[10] The Latin word for participle is participium, which makes participio in the dative or the ablative case; but the Latin word for partake is participo, and not “participio.”—­G.  BROWN.

[11] This sentence is manifestly bad English:  either the singular verb “appears” should be made plural, or the plural noun “investigations” should be made singular.—­G.  BROWN.

[12] “What! a book have no merit, and yet be called for at the rate of sixty thousand copies a year!  What a slander is this upon the public taste!  What an insult to the understanding and discrimination of the good people of these United States!  According to this reasoning, all the inhabitants of our land must be fools, except one man, and that man is GOOLD BROWN!”—­KIRKHAM, in the Knickerbocker, Oct. 1837, p. 361.

Well may the honest critic expect to be called a slanderer of “the public taste,” and an insulter of the nation’s “understanding,” if both the merit of this vaunted book and the wisdom of its purchasers are to be measured and proved by the author’s profits, or the publisher’s account of sales!  But, possibly, between the intrinsic merit and the market value of some books there may be a difference.  Lord Byron, it is said, received from Murray his bookseller, nearly ten dollars a line for the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold, or about as much for every two lines as Milton obtained for the whole of Paradise Lost.  Is this the true ratio of the merit of these authors, or of the wisdom of the different ages in which they lived?

[13] Kirkham’s real opinion of Murray cannot be known from this passage only.  How able is that writer who is chargeable with the greatest want of taste and discernment?  “In regard to the application of the final pause in reading blank verse, nothing can betray a greater want of rhetorical taste and philosophical acumen, than the directions of Mr. Murray.”—­Kirkham’s Elocution, p. 145.  Kirkham is indeed no judge either of the merits, or of the demerits, of Murray’s writings; nor is it probable that this criticism originated with himself.  But, since it appears in his name, let him have the credit of it, and of representing the compiler whom he calls “that able writer” and “that eminent philologist,” as an untasteful dunce, and a teacher of nonsense:  “To say that, unless we ’make every line sensible to the ear,’ we mar the melody, and suppress the numbers of the poet, is all nonsense.”—­Ibid. See Murray’s Grammar, on “Poetical Pauses;” 8vo, p. 260; 12mo, 210.

[14] “Now, in these instances, I should be fair game, were it not for the trifling difference, that I happen to present the doctrines and notions of other writers, and NOT my own, as stated by my learned censor.”—­KIRKHAM, in the Knickerbocker, Oct. 1837, p. 360.  If the instructions above cited are not his own, there is not, within the lids of either book, a penny’s worth that is.  His fruitful copy-rights are void in law:  the “learned censor’s” pledge shall guaranty this issue.—­G.  B. 1838.