OBS. 14.—­Of two prepositions coming together between the same terms of relation, and sometimes connected in the same construction, I have given several plain examples in this chapter, and in the tenth chapter of Etymology, a very great number, all from sources sufficiently respectable.  But, in many of our English grammars, there is a stereotyped remark on this point, originally written by Priestley, which it is proper here to cite, as an other specimen of the Doctor’s hastiness, and of the blind confidence of certain compilers and copyists:  “Two different prepositions must be improper in the same construction, and in the same sentence:  [as,] The combat between thirty Britons, against twenty English.  Smollett’s Voltaire, Vol. 2, p. 292.”—­Priestley’s Gram., p. 156.  Lindley Murray and others have the same remark, with the example altered thus:  “The combat between thirty French against twenty English.”—­Murray’s Gram., 8vo, p. 200; Smith’s New Gram., 167:  Fisk’s, 142; Ingersoll’s, 228.  W. Allen has it thus:  “Two different prepositions in the same construction are improper; as, a combat between twenty French against thirty English.”—­Elements of E. Gram., p. 179.  He gives the odds to the latter party.  Hiley, with no expense of thought, first takes from Murray, as he from Priestley, the useless remark, “Different relations, and different senses, must be expressed by different prepositions;” and then adds, “One relation must not, therefore, be expressed by two different prepositions in the same clause; thus, ’The combat between thirty French against thirty English,’ should be, ’The combat between thirty French and thirty English.’”—­Hiley’s E. Gram., p 97.  It is manifest that the error of this example is not in the use of two prepositions, nor is there any truth or fitness in the note or notes made on it by all these critics; for had they said, “The combat of thirty French against twenty English,” there would still be two prepositions, but where would be the impropriety, or where the sameness of construction, which they speak of? Between is incompatible with against, only because it requires two parties or things for its own regimen; as, “The combat between thirty Frenchmen and twenty Englishmen.”  This is what Smollett should have written, to make sense with the word “between.”

OBS. 15.—­With like implicitness, Hiley excepted, these grammarians and others have adopted from Lowth an observation in which the learned doctor has censured quite too strongly the joint reference of different prepositions to the same objective noun:  to wit, “Some writers separate the preposition from its noun, in order to connect different prepositions to the same noun; as, ’To suppose the zodiac and planets to be efficient of, and antecedent