[383] This rule, in all its parts, is to be applied chiefly, if not solely, to such relative clauses as are taken in the restrictive sense; for, in the resumptive sense of the relative, who or which may be more proper than that:  as, “Abraham solemnly adjures his most faithful servant, whom he despatches to Charran on this matrimonial mission for his son, to discharge his mission with all fidelity.”—­Milman’s Jews, i, 21.  See Etymology, Chap. 5th, Obs. 23d, 24th, &c., on the Classes of Pronouns.

[384] Murray imagined this sentence to be bad English.  He very strangely mistook the pronoun he for the object of the preposition with; and accordingly condemned the text, under the rule, “Prepositions govern the objective case.”  So of the following:  “It is not I he is engaged with.”—­Murray’s Exercises, R. 17.  Better:  “It is not I that he is engaged with.”  Here is no violation of the foregoing rule, or of any other; and both sentences, with even Murray’s form of the latter, are quite as good as his proposed substitutes:  “It was not with him, that they were so angry.”—­Murray’s Key, p. 51.  “It is not with me he is engaged.”—­Ib. In these fancied corrections, the phrases with him and with me have a very awkward and questionable position:  it seems doubtful, whether they depend on was and is, or on angry and engaged.

[385] In their speculations on the personal pronouns, grammarians sometimes contrive, by a sort of abstraction, to reduce all the persons to the third; that is, the author or speaker puts I, not for himself in particular, but for any one who utters the word, and thou, not for his particular hearer or reader, but for any one who is addressed; and, conceiving of these as persons merely spoken of by himself, he puts the verb in the third person, and not in the first or second:  as, “I is the speaker, thou [is] the hearer, and he, she, or it, is the person or thing spoken of.  All denote qualities of existence, but such qualities as make different impressions on the mind. I is the being of consciousness, thou [is the being] of perception, and he of memory.”—­Booth’s Introd., p. 44.  This is such syntax as I should not choose to imitate; nor is it very proper to say, that the three persons in grammar “denote qualities of existence.”  But, supposing the phraseology to be correct, it is no real exception to the foregoing rule of concord; for I and thou are here made to be pronouns of the third person.  So in the following example, which I take to be bad English:  “I, or the person who speaks, is the first person; you, is the second; he, she, or it, is the third person singular.”—­Bartlett’s Manual, Part ii, p. 70.  Again, in the following;