4.  “Definitions,” says Duncan, in his Elements of Logic, “are intended to make known the meaning of words standing for complex ideas;[65] and were we always careful to form those ideas exactly in our minds, and copy our definitions from that appearance, much of the confusion and obscurity complained of in languages might be prevented.”—­P. 70.  Again he says:  “The writings of the mathematicians are a clear proof, how much the advancement of human knowledge depends upon a right use of definitions.”—­P. 72.  Mathematical science has been supposed to be, in its own nature, that which is best calculated to develop and strengthen the reasoning faculty; but, as speech is emphatically the discourse of reason, I am persuaded, that had the grammarians been equally clear and logical in their instructions, their science would never have been accounted inferior in this respect.  Grammar is perhaps the most comprehensive of all studies; but it is chiefly owing to the unskillfulness of instructors, and to the errors and defects of the systems in use, that it is commonly regarded as the most dry and difficult.

5.  “Poor Scaliger (who well knew what a definition should be) from his own melancholy experience exclaimed—­’Nihil infelicius grammatico definitore!’ Nothing is more unhappy than the grammatical definer.”—­Tooke’s Diversions, Vol. i, p. 238.  Nor do our later teachers appear to have been more fortunate in this matter.  A majority of all the definitions and rules contained in the great multitude of English grammars which I have examined, are, in some respect or other, erroneous.  The nature of their multitudinous faults, I must in general leave to the discernment of the reader, except the passages be such as may be suitably selected for examples of false syntax.  Enough, however, will be exhibited, in the course of this volume, to make the foregoing allegation credible; and of the rest a more accurate judgement may perhaps be formed, when they shall have been compared with what this work will present as substitutes.  The importance of giving correct definitions to philological terms, and of stating with perfect accuracy whatsoever is to be learned as doctrine, has never been duly appreciated.  The grand source of the disheartening difficulties encountered by boys in the study of grammar, lies in their ignorance of the meaning of words.  This cause of embarrassment is not to be shunned and left untouched; but, as far as possible, it ought to be removed.  In teaching grammar, or indeed any other science, we cannot avoid the use of many terms to which young learners may have attached no ideas.  Being little inclined or accustomed to reflection, they often hear, read, or even rehearse from memory, the plainest language that can be uttered, and yet have no very distinct apprehension of what it means.  What marvel then, that in a study abounding with terms taken in a peculiar or technical sense, many of which, in the common manuals, are either left undefined, or are explained but loosely or erroneously, they should often be greatly puzzled, and sometimes totally discouraged?