of the rule.  But when the proper subject is placed after the verb, as in certain instances specified in the second observation under Rule 2d, the explanatory nominative is commonly introduced still later; as, “But be thou an example of the believers.”—­1 Tim. iv, 12.  “But what! is thy servant a dog?”—­2 Kings, viii, 13.  “And so would I, were I Parmenio.”—­Goldsmith.  “O Conloch’s daughter! is it thou?”—­Ossian.  But in the following example, on the contrary, there is a transposition of the entire lines, and the verb agrees with the two nominatives in the latter: 

   “To thee were solemn toys or empty show,
    The robes of pleasure and the veils of wo.”—­Dr. Johnson.

OBS. 3.—­In interrogative sentences, the terms are usually transposed,[359] or both are placed after the verb; as, “Am I a Jew?”—­John, xviii, 35.  “Art thou a king then?”—­Ib., ver. 37. “What is truth?”—­Ib., ver. 38. “Who art thou?”—­Ib., i, 19.  “Art thou Elias?”—­Ib., i, 21.  “Tell me, Alciphron, is not distance a line turned endwise to the eye?”—­Berkley’s Dialogues, p. 161.

   “Whence, and what art thou, execrable shape?”—­Milton.

    “Art thou that traitor angel? art thou he?”—­Idem.

OBS. 4.—­In a declarative sentence also, there may be a rhetorical or poetical transposition of one or both of the terms:  as, “And I thy victim now remain.”—­Francis’s Horace, ii, 45.  “To thy own dogs a prey thou shalt be made.”—­Pope’s Homer, “I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame.”—­Job, xxix, 15.  “Far other scene is Thrasymene now.”—­Byron.  In the following sentence, the latter term is palpably misplaced:  “It does not clearly appear at first what the antecedent is to they.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 218.  Say rather:  “It does not clearly appear at first, what is the antecedent to [the pronoun] they.”  In examples transposed like the following, there is an elegant ellipsis of the verb to which the pronoun is nominative; as, am, art, &c.

   “When pain and anguish wring the brow,
    A ministering angel thou.”—­Scott’s Marmion.

    “The forum’s champion, and the people’s chief,
    Her new-born Numa thou—­with reign, alas! too brief.”—­Byron.

    “For this commission’d, I forsook the sky—­
    Nay, cease to kneel—­thy fellow-servant I.”—­Parnell.