An Improved Grammar of the English Language |
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Common terms and phrases
accent adjective admit Adverbs or Modifiers affirmation agreeing Amphibrach attribute authors auxiliary called clause common connective considered Defective Verbs definitive Dig dug distinct ellipsis English English language entirely obsolete examples express form our modes future tense gender hath idea idiom imperative mode indefinite indicative mode infinitive mode inflections intransitive irregular verbs language letters Lord loved Ye Lowth modes and tenses n be loved n been loved nominative NOTE notwithstanding noun number of words object omitted original passage passive form Past Tense obsolete pause Perfect Tense phrases plural number possessive preceding prefix preposition present tense principles Prior-Future represents Rhet RULE Saxon sense sentence shalt or wilt singular number sound species subjunctive mode substitute suppose syllable tence tense and participle termination things third person thou n love tion tive transitive verb Trochee verse vowel write wrought wrung ye n love
Popular passages
Page 81 - A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.
Page 133 - Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars...
Page 79 - Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they speak not : eyes have they, but they see not...
Page 146 - War he sung is toil and trouble ; Honor but an empty bubble ; Never ending, still beginning, Fighting still, and still destroying : If the world be worth thy winning, Think, O, think it worth enjoying ! Lovely Thais sits beside thee, Take the good the gods provide thee.
Page 139 - That, changed through all, and yet in all the same; Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame; Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees; Lives through all life, extends through all extent; Spreads undivided, operates unspent!
Page 146 - I have found out a gift for my fair; I have found where the wood-pigeons breed; But let me that plunder forbear, She will say 'twas a barbarous deed: For he ne'er could be true, she averr'd, Who could rob a poor bird of its young; And I loved her the more when I heard Such tenderness fall from her tongue.
Page 148 - See through this air, this ocean, and this earth, All matter quick, and bursting into birth! Above, how high progressive life may go ! Around, how wide ! how deep extend below ! Vast chain of being! which from God began; Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach; from infinite to thee; From thee to nothing...
Page 134 - A brute arrives at a point of perfection that he can never pass : in a few years he has all the endowments he is capable of; and, were he to live ten thousand more, would be the same thing he is at present.
Page 80 - To reform and not to chastise I am afraid is impossible, and that the best precepts, as well as the best laws, would prove of small use if there were no examples to enforce them. To attack vices in the abstract, without touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed, but it is fighting with shadows.
Page 79 - I have, notwithstanding this discouragement, attempted a dictionary of the English language, which, while it was employed in the cultivation of every species of literature, has itself been hitherto neglected ; suffered to spread, under the direction of chance, into wild exuberance; resigned to the tyranny of time and fashion ; and exposed to the corruptions of ignorance, and caprices of innovation.