[396] S. W. Clark, by reckoning “as” a “preposition,” perverts the construction of sentences like this, and inserts a wrong case after the conjunction.  See Clark’s Practical Grammar, pp. 92 and 178; also this Syntax, Obs. 6 and Obs. 18, on Conjunctions.

[397] Murray gives us the following text for false grammar, under the head of Strength:  “And Elias with Moses appeared to them.”—­Exercises, 8vo, p. 135.  This he corrects thus:  “And there appeared to them Elias with Moses.”—­Key, 8vo, p. 266.  He omits the comma after Elias, which some copies of the Bible contain, and others do not.  Whether he supposed the verb appeared to be singular or plural, I cannot tell; and he did not extend his quotation to the pronoun they, which immediately follows, and in which alone the incongruity lies.

[398] This order of the persons, is not universally maintained in those languages.  The words of Mary to her son, “Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing,” seem very properly to give the precedence to her husband; and this is their arrangement in St. Luke’s Greek, and in the Latin versions, as well as in others.

[399] The hackneyed example, “I and Cicero are well,”—­“Ego et Cicero valemus”—­which makes such a figure in the grammars, both Latin and English, and yet is ascribed to Cicero himself, deserves a word of explanation.  Cicero the orator, having with him his young son Marcus Cicero at Athens, while his beloved daughter Tullia was with her mother in Italy, thus wrote to his wife, Terentia:  “Si tu, et Tullia, lux nostra, valetix; ego, et suavissimus Cicero, valemus.”—­EPIST. AD FAM.  Lib. xiv, Ep. v.  That is, “If thou, and Tullia, our joy, are well; I, and the sweet lad Cicero, are likewise well.”  This literal translation is good English, and not to be amended by inversion; for a father is not expected to give precedence to his child.  But, when I was a boy, the text and version of Dr. Adam puzzled me not a little; because I could not conceive how Cicero could ever have said, “I and Cicero are well.”  The garbled citation is now much oftener read than the original.  See it in Crombie’s Treatise, p. 243; McCulloch’s Gram., p. 158; and others.

[400] Two singulars connected by and, when they form a part of such a disjunction, are still equivalent to a plural; and are to be treated as such, in the syntax of the verb.  Hence the following construction appears to be inaccurate:  “A single consonant or a mute and a liquid before an accented vowel, is joined to that vowel”—­Dr. Bullions, Lat.  Gram. p. xi.

[401] Murray the schoolmaster has it, “used to govern.”—­English Gram., p. 64.  He puts the verb in a wrong tense.  Dr. Bullions has it, “usually governs.”—­Lat.  Gram., p. 202.  This is right.—­G.  B.