OBS. 14.—­In Rev., ii, 17th, we read, “Which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it;” and again, xiii, 17th, “That no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark.”  The following text is inaccurate, but not in the construction of the nominative they:  “All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.”—­Matt., xix, 11.  The version ought to have been, “Not all men can receive this saying, but they only to whom it is given:”  i.e., “they only can receive it, to whom there is given power to receive it.”  Of but with a nominative, examples may be multiplied indefinitely.  The following are as good as any:  “There is no God but He.”—­Sale’s Koran, p. 27.  “The former none but He could execute.”—­Maturin’s Sermons, p. 317.  “There was nobody at home but I.”—­Walker’s Particles, p. 95.  “A fact, of which as none but he could be conscious, [so] none but he could be the publisher of it.”—­Pope’s Works, Vol. iii, p. 117.  “Few but they who are involved in the vices, are involved in the irreligion of the times.”—­Brown’s Estimate, i, 101.

   “I claim my right.  No Grecian prince but I
    Has power this bow to grant, or to deny.”
        —­Pope, Odys., B. xxi, l. 272.

    “Thus she, and none but she, the insulting rage
    Of heretics oppos’d from age to age.”
        —­Dryden’s Poems, p. 98.

In opposition to all these authorities, and many more that might be added, we have, with now and then a text of false syntax, the absurd opinion of perhaps a score or two of our grammarians; one of whom imagines he has found in the following couplet from Swift, an example to the purpose; but he forgets that the verb let governs the objective case: 

   “Let none but him who rules the thunder,
    Attempt to part these twain asunder.”
        —­Perley’s Gram., p. 62.

OBS. 15.—­It is truly a wonder, that so many professed critics should not see the absurdity of taking but and save for “prepositions,” when this can be done only by condemning the current usage of nearly all good authors, as well as the common opinion of most grammarians; and the greater is the wonder, because they seem to do it innocently, or to teach it childishly, as not knowing that they cannot justify both sides, when the question lies between opposite and contradictory principles.  By this sort of simplicity, which approves of errors, if much practised, and of opposites, or essential contraries, when authorities may be found for them, no work, perhaps, is more strikingly characterized, than the popular School Grammar of W. H. Wells.  This author says, “The use of but as a preposition is approved by J. E. Worcester, John Walker, R. C. Smith, Picket,