OBS. 1.—­The word for which a pronoun stands, is called its antecedent, because it usually precedes the pronoun.  But some have limited the term antecedent to the word represented by a relative pronoun.  There can be no propriety in this, unless we will have every pronoun to be a relative, when it stands for a noun which precedes it; and, if so, it should be called something else, when the noun is to be found elsewhere.  In the example above, his and he represent boy, and them represents lessons; and these nouns are as truly the antecedents to the pronouns, as any can be.  Yet his, he, and them, in our most approved grammars, are not called relative pronouns, but personal.

OBS. 2.—­Every pronoun may be explained as standing for the name of something, for the thing itself unnamed, or for a former pronoun; and, with the noun, pronoun, or thing, for which it stands, every pronoun must agree in person, number, and gender.  The exceptions to this, whether apparent or real, are very few; and, as their occurrence is unfrequent, there will be little occasion to notice them till we come to syntax.  But if the student will observe the use and import of pronouns, he may easily see, that some of them are put substantively, for nouns not previously introduced; some, relatively, for nouns or pronouns going before; some, adjectively, for nouns that must follow them in any explanation which can be made of the sense.  These three modes of substitution, are very different, each from the others.  Yet they do not serve for an accurate division of the pronouns; because it often happens, that a substitute which commonly represents the noun in one of these ways, will sometimes represent it in an other.

OBS. 3.—­The pronouns I and thou, in their different modifications, stand immediately for persons that are, in general, sufficiently known without being named; (I meaning the speaker, and thou, the hearer;) their antecedents, or nouns, are therefore generally understood.  The other personal pronouns, also, are sometimes taken in a general and demonstrative sense, to denote persons or things not previously mentioned; as, “He that hath knowledge, spareth his words.”—­Bible.  Here he is equivalent to the man, or the person.  “The care of posterity is most in them that have no posterity.”—­Bacon.  Here them is equivalent to those persons.  “How far do you call it to such a place?”—­Priestley’s Gram., p. 85.  Here it, according to Priestley, is put for the distance.  “For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth.”—­Malachi, ii, 7.  Here they is put indefinitely for men or people.  So who and which, though called relatives, do not always