31.  The treatises of the learned doctors Harris, Lowth, Johnson, Ash, Priestley, Horne Tooke, Crombie, Coote, and Webster, owe their celebrity not so much to their intrinsic fitness for school instruction, as to the literary reputation of the writers.  Of Harris’s Hermes, (which, in comparison with our common grammars, is indeed a work of much ingenuity and learning, full of interesting speculations, and written with great elegance both of style and method,) Dr. Lowth says, it is “the most beautiful and perfect example of analysis, that has been exhibited since the days of Aristotle.”—­Preface to Gram., p. x.  But these two authors, if their works be taken together, as the latter intended they should be, supply no sufficient course of English grammar.  The instructions of the one are too limited, and those of the other are not specially directed to the subject.

32. Dr. Johnson, who was practically one of the greatest grammarians that ever lived, and who was very nearly coetaneous with both Harris and Lowth, speaks of the state of English grammar in the following terms:  “I found our speech copious without order, and energetick without rules:  wherever I turned my view, there was perplexity to be disentangled, and confusion to be regulated.”—­Preface to Dict., p. 1.  Again:  “Having therefore no assistance but from general grammar, I applied myself to the perusal of our writers; and noting whatever might be of use to ascertain or illustrate any word or phrase, accumulated in time the materials of a dictionary.”—­Ibid. But it is not given to any one man to do every thing; else, Johnson had done it.  His object was, to compile a dictionary, rather than to compose a grammar, of our language.  To lexicography, grammar is necessary, as a preparation; but, as a purpose, it is merely incidental.  Dr. Priestley speaks of Johnson thus:  “I must not conclude this preface, without making my acknowledgements to Mr. Johnson, whose admirable dictionary has been of the greatest use to me in the study of our language.  It is pity he had not formed as just, and as extensive an idea of English grammar.  Perhaps this very useful work may still be reserved for his distinguished abilities in this way.”—­Priestley’s Grammar, Preface, p. xxiii.  Dr. Johnson’s English Grammar is all comprised in fourteen pages, and of course it is very deficient.  The syntax he seems inclined entirely to omit, as (he says) Wallis did, and Ben Jonson had better done; but, for form’s sake, he condescends to bestow upon it ten short lines.