OBS. 24.—­On the word never, Dr. Johnson remarks thus:  “It seems in some phrases to have the sense of an adjective, [meaning,] not any; but in reality it is not ever:  [as,] ‘He answered him to never a word.’  MATTHEW, xxvii, 14.”—­Quarto Dict. This mode of expression was formerly very common, and a contracted form of it is still frequently heard among the vulgar:  as, “Because he’d ne’er an other tub.”—­Hudibras, p. 102.  That is, “Because he had no other tub.”  “Letter nor line know I never a one.”—­Scott’s Lay of L. M., p. 27.  This is what the common people pronounce “ne’er a one,” and use in stead of neither or no one.  In like manner they contract ever a one into “e’er a one;” by which they mean either or any one.  These phrases are the same that somebody—­(I believe it is Smith, in his Inductive Grammar—­) has ignorantly written “ary one” and “nary one” calling them vulgarisms.[432] Under this mode of spelling, the critic had an undoubted right to think the terms unauthorized!  In the compounds of whoever or whoe’er, whichever or whiche’er, whatever or whate’er, the word ever or e’er, which formerly stood separate, appears to be an adjective, rather than an adverb; though, by becoming part of the pronoun, it has now technically ceased to be either.

OBS. 25.—­The same may be said of soever or soe’er, which is considered as only a part of an other word even when it is written separately; as, “On which side soever I cast my eyes.”  In Mark, iii, 28th, wherewithsoever is commonly printed as two words; but Alger, in his Pronouncing Bible, more properly makes it one.  Dr. Webster, in his grammars, calls soever a WORD; but, in his dictionaries, he does not define it as such.  “The word soever may be interposed between the attribute and the name; ’how clear soever this idea of infinity,’—­’how remote soever it may seem.’—­LOCKE.”—­Webster’s Philosophical Gram., p. 154; Improved Gram., p. 107.  “SOEVER, so and ever, found in compounds, as in whosoever, whatsoever, wheresoever.  See these words.”—­Webster’s Dict., 8vo.

OBS. 26.—­The word only, (i.e., onely, or onelike,) when it relates to a noun or a pronoun, is a definitive adjective, meaning single, alone, exclusive of others; as, “The only man,”—­“The only men,”—­“Man only,”—­“Men only,”—­“He only,”—­“They only.”  When it relates to a verb or a participle, it is an adverb of manner, and means simply, singly, merely, barely; as, “We fancy that we hate flattery, when we only hate the manner of it.”—­Art of Thinking, p. 38.  “A disinterested love of one’s country can only subsist in small republics.”—­Ib., p.