[371] Dr. Enfield misunderstood this passage; and, in copying it into his Speaker, (a very popular school-book,) he has perverted the text, by changing we to us:  as if the meaning were, “Making us fools of nature.”  But it is plain, that all “fool’s of nature!” must be fools of nature’s own making, and not persons temporarily frighted out of their wits by a ghost; nor does the meaning of the last two lines comport with any objective construction of this pronoun.  See Enfield’s Speaker, p. 864.

[372] In Clark’s Practical Grammar, of 1848, is found this NOTE:  “The Noun should correspond in number with the Adjectives.  EXAMPLES—­A two feet ruler.  A ten feet pole.”—­P. 165.  These examples are wrong:  the doctrine is misapplied in both.  With this author, a, as well as two or ten, is an adjective of number; and, since these differ in number, what sort of concord or construction do the four words in each of these phrases make?  When a numeral and a noun are united to form a compound adjective, we commonly, if not always, use the latter in its primitive or singular form:  as, “A twopenny toy,”—­“a twofold error,”—­“three-coat plastering,” say, “a twofoot rule,”—­“a tenfoot pole;” which phrases are right; while Clark’s are not only unusual, but unanalogical, ungrammatical.

[373] Certain adjectives that differ in number, are sometimes connected disjunctively by or or than, while the noun literally agrees with that which immediately precedes it, and with the other merely by implication or supplement, under the figure which is called zeugma:  as, “Two or more nouns joined together by one or more copulative conjunctions.”—­ Lowth’s Gram., p. 75; L.  Murray’s, 2d Ed., p. 106.  “He speaks not to one or a few judges, but to a large assembly.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 280. “More than one object at a time.”—­Murray’s Gram., 8vo, p. 301.  See Obs. 10th on Rule 17th.

[374] Double comparatives and double superlatives, such as, “The more serener spirit,”—­“The most straitest sect,”—­are noticed by Latham and Child, in their syntax, as expressions which “we occasionally find, even in good writers,” and are truly stated to be “pleonastic;” but, forbearing to censure them as errors, these critics seem rather to justify them as pleonasms allowable.  Their indecisive remarks are at fault, not only because they are indecisive, but because they are both liable and likely to mislead the learner.—­See their Elementary Grammar, p. 155.