[447] In his explanation of Ellipsis, Lindley Murray continually calls it “the ellipsis,” and speaks of it as something that is “used,”—­“made use of,”—­“applied,”—­“contained in” the examples; which expressions, referring, as they there do, to the mere absence of something, appear to me solecistical.  The notion too, which this author and others have entertained of the figure itself, is in many respects erroneous; and nearly all their examples for its illustration are either questionable as to such an application, or obviously inappropriate.  The absence of what is needless or unsuggested, is no ellipsis, though some grave men have not discerned this obvious fact.  The nine solecisms here quoted concerning “the ellipsis,” are all found in many other grammars.  See Fisk’s E. Gram., p. 144; Guy’s, 91; Ingersoll’s, 153; J.  M. Putnam’s, 137; R.  C. Smith’s, 180; Weld’s, 190.

[448] Some of these examples do, in fact, contain more than two errors; for mistakes in punctuation, or in the use of capitals, are not here reckoned.  This remark may also he applicable to some of the other lessons.  The reader may likewise perceive, that where two, three, or more improprieties occur in one sentence, some one or more of them may happen to be such, as he can, if he choose, correct by some rule or note belonging to a previous chapter.  Great labour has been bestowed on the selection and arrangement of these syntactical exercises; but to give to so great a variety of literary faults, a distribution perfectly distinct, and perfectly adapted to all the heads assumed in this digest, is a work not only of great labour, but of great difficulty.  I have come as near to these two points of perfection in the arrangement, as I well could.—­G.  BROWN.

[449] In Murray’s sixth chapter of Punctuation, from which this example, and eleven others that follow it, are taken, there is scarcely a single sentence that does not contain many errors; and yet the whole is literally copied in Ingersoll’s Grammar, p. 293; in Fisk’s, p. 159; in Abel Flint’s, 116; and probably in some others.  I have not always been careful to subjoin the great number of references which might be given for blunders selected from this hackneyed literature of the schools.  For corrections, or improvements, see the Key.

[450] This example, or L. Murray’s miserable modification of it, traced through the grammars of Alden, Alger, Bullions, Comly, Cooper, Flint, Hiley, Ingersoll, Jaudon, Merchant, Russell, Smith, and others, will be found to have a dozen different forms—­all of them no less faulty than the original—­all of them obscure, untrue, inconsistent, and almost incorrigible.  It is plain, that “a comma,” or one comma, cannot divide more than two “simple members;” and these, surely, cannot be connected by more than one relative, or by more than one “comparative;” if it be allowable to call than, as, or so, by this questionable name.  Of the multitude of errors into which these pretended critics have so blindly fallen, I shall have space and time to point out only a very small part:  this text, too justly, may be taken as a pretty fair sample of their scholarship!