OBS. 19.—­This use of whom after than has greatly puzzled and misled our grammarians; many of whom have thence concluded that than must needs be, at least in this instance, a preposition,[435] and some have extended the principle beyond this, so as to include than which, than whose with its following noun, and other nominatives which they will have to be objectives; as, “I should seem guilty of ingratitude, than which nothing is more shameful.”  See Russell’s Gram., p. 104.  “Washington, than whose fame naught earthly can be purer.”—­Peirce’s Gram., p. 204.  “You have given him more than I.  You have sent her as much as he.”—­Buchanan’s Eng.  Syntax, p. 116.  These last two sentences are erroneously called by their author, “false syntax;” not indeed with a notion that than and as are prepositions, but on the false supposition that the preposition to must necessarily be understood between them and the pronouns, as it is between the preceding verbs and the pronouns him and her.  But, in fact, “You have given him more than I,” is perfectly good English; the last clause of which plainly means—­“more than I have given him.”  And, “You have sent her as much as he,” will of course be understood to mean—­“as much as he has sent her;” but here, because the auxiliary implied is different from the one expressed, it might have been as well to have inserted it:  thus, “You have sent her as much as he has.”  “She reviles you as much as he,” is also good English, though found, with the foregoing, among Buchanan’s examples of “false syntax.”

OBS. 20.—­Murray’s twentieth Rule of syntax avers, that, “When the qualities of different things are compared, the latter noun or pronoun is not governed by the conjunction than or as, but agrees with the verb,” &c.—­Octavo Gram., p. 214; Russell’s Gram., 103; Bacon’s, 51; Alger’s, 71; Smith’s, 179; Fisk’s, 138.  To this rule, the great Compiler and most of his followers say, that than whom “is an exception.” or “seems to form an exception;” to which they add, that, “the phrase is, however, avoided by the best modern writers.”—­Murray, i, 215.  This latter assertion Russell conceives to be untrue:  the former he adopts; and, calling than whom “an exception to the general rule,” says of it, (with no great consistency,) “Here the conjunction than has certainly the force of a preposition, and supplies its place by governing the relative.”—­Russell’s Abridgement of Murray’s Gram., p. 104.  But this is hardly an instance to which one would apply the maxim elsewhere adopted by Murray:  “Exceptio probat regulam.”—­Octavo Gram., p. 205.  To ascribe to a conjunction the governing power of a preposition, is a very wide step, and quite too much like straddling the line which separates these parts of speech one from the other.