26.  Dr. Webster says, in a marginal note to the preface of his Philosophical Grammar, “Since the days of Wallis, who published a Grammar of the English Language, in Latin, in the reign of Charles II.[,] from which Johnson and Lowth borrowed most of their rules, little improvement has been made in English grammar.  Lowth supplied some valuable criticisms, most of which however respect obsolete phrases; but many of his criticisms are extremely erroneous, and they have had an ill effect, in perverting the true idioms of our language.  Priestley furnished a number of new and useful observations on the peculiar phrases of the English language.  To which may be added some good remarks of Blair and Campbell, interspersed with many errors.  Murray, not having mounted to the original sources of information, and professing only to select and arrange the rules and criticisms of preceding writers, has furnished little or nothing new.  Of the numerous compilations of inferior character, it may be affirmed, that they have added nothing to the stock of grammatical knowledge.”  And the concluding sentence of this work, as well as of his Improved Grammar, published in 1831, extends the censure as follows:  “It is not the English language only whose history and principles are yet to be illustrated; but the grammars and dictionaries of all other languages, with which I have any acquaintance, must be revised and corrected, before their elements and true construction can be fully understood.”  In an advertisement to the grammar prefixed to his quarto American Dictionary, the Doctor is yet more severe upon books of this sort.  “I close,” says he, “with the single remark, that from all the observations I have been able to make, I am convinced the dictionaries and grammars which have been used in our seminaries of learning for the last forty or fifty years, are so incorrect and imperfect that they have introduced or sanctioned more errors than they have amended; in other words, had the people of England and of these States been left to learn the pronunciation and construction of their vernacular language solely by tradition, and the reading of good authors, the language would have been spoken and written with more purity than it has been and now is, by those who have learned to adjust their language by the rules which dictionaries prescribe.”

27.  Little and much are but relative terms; yet when we look back to the period in which English grammar was taught only in Latin, it seems extravagant to say, that “little improvement has been made” in it since.  I have elsewhere expressed a more qualified sentiment.  “That the grammar of our language has made considerable progress since the days of Swift, who wrote a petty treatise on the subject, is sufficiently evident; but whoever considers what remains to be done, cannot but perceive how ridiculous are many of the boasts and felicitations which we have heard on that topic.” [77] Some further