Words necessary to the sense, or even to the melody or beauty of a sentence, ought seldom, if ever, to be omitted.

CRITICAL NOTE XI.—­OF LITERARY BLUNDERS.

Grave blunders made in the name of learning, are the strongest of all certificates against the books which contain them unreproved.

CRITICAL NOTE XII.—­OF PERVERSIONS.

Proof-texts in grammar, if not in all argument, should be quoted literally; and even that which needs to be corrected, must never be perverted.

CRITICAL NOTE XIII.—­OF AWKWARDNESS.

Awkwardness, or inelegance of expression, is a reprehensible defect in style, whether it violate any of the common rules of syntax or not.

CRITICAL NOTE XIV.—­OF IGNORANCE.

Any use of words that implies ignorance of their meaning, or of their proper orthography, is particularly unscholarlike; and, in proportion to the author’s pretensions to learning, disgraceful.

CRITICAL NOTE XV.—­OF SILLINESS.  Silly remarks and idle truisms are traits of a feeble style, and, when their weakness is positive, or inherent, they ought to be entirely omitted.  CRITICAL NOTE XVI.—­OF THE INCORRIGIBLE.

Passages too erroneous for correction, may be criticised, orally or otherwise, and then passed over without any attempt to amend them.[445]

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX.

OBS. 1.—­In the foregoing code of syntax, the author has taken the parts of speech in their order, and comprised all the general principles of relation, agreement, and government, in twenty-four leading Rules.  Of these rules, eight—­(namely, the 1st, of Articles; the 4th, of Possessives; the 9th, of Adjectives; the 20th, of Participles; the 21st, of Adverbs; the 22d, of Conjunctions; the 23d, of Prepositions; and the 24th, of Interjections—­) are used only in parsing.  The remaining sixteen, because they embrace principles that are sometimes violated in practice, answer the double purpose of parsing and correcting.  The Exceptions, of which there are thirty-two, (all occasionally applicable in parsing,) belong to nine different rules, and refer to all the parts of speech, except nouns and interjections.  The Notes, of which there are one hundred and fifty-two, are subordinate rules of syntax, not designed to be used in parsing, but formed for the exposition and correction of so many different forms of false grammar.  The Observations, of which there are, in this part of the work, without the present series, four hundred and ninety-seven, are designed not only to defend and confirm the doctrines adopted by the author, but to explain the arrangement of words, and whatever is difficult or peculiar in construction.