NOTE III.—­In English, the speaker should always mention himself last; unless his own superior dignity, or the confessional nature of the expression, warrant him in taking the precedence:  as, “Thou or I must go.”—­“He then addressed his discourse to my father and me.”—­“Ellen and I will seek, apart, the refuge of some forest cell.”—­Scott.  See Obs. 11th above.

NOTE IV.—­Two or more distinct subject phrases connected by or or nor, require a singular verb; and, if a nominative come after the verb, that must be singular also:  as, “That a drunkard should be poor, or that a fop should be ignorant, is not strange.”—­“To give an affront, or to take one tamely, is no mark of a great mind.”  So, when the phrases are unconnected:  as, “To spread suspicion, to invent calumnies, to propagate scandal, requires neither labour nor courage.”—­Rambler, No. 183.

NOTE V.—­In general, when verbs are connected by and, or, or nor, they must either agree in mood, tense, and form, or the simplest in form must be placed first; as, “So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh.”—­Isaiah, xxxvii, 37.  “For if I be an offender, or have committed any thing worthy of death, I refuse not to die.”—­Acts, xxv, 11.

NOTE VI.—­In stead of conjoining discordant verbs, it is in general better to repeat the nominative or insert a new one; as, “He was greatly heated, and [he] drank with avidity.”—­Murray’s Key, 8vo, p. 201.  “A person may be great or rich by chance; but cannot be wise or good, without taking pains for it.”—­Ib., p. 200.  Say,—­“but no one can be wise or good, without taking pains for it.”

NOTE VII.—­A mixture of the forms of the solemn style and the familiar, is inelegant, whether the verbs refer to the same nominative or have different ones expressed; as, “What appears tottering and in hazard of tumbling, produceth in the spectator the painful emotion of fear.”—­Kames, El. of Crit., ii, 356.  “And the milkmaid singeth blithe, And the mower whets his sithe.”—­Milton’s Allegro, l. 65 and 66.

NOTE VIII.—­To use different moods under precisely the same circumstances, is improper, even if the verbs have separate nominatives; as, “Bating that one speak and an other answers, it is quite the same.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 368.  Say,—­“that one speaks;” for both the speaking and the answering are assumed as facts.