as, O thou, O ye.”—­Ash’s Gram., p. 60.  Or perhaps he had Bicknell’s book, which was later:  “The interjections O, oh, and ah, require the accusative case of a pronoun in the first person after them; as, O, me!  Oh, me!  Ah, me! But the nominative case in the second person; as, O, thou that rulest!  O, ye rulers of this land!”—­The Grammatical Wreath, Part I, p. 105.

[442] See 2 Sam., xix, 4; also xviii, 33.  Peirce has many times misquoted this text, or some part of it; and, what is remarkable, he nowhere agrees either with himself or with the Bible!  “O!  Absalom! my son!”—­Gram., p. 283.  “O Absalom! my son, my son! would to God I had died for thee.”—­Ib., p. 304.  Pinneo also misquotes and perverts a part of it, thus:  “Oh, Absalom! my son”—­Primary Gram., Revised Ed., p. 57.

[443] Of this example, Professor Bullions says, “This will be allowed to be a correct English sentence, complete in itself, and requiring nothing to be supplied.  The phrase, ‘being an expert dancer,’ is the subject of the verb ‘does entitle;’ but the word ‘dancer’ in that phrase is neither the subject of any verb, nor is governed by any word in the sentence.”—­Eng.  Gram., p. 52.  It is because this word cannot have any regular construction after the participle when the possessive case precedes, that I deny his first proposition, and declare the sentence not “to be correct English.”  But the Professor at length reasons himself into the notion, that this indeterminate “predicate,” as he erroneously calls it, “is properly in the objective case, and in parsing, may correctly be called the objective indefinite;” of which case, he says, “The following are also examples:  ‘He had the honour of being a director for life.’  ’By being a diligent student, he soon acquired eminence in his profession.’”—­Ib., p. 83.  But “director” and “student” are here manifestly in the nominative case:  each agreeing with the pronoun he, which denotes the same person.  In the latter sentence, there is a very obvious transposition of the first five words.

[444] Faulty as this example is, Dr. Blair says of it:  “Nothing can be more elegant, or more finely turned, than this sentence.  It is neat, clear, and musical.  We could hardly alter one word, or disarrange one member, without spoiling it.  Few sentences are to be found, more finished, or more happy.”—­Lecture XX, p. 201.  See the six corrections suggested in my Key, and judge whether or not they spoil the sentence.—­G.  B.