is quite mistaken in supposing that they “indispensably prove the word in question to be a noun.”  There are other authors, who, with equal confidence, and equal absurdity, call worth a verb.  For example:  “A noun, which signifies the price, is put in the objective case, without a preposition; as, ‘my book is worth twenty shillings.’ Is worth is a neuter verb, and answers to the latin [sic—­KTH] verb valet.”—­Barrett’s Gram., p. 138.  I do not deny that the phrase “is worth” is a just version of the verb valet; but this equivalence in import, is no proof at all that worth is a verb. Prodest is a Latin verb, which signifies “is profitable to;” but who will thence infer, that profitable to is a verb?

[369] In J. R. Chandler’s English Grammar, as published in 1821, the word worth appears in the list of prepositions:  but the revised list, in his edition of 1847, does not contain it.  In both books, however, it is expressly parsed as a preposition; and, in expounding the sentence, “The book is worth a dollar,” the author makes this remark:  “Worth has been called an adjective by some, and a noun by others:  worth, however, in this sentence expresses a relation by value, and is so far a preposition; and no ellipsis, which may be formed, would change the nature of the word, without giving the sentence a different meaning.”—­Chandler’s Gram., Old Ed., p. 155; New Ed., p. 181.

[370] Cowper here purposely makes Mrs. Gilpin use bad English; but this is no reason why a school-boy may not be taught to correct it.  Dr. Priestley supposed that the word we, in the example, “To poor we, thine enmity,” &c., was also used by Shakespeare, “in a droll humorous way.”—­Gram., p. 103.  He surely did not know the connexion of the text.  It is in “Volumnia’s pathetic speech” to her victorious son.  See Coriolanus, Act V, Sc. 3.