Grammar of The English Language

<p>The present performance is so far as the end could be reached the fulfillment of a design formed about twenty-seven years ago of one day presenting to the world if I might something like a complete grammar of the English language;-not a mere work of criticism nor yet a work too tame indecisive and uncritical; for in books of either of these sorts our libraries already abound;-not a mere philosophical investigation of what is general or universal in grammar nor yet a minute detail of what forms only a part of our own philology; for either of these plans falls very far short of such a purpose;-not a mere grammatical compend abstract or compilation sorting with other works already before the public; for in the production of school grammars the author had early performed his part; and of small treatises on this subject we have long had a superabundance rather than a lack.</p><p> </p><p>After about fifteen years devoted chiefly to grammatical studies and exercises during most of which time I had been alternately instructing youth in four different languages thinking it practicable to effect some improvement upon the manuals which explain our own I prepared and published for the use of schools a duodecimo volume of about three hundred pages; which upon the presumption that its principles were conformable to the best usage and well established thereby I entitled The Institutes of English Grammar.</p><p> </p><p>Of this work which it is believed has been gradually gaining in reputation and demand ever since its first publication there is no occasion to say more here than that it was the result of diligent study and that it is essentially the nucleus or the groundwork of the present volume. With much additional labour the principles contained in the Institutes of English Grammar have here been not only reaffirmed and rewritten but occasionally improved in expression or amplified in their details.</p><p><br></p>