The Grammar of English Grammars eBook

Goold Brown
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,149 pages of information about The Grammar of English Grammars.

The Grammar of English Grammars eBook

Goold Brown
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,149 pages of information about The Grammar of English Grammars.
and apply the rule which their assumed construction requires.  But let it be remembered, that adverbs, as such, neither relate to nouns, nor assume the nature of cases:  but express the time, place, degree, or manner, of actions or qualities.  In some instances in which their construction may seem not to be reconcilable with the common rule, there may be supposed an ellipsis of a verb or a participle:[428] as, “From Monday to Saturday inclusively.”—­Webster’s Dict. Here, the Doctor ought to have used a comma after Saturday; for the adverb relates, not to that noun, but to the word reckoned, understood.  “It was well said by Roscommon, ’too faithfully is pedantically.’”—­Com.  Sch.  Journal, i, 167.  This saying I suppose to mean, “To do a thing too faithfully, is, to do it pedantically.”  “And, [I say] truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.”—­Heb., xi, 15.

OBS 7.—­To abbreviate expressions, and give them vivacity, verbs of self-motion (such as go, come, rise, get, &c.) are sometimes suppressed, being suggested to the mind by an emphatic adverb, which seems to be put for the verb, but does in fact relate to it understood; as,

“I’ll hence to London, on a serious matter.”—­Shak.  Supply “go.”

“I’ll in.  I’ll in.  Follow your friend’s counsel.  I’ll in”—­Id. Supply “get.”

Away, old man; give me thy hand; away.”—­Id. Supply “come.”

“Love hath wings, and will away”—­Waller.  Supply “fly.”

Up, up, Glentarkin! rouse thee, ho!”—­Scott.  Supply “spring.”

“Henry the Fifth is crowned; up, vanity!” Supply “stand.”

Down, royal state! all you sage counsellors, hence!”—­Shak. Supply “fall,” and “get you.”

“But up, and enter now into full bliss.”—­Milton.  Supply “rise.”

OBS. 8.—­We have, on some occasions, a singular way of expressing a transitive action imperatively, or emphatically, by adding the preposition with to an adverb of direction; as, up with it, down with it, in with it, out with it, over with it, away with it, and the like; in which construction, the adverb seems to be used elliptically as above, though the insertion of the verb would totally enervate or greatly alter the expression.  Examples:  “She up with her fist, and took him on the face.”—­Sydney, in Joh.  Dictionary. “Away with him!”—­Acts, xxi, 36. “Away with such a fellow from the earth.”—­Ib., xxii, 22.  “The calling of assemblies I cannot away with”—­Isaiah, i, 13. “Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse.”—­Milton’s Comus.  Ingersoll says, “Sometimes a

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