his own country, the introduction of the semicolon, had not the power to prevent it forever.  In short, to leave no literary extravagance unbroached, the latter point also has not lacked a modern impugner.  “One of the greatest improvements in punctuation,” says Justin Brenan, “is the rejection of the eternal semicolons of our ancestors.  In latter times, the semicolon has been gradually disappearing, not only from the newspapers, but from books.”—­Brenan’s “Composition and Punctuation familiarly Explained", p. 100; London, 1830.  The colon and the semicolon are both useful, and, not unfrequently, necessary; and all correct writers will, I doubt not, continue to use both.

OBS. 7—­Since Dr. Blair published his emphatic caution against too frequent a use of parentheses, there has been, if not an abatement of the kind of error which he intended to censure, at least a diminution in the use of the curves, the sign of a parenthesis.  These, too, some inconsiderate grammarians now pronounce to be out of vogue.  “The parenthesis is now generally exploded as a deformity.”—­Churchill’s Gram., p. 362.  “The Parenthesis, () has become nearly obsolete, except in mere references, and the like; its place, by modern writers, being usually supplied by the use of the comma, and the dash.”—­Nutting’s Practical Gram., p. 126; Frazee’s Improved Grammar, p. 187.  More use may have been made of the curves than was necessary, and more of the parenthesis itself than was agreeable to good taste; but, the sign being well adapted to the construction, and the construction being sometimes sprightly and elegant, there are no good reasons for wishing to discard either of them; nor is it true, that the former “has become nearly obsolete.”

OBS. 8—­The name parenthesis is, which literally means a putting-in-between, is usually applied both to the curves, and to the incidental clause which they enclose.  This twofold application of the term involves some inconvenience, if not impropriety.  According to Dr. Johnson, the enclosed “sentence” alone is the parenthesis; but Worcester, agreeably to common usage, defines the word as meaning also “the mark thus ().”  But, as this sign consists of two distinct parts, two corresponding curves, it seems more natural to use a plural name:  hence L. Murray, when he would designate the sign only, adopted a plural expression; as, “the parenthetical characters,”—­“the parenthetical marks.”  So, in another case, which is similar:  “the hooks in which words are included,” are commonly called crotchets or brackets; though Bucke, in his Classical Grammar, I know not why, calls the two “[ ] a Crotchet;” (p. 23;) and Webster, in his octavo Dictionary, defines a “Bracket, in printing,” as Johnson does a “Crotchet” by a plural noun:  “hooks; thus, [ ].”  Again, in his grammars, Dr. Webster