it; George or I am the person.’  Mr. Lindley Murray says, that we may use these phrases; and that we have only to take care that the verb agree with that person which is placed nearest to it; but, he says also, that it would be better to avoid such phrases by giving a different turn to our words.  I do not like to leave any thing to chance or to discretion, when we have a clear principle for our guide.”—­Ib., 243.  This author’s “clear principle” is merely his own confident assumption, that every form of figurative or implied agreement, every thing which the old grammarians denominated zeugma, is at once to be condemned as a solecism.  He is however supported by an other late writer of much greater merit.  See Churchill’s New Gram., pp. 142 and 312.

OBS. 7.—­If, in lieu of their fictitious examples, our grammarians would give us actual quotations from reputable authors, their instructions would doubtless gain something in accuracy, and still more in authority. “I or they were offended by it,” and, “I, or thou, or he, is the author of it,” are expressions that I shall not defend.  They imply an egotistical speaker, who either does not know, or will not tell, whether he is offended or not,—­whether he is the author or not!  Again, there are expressions that are unobjectionable, and yet not conformable to any of the rules just quoted.  That nominatives may be correctly connected by or or nor without an express agreement of the verb with each of them, is a point which can be proved to as full certainty as almost any other in grammar; Churchill, Cobbett, and Peirce to the contrary notwithstanding.  But with which of the nominatives the verb shall expressly agree, or to which of them it may most properly be understood, is a matter not easy to be settled by any sure general rule.  Nor is the lack of such a rule a very important defect, though the inculcation of a false or imperfect one may be.  So judged at least the ancient grammarians, who noticed and named almost every possible form of the zeugma, without censuring any as being ungrammatical.  In the Institutes of English Grammar, I noted first the usual form of this concord, and then the allowable exceptions; but a few late writers, we see, denounce every form of it, exceptions and all:  and, standing alone in their notions of the figure, value their own authority more than that of all other critics together.

OBS. 8.—­In English, as in other languages, when a verb has discordant nominatives connected disjunctively, it most commonly agrees expressly with that which is nearest, and only by implication, with the more remote; as, “When some word or words are dependent on the attribute.”—­Webster’s Philos.  Gram., p. 153.  “To the first of these qualities, dulness or refinements are dangerous enemies.”—­Brown’s Estimate, Vol. ii, p. 15.  “He hazards