Bullions, on page 131, pronounces “quite unnecessary,” and inserts in his own formule on page 132; ninthly, the distinction of adverbs as expressing time, place, degree, or manner; tenthly, the distinction of conjunctions as copulative or disjunctive; lastly, the distinction of interjections as indicating different emotions.  All these things does their completest specimen of etymological parsing lack, while it is grossly encumbered with parentheses of syntax, which “must be omitted till the pupil get the rules of syntax.”—­Lennie, p. 51.  It is also vitiated with several absurdities, contradictions, and improper changes of expression:  as, “His, the third personal pronoun;” (B., p. 23;)—­“me, the first personal pronoun;” (Id., 74;)—­“A, The indefinite article;” (Id., 73;)—­“a, an article, the indefinite;” (Id., 74;)—­“When the verb is passive, parse thus:  ’A verb active, in the passive voice, regular, irregular,’ &c.”—­Bullions, p. 131.  In stead of teaching sufficiently, as elements of etymological parsing, the definitions which belong to this exercise, and then dismissing them for the principles of syntax, Dr. Bullions encumbers his method of syntactical parsing with such a series of etymological questions and answers as cannot but make it one of the slowest, longest, and most tiresome ever invented.  He thinks that the pupil, after parsing any word syntactically, “should be requested to assign a reason for every thing contained in his statement!”—­Principles of E. Grammar, p. 131.  And the teacher is to ask questions as numerous as the reasons!  Such is the parsing of a text-book which has been pronounced “superior to any other, for use in our common schools”—­“a complete grammar of the language, and available for every purpose for which Mr. Brown’s can possibly be used.”—­Ralph K. Finch’s Report, p, 12.

[63] There are many other critics, besides Murray and Alger, who seem not to have observed the import of after and before in connexion with the tenses.  Dr. Bullions, on page 139th of his English Grammar, copied the foregoing example from Lennie, who took it from Murray.  Even Richard Hiley, and William Harvey Wells, grammarians of more than ordinary tact, have been obviously misled by the false criticism above cited.  One of Hiley’s Rules of Syntax, with its illustration, stands thus:  “In the use of the different tenses, we must particularly observe to use that tense which clearly and properly conveys the sense intended; thus, instead of saying, ‘After I visited Europe, I returned to America;’ we should say, ’After I had visited Europe, I returned to America.”—­Hiley’s Gram., p. 90.  Upon this he thought it needful to comment thus:  “’After I visited Europe, I returned to America;’ this sentence is incorrect; visited ought to be had visited,