plainly gives his vote for that common scheme which he first condemned, he does not adopt it without “some slight alterations;” and in contriving these alterations he is inconsistent with his own professions.  He makes the parts of speech eight, thus:  “1.  The name or noun; 2.  The pronoun or substitute; 3.  The adjective, attribute, or attributive; 4.  The verb; 5.  The adverb; 6.  The preposition; 7.  The connective or conjunction; 8.  The exclamation or interjection.”  In his Rudiments of English Grammar, published in 1811, “to unfold the true principles of the language,” his parts of speech were seven; “viz. 1.  Names or nouns; 2.  Substitutes or pronouns; 3.  Attributes or adjectives; 4.  Verbs, with their participles; 5.  Modifiers or adverbs; 6.  Prepositions; 7.  Connectives or conjunctions.”  In his Philosophical and Practical Grammar, published in 1807, a book which professes to teach “the only legitimate principles, and established usages,” of the language, a twofold division of words is adopted; first, into two general classes, primary and secondary; then into “seven species or parts of speech,” the first two belonging to the former class, the other five to the latter; thus:  “1.  Names or nouns; 2.  Verbs; 3.  Substitutes; 4.  Attributes; 5.  Modifiers; 6.  Prepositions; 7.  Connectives.”  In his “Improved Grammar of the English Language,” published in 1831, the same scheme is retained, but the usual names are preferred.

18.  How many different schemes of classification this author invented, I know not; but he might well have saved himself the trouble of inventing any; for, so far as appears, none of his last three grammars ever came to a second edition.  In the sixth edition of his “Plain and Comprehensive Grammar, grounded on the true principles and idioms of the language,” a work which his last grammatical preface affirms to have been originally fashioned “on the model of Lowth’s,” the parts of speech are reckoned “six; nouns, articles, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and abbreviations or particles.”  This work, which he says “was extensively used in the schools of this country,” and continued to be in demand, he voluntarily suppressed; because, after a profitable experiment of four and twenty years, he found it so far from being grounded on “true principles,” that the whole scheme then appeared to him incorrigibly bad.  And, judging from this sixth edition, printed in 1800, the only one which I have seen, I cannot but concur with him in the opinion.  More than one half of the volume is a loose Appendix composed chiefly of notes taken from Lowth and Priestley; and there is a great want of method in what was meant for the body of the work.  I imagine his several editions must have been different grammars with the same title; for such things are of no uncommon occurrence, and I cannot otherwise account for the assertion that this book was compiled “on the model of Lowth’s, and on the same principles as [those on which] Murray has constructed his.”—­Advertisement in Webster’s Quarto Dict., 1st Ed.