“Stealing her soul with many vows of faith,
    And ne’er a true one.”—­Shakspeare.

What sense would there be in expounding this to mean, “And neither a true one?” So some men both write and interpret their mother tongue erroneously through ignorance.  But these authors condemn the errors which they here falsely suppose to be common.  What is yet more strange, no less a critic than Prof.  William C. Fowler, has lately exhibited, without disapprobation, one of these literary blunders, with sundry localisms, (often descending to slang,) which, he says, are mentioned by “Mr. Bartlett, in his valuable dictionary [Dictionary] of Americanisms.”  The brief example, which may doubtless be understood to speak for both phrases and both authors, is this:  “ARY = either.”—­Fowler’s E. Gram., 8vo, N. Y., 1850, p. 92.

[433] The conjunction that, at the head of a sentence or clause, enables us to assume the whole preposition as one thing; as, “All arguments whatever are directed to prove one or other of these three things:  that something is true; that it is morally right or fit; or that it is profitable and good.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 318.  Here each that may be parsed as connecting its own clause to the first clause in the sentence; or, to the word things with which the three clauses are in a sort of apposition.  If we conceive it to have no such connecting power, we must make this too an exception.

[434] “Note.  Then and than are distinct Particles, but use hath made the using of then for than after a Comparative Degree at least passable.  See Butler’s Eng.  Gram.  Index.”—­Walker’s Eng.  Particles, Tenth Ed., 1691, p. 333.

[435] “When the relative who follows the preposition than, it must be used as in the accusative case.”—­Bucke’s Gram., p. 93.  Dr. Priestley seems to have imagined the word than to be always a preposition; for he contends against the common doctrine and practice respecting the case after it:  “It is, likewise, said, that the nominative case ought to follow the preposition than; because the verb to be is understood after it; As, You are taller than he, and not taller than him; because at full length, it would be, You are taller than he is; but since it is allowed, that the oblique case should follow prepositions; and since the comparative degree of an adjective, and the particle than have, certainly, between them, the force of a preposition, expressing the relation of one word to another, they ought to require the oblique case of the pronoun following.”—­Priestley’s Gram., p. 105.  If than were a preposition, this reasoning would certainly be right; but the Doctor begs the question, by assuming that it is a preposition.  William Ward, an other noted grammarian of the same age, supposes that, “ME sapientior es, may be translated, Thou art wiser THAN ME.”  He also, in the same place, avers, that, “The best English Writers have considered than as a Sign of an oblique Case; as, ‘She suffers more THAN ME.’  Swift, i.e. more than I suffer.