to say, “Ah he!” the nominative being our only case absolute.  But if any will insist that “Ah him!” is good English, they must suppose that him is governed by something understood; as, “Ah!  I lament him;” or, “Ah! I mourn for him.”  And possibly, on this principle, the example referred to may be most correct as it stands, with the pronoun in the objective case:  “Ah Him! the first great martyr in this great cause.”—­D.  WEBSTER:  Peirce’s Gram., p. 199.

OBS. 11.—­If we turn to the Latin syntax, to determine by analogy what case is used, or ought to be used, after our English interjections, in stead of finding a “perfect accordance” between that syntax and the rule for which such accordance has been claimed, we see at once an utter repugnance, and that the pretence of their agreement is only a sample of Kirkham’s unconscionable pedantry.  The rule, in all its modifications, is based on the principle, that the choice of cases depends on the distinction of persons—­a principle plainly contrary to the usage of the Latin classics, and altogether untrue.  In Latin, some interjections are construed with the nominative, the accusative, or the vocative; some, only with the dative; some, only with the vocative.  But, in English, these four cases are all included in two, the nominative and the objective; and, the case independent or absolute being necessarily the nominative, it follows that the objective, if it occur after an interjection, must be the object of something which is capable of governing it.  If any disputant, by supposing ellipses, will make objectives of what I call nominatives absolute, so be it; but I insist that interjections, in fact, never “require” or “govern” one case more than an other.  So Peirce, and Kirkham, and Ingersoll, with pointed self-contradiction, may continue to make “the independent case,” whether vocative or merely exclamatory, the subject of a verb, expressed or understood; but I will content myself with endeavouring to establish a syntax not liable to this sort of objection.  In doing this, it is proper to look at all the facts which go to show what is right, or wrong. “Lo, the poor Indian!” is in Latin, “Ecce pauper Indus!” or, “Ecce pauperem Indum!” This use of either the nominative or the accusative after ecce, if it proves any thing concerning the case of the word Indian, proves it doubtful.  Some, it seems, pronounce it an objective.  Some, like Murray, say nothing about it.  Following the analogy of our own language, I refer it to the nominative absolute, because there is nothing to determine it to be otherwise.  In the examples. “Heu me miserum! Ah wretch that I am!”—­(Grant’s Latin Gram., p. 263.) and “Miser ego homo! O wretched man that I am!”—­(Rom., vii, 24,) if the word that is a relative pronoun, as I incline to think it is, the case of the nouns wretch and man does not depend on any other words, either expressed or implied.  They are therefore nominatives absolute, according to Rule 8th, though the Latin words may be most properly explained on the principle of ellipsis.