[61] Many other grammars, later than Murray’s, have been published, some in England, some in America, and some in both countries; and among these there are, I think, a few in which a little improvement has been made, in the methods prescribed for the exercises of parsing and correcting.  In most, however, nothing of the kind has been attempted.  And, of the formularies which have been given, the best that I have seen, are still miserably defective, and worthy of all the censure that is expressed in the paragraph above; while others, that appear in works not entirely destitute of merit, are absolutely much worse than Murray’s, and worthy to condemn to a speedy oblivion the books in which they are printed.  In lieu of forms of expression, clear, orderly, accurate, and full; such as a young parser might profitably imitate; such as an experienced one would be sure to approve; what have we?  A chaos of half-formed sentences, for the ignorant pupil to flounder in; an infinite abyss of blunders, which a world of criticism could not fully expose!  See, for example, the seven pages of parsing, in the neat little book entitled, “A Practical Grammar of the English Language, by the Rev. David Blair:  Seventh Edition:  London, 1815:”  pp. 49 to 57.  I cannot consent to quote more than one short paragraph of the miserable jumble which these pages contain.  Yet the author is evidently a man of learning, and capable of writing well on some subjects, if not on this.  “Bless the Lord, O my soul!” Form:  “Bless, a verb, (repeat 97); active (repeat 99); active voice (102); infinitive mood (107); third person, soul being the nominative (118); present tense (111); conjugate the verb after the pattern (129); its object is Lord (99).”—­Blair’s Gram., p. 50.  Of the paragraphs referred to, I must take some notice:  “107.  The imperative mood commands or orders or intreats.”—­Ib., p. 19. “118.  The second person is always the pronoun thou or you in the singular, and ye or you in the plural.”—­Ib., p. 21. “111.  The imperative mood has no distinction of tense:  and the infinitive has no distinction of persons.”—­Ib., p. 20.  Now the author should have said:  “Bless is a redundant active-transitive verb, from bless, blessed or blest, blessing, blessed or blest; found in the imperative mood, present tense, second person, and singular number:”  and, if he meant to parse the word syntactically, he should have added:  “and agrees with its nominative thou understood; according to the rule which says, ’Every finite verb must agree with its subject or nominative, in person and number.’  Because the meaning is—­Bless thou the Lord.”  This is the whole story.  But, in the form above, several things are false; many, superfluous; some, deficient; several, misplaced; nothing, right.  Not much better are the models furnished by Kirkham, Smith, Lennie, Bullions, and other late authors.