4.  When a supposition is made without the conjunction if; as, “Had they known it;” for, “If they had known it.”—­“Were it true;” for, “If it were true.”—­“Could we draw by the covering of the grave;” for, “If we could draw,” &c.

5.  When neither or nor, signifying and not, precedes the verb; as, “This was his fear; nor was his apprehension groundless.”—­“Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it.”—­Gen., iii, 3.

6.  When, for the sake of emphasis, some word or words are placed before the verb, which more naturally come after it; as, “Here am I.”—­“Narrow is the way.”—­“Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have, give I thee.”—­Bible.

7.  When the verb has no regimen, and is itself emphatical; as, “Echo the mountains round.”—­Thomson.  “After the Light Infantry marched the Grenadiers, then followed the Horse.”—­Buchanan’s Syntax, p. 71.

8.  When the verbs, say, answer, reply, and the like, introduce the parts of a dialogue; as, “‘Son of affliction,’ said Omar, ‘who art thou?’ ’My name,’ replied the stranger, ‘is Hassan.’”—­Dr. Johnson.

9.  When the adverb there precedes the verb; as, “There lived a man.”—­Montgomery.  “In all worldly joys, there is a secret wound.”—­Owen.  This use of there, the general introductory adverb of place, is idiomatic, and somewhat different from the use of the same word in reference to a particular locality; as, “Because there was not much water there.”—­John, iii, 23.

OBS. 3.—­In exclamations, and some other forms of expression, a few verbs are liable to be suppressed, the ellipsis being obvious; as, “How different [is] this from the philosophy of Greece and Rome!”—­DR. BEATTIE:  Murray’s Sequel, p. 127.  “What a lively picture [is here] of the most disinterested and active benevolence!”—­HERVEY:  ib., p. 94.  “When Adam [spake] thus to Eve.”—­MILTON:  Paradise Lost, B. iv, l. 610.

OBS. 4.—­Though we often use nouns in the nominative case to show whom we address, yet the imperative verb takes no other nominative of the second person, than the simple personal pronoun, thou, ye, or you, expressed or understood.  It would seem that some, who ought to know better, are liable to mistake for the subject of such a verb, the noun which we put absolute in the nominative by direct address.  Of this gross error, the following is an example:  “Study boys.  In this sentence,” (says its author,) “study is a verb of the second person, plural number, and agrees with its nominative case, boys—­according to the rule:  A verb must agree with its nominative case in number and person. Boys is a noun of