OBS. 12.—­Of some impenetrable blockhead, Horace, telling how himself was vexed, says:  “O te, Bollane, cerebri Felicem! aiebam tacitus.”—­Lib. i, Sat. ix, 11.  Literally:  “O thee, Bollanus, happy of brain! said I to myself.”  That is, “O! I envy thee,” &c.  This shows that O does not “require the nominative case of the second person” after it, at least, in Latin.  Neither does oh or ah:  for, if a governing word be suggested, the objective may be proper; as, “Whom did he injure?  Ah! thee, my boy?”—­or even the possessive; as, “Whose sobs do I hear?  Oh! thine, my child?” Kirkham tells us truly, (Gram., p. 126,) that the exclamation “O my” is frequently heard in conversation.  These last resemble Lucan’s use of the genitive, with an ellipsis of the governing noun:  “O miserae sortis!” i.e., “O [men] of miserable lot!” In short, all the Latin cases as well as all the English, may possibly occur after one or other of the interjections.  I have instanced all but the ablative, and the following is literally an example of that, though the word quanto is construed adverbially:  “Ah, quanto satius est!”—­Ter.  And., ii, 1.  “Ah, how much better it is!” I have also shown, by good authorities, that the nominative of the first person, both in English and in Latin, may be properly used after those interjections which have been supposed to require or govern the objective.  But how far is analogy alone a justification?  Is “O thee” good English, because “O te” is good Latin?  No:  nor is it bad for the reason which our grammarians assign, but because our best writers never use it, and because O is more properly the sign of the vocative.  The literal version above should therefore be changed; as, “O Bollanus, thou happy numskull! said I to myself.”

OBS. 13—­Allen Fisk, “author of Adam’s Latin Grammar Simplified,” and of “Murray’s English Grammar Simplified,” sets down for “False Syntax” not only that hackneyed example, “Oh! happy we,” &c., but, “O!  You, who love iniquity,” and, “Ah! you, who hate the light.”—­Fisk’s E. Gram., p. 144.  But, to imagine that either you or we is wrong here, is certainly no sing of a great linguist; and his punctuation is very inconsistent both with his own rule of syntax and with common practice.  An interjection set off by a comma or an exclamation point, is of course put absolute singly, or by itself.  If it is to be read as being put absolute with something else, the separation is improper.  One might just as well divide a preposition from its object, as an interjection from the case which it is supposed to govern.  Yet we find here not only such a division as Murray sometimes improperly adopted, but in one instance a total separation, with a capital following; as, “O!  You, who love iniquity,” for, “O you who love iniquity!” or “O