OBS. 11.—­In Greek and Latin, the pronoun of the first person, according to our critics, is generally[398] placed first; as, “[Greek:  Ego kai su ta dikaia poiaesomen].  Xen.”—­Milnes’s Gr.  Gram., p. 120.  That is, “Ego et tu justa faciemus.”  Again:  “Ego et Cicero valemus.  Cic.”—­Buchanan’s Pref., p. x; Adam’s Gram., 206; Gould’s, 203.  “I and Cicero are well.”—­Ib. But, in English, a modest speaker usually gives to others the precedence, and mentions himself last; as, “He, or thou, or I, must go.”—­“Thou and I will do what is right.”—­“Cicero and I are well.”—­Dr. Adam.[399] Yet, in speaking of himself and his dependants, a person most commonly takes rank before them; as, “Your inestimable letters supported myself, my wife, and children, in adversity.”—­Lucien Bonaparte, Charlemagne, p. v.  “And I shall be destroyed, I and my house.”—­Gen., xxxiv, 30.  And in acknowledging a fault, misfortune, or censure, any speaker may assume the first place; as, “Both I and thou are in the fault.”—­Adam’s Gram., p. 207.  “Both I and you are in fault.”—­Buchanan’s Syntax, p. ix.  “Trusty did not do it; I and Robert did it.”—­Edgeworth’s Stories.

   “With critic scales, weighs out the partial wit,
    What I, or you, or he, or no one writ.”
        —­Lloyd’s Poems, p. 162.

OBS. 12.—­According to the theory of this work, verbs themselves are not unfrequently connected, one to an other, by and, or, or nor; so that two or more of them, being properly in the same construction, may be parsed as agreeing with the same nominative:  as, “So that the blind and dumb [man] both spake and saw.”—­Matt., xii, 22.  “That no one might buy or sell.”—­Rev., xiii, 17.  “Which see not, nor hear, nor know.”—­Dan., v, 23.  We have certainly very many examples like these, in which it is neither convenient nor necessary to suppose an ellipsis of the nominative before the latter verb, or before all but the first, as most of our grammarians do, whenever they find two or more finite verbs connected in this manner.  It is true, the nominative may, in most instances, be repeated without injury to the sense; but this fact is no proof of such an ellipsis; because many a sentence which is not incomplete, may possibly take additional words without change of meaning.  But these authors, (as I have already suggested under the head of conjunctions,) have not been very careful of their own consistency.  If they teach, that, “Every finite verb has its own separate nominative, either expressed or implied,” which idea Murray and others seem to have gathered from Lowth; or if they say, that, “Conjunctions really unite sentences, when they appear to unite only words,” which notion they may have acquired