OBS. 14.—­One of Murray’s examples of what he erroneously terms “nominative sentences,” i.e., “sentences or clauses constituting the subject of an affirmation,” is the following:  “A desire to excel others in learning and virtue [,] is commendable.”—­Gram., 8vo, p. 144.  Here the verb is agrees regularly with the noun desire, and with that only; the whole text being merely a simple sentence, and totally irrelevant to the doctrine which it accompanies.[388] But the great “Compiler” supposes the adjuncts of this noun to be parts of the nominative, and imagines the verb to agree with all that precedes it.  Yet, soon after, he expends upon the ninth rule of Webster’s Philosophical Grammar a whole page of useless criticism, to show that the adjuncts of a noun are not to be taken as parts of the nominative; and that, when objectives are thus subjoined, “the assertion grammatically respects the first nouns only.”—­Ib., p. 148.  I say useless, because the truth of the doctrine is so very plain.  Some, however, may imagine an example like the following to be an exception to it; but I do not, because I think the true nominative suppressed: 

   “By force they could not introduce these gods;
    For ten to one in former days was odds.”—­Dryden’s Poems, p. 38.

OBS. 15.—­Dr. Webster’s ninth rule is this:  “When the nominative consists of several words, and the last of the names is in the plural number, the verb is commonly in the plural also; as, ’A part of the exports consist of raw silk.’  ‘The number of oysters increase.’  GOLDSMITH.  ’Such as the train of our ideas have lodged in our memories.’  LOCKE.  ’The greater part of philosophers have acknowledged the excellence of this government.’  ANACHARSIS.”—­Philos.  Gram., p. 146; Impr.  Gram., 100.  The last of these examples Murray omits; the second he changes thus:  “A number of men and women were present.”  But all of them his reasoning condemns as ungrammatical.  He thinks them wrong, upon the principle, that the verbs, being plural, do not agree with the first nouns only.  Webster, on the contrary, judges them all to be right; and, upon this same principle, conceives that his rule must be so too.  He did not retract or alter the doctrine after he saw the criticism, but republished it verbatim, in his “Improved Grammar,” of 1831.  Both err, and neither convinces the other.

OBS. 16.—­In this instance, as Webster and Murray both teach erroneously, whoever follows either, will be led into many mistakes.  The fact is, that some of the foregoing examples, though perhaps not all, are perfectly right; and hundreds more, of a similar character, might be quoted, which no true grammarian would presume to condemn.  But what have these to do with the monstrous absurdity of supposing objective adjuncts to be “parts of the actual nominative?” The words, “part,”