21.  Nor is this number, three, quite destitute of modern supporters; though most of these come at it in an other way.  D. St. Quentin, in his Rudiments of General Grammar, published in 1812, divides words into the “three general classes” last mentioned; viz., “1.  Nouns, 2.  Verbs, 3.  Particles.”—­P. 5.  Booth, who published the second edition of his etymological work in 1814, examining severally the ten parts of speech, and finding what he supposed to be the true origin of all the words in some of the classes, was led to throw one into an other, till he had destroyed seven of them.  Then, resolving that each word ought to be classed according to the meaning which its etymology fixes upon it, he refers the number of classes to nature, thus:  “If, then, each [word] has a meaning, and is capable of raising an idea in the mind, that idea must have its prototype in nature.  It must either denote an exertion, and is therefore a verb; or a quality, and is, in that case, an adjective; or it must express an assemblage of qualities, such as is observed to belong to some individual object, and is, on this supposition, the name of such object, or a noun. * * * We have thus given an account of the different divisions of words, and have found that the whole may be classed under the three heads of Names, Qualities, and Actions; or Nouns, Adjectives, and Verbs.”—­Introd. to Analyt.  Dict., p. 22.

22.  This notion of the parts of speech, as the reader will presently see, found an advocate also in the author of the popular little story of Jack Halyard.  It appears in his Philosophic Grammar published in Philadelphia in 1827.  Whether the writer borrowed it from Booth, or was led into it by the light of “nature,” I am unable to say:  he does not appear to have derived it from the ancients.  Now, if either he or the lexicographer has discovered in “nature” a prototype for this scheme of grammar, the discovery is only to be proved, and the schemes of all other grammarians, ancient or modern, must give place to it.  For the reader will observe that this triad of parts is not that which is mentioned by Vossius and Quintilian.  But authority may be found for reducing the number of the parts of speech yet lower.  Plato, according to Harris, and the first inquirers into language, according to Horne Tooke, made them two; nouns and verbs, which Crombie, Dalton, M’Culloch, and some others, say, are the only parts essentially necessary for the communication of our thoughts.  Those who know nothing about grammar, regard all words as of one class.  To them, a word is simply a word; and under what other name it may come, is no concern of theirs.