15.  They who cannot define a letter or a word, may be expected to err in explaining other grammatical terms.  In my opinion, nothing is well written, that can possibly be misunderstood; and if any definition be likely to suggest a wrong idea, this alone is enough to condemn it:  nor does it justify the phraseology, to say, that a more reasonable construction can be put upon it.  By Murray and others, the young learner is told, that, “A vowel is an articulate sound, that can be perfectly uttered by itself;” as if a vowel were nothing but a sound, and that a sort of echo, which can utter itself; and next, that, “A consonant is an articulate sound, which cannot be perfectly uttered without the help of a vowel.”  Now, by their own showing, every letter is either a vowel or a consonant; hence, according to these definitions, all the letters are articulate sounds.  And, if so, what is a “silent letter?” It is a silent articulate sound! Again:  ask a boy, “What is a triphthong?” He answers in the words of Murray, Weld, Pond, Smith, Adams, Kirkham, Merchant, Ingersoll, Bacon, Alger, Worcester, and others:  “A triphthong is the union of three vowels, pronounced in like manner:  as eau in beau, iew in view.”  He accurately cites an entire paragraph from his grammar, but does he well conceive how the three vowels in beau or view are “pronounced in like manner?” Again:  “A syllable is a sound, either simple or compound, pronounced by a single impulse of the voice.”—­Murray’s Gram., 8vo, p. 22.  This definition resolves syllables into sounds; whereas their true elements are letters.  It also mistakes the participle compounded for the adjective compound; whereas the latter only is the true reverse of simple.  A compound sound is a sound composed of others which may be separated; a sound compounded is properly that which is made an ingredient with others, but which may itself be simple.

16.  It is observable, that in their attempts to explain these prime elements of grammar, Murray, and many others who have copied him, overlook all written language; whereas their very science itself took its origin, name, and nature, from the invention of writing; and has consequently no bearing upon any dialect which has not been written.  Their definitions absurdly resolve letters, vowels, consonants, syllables, and words, all into sounds; as if none of these things had any existence on paper, or any significance to those who read in silence.  Hence, their explanations of all these elements, as well as of many other things equally essential to the study, are palpably erroneous.  I attribute this to the carelessness with which men have compiled or made up books of grammar; and that carelessness to those various circumstances, already described, which have left diligence in a grammarian no hope