[128] This book has, probably, more recommenders than any other of the sort.  I have not patience to count them accurately, but it would seem that more than a thousand of the great and learned have certified to the world, that they never before had seen so good a spelling-book!  With personal knowledge of more than fifty of the signers, G. B. refused to add his poor name, being ashamed of the mischievous facility with which very respectable men had loaned their signatures.

[129] Scrat, for scratch. The word is now obsolete, and may be altered by taking ch in the correction.

[130] “Hairbrained, adj. This should rather be written harebrained; unconstant, unsettled, wild as a hare.”—­Johnson’s Dict. Webster writes it harebrained, as from hare and brain.  Worcester, too, prefers this form.

[131] “The whole number of verbs in the English language, regular and irregular, simple and compounded, taken together, is about 4,300.  See, in Dr. Ward’s Essays on the English language, the catalogue of English verbs.  The whole number of irregular verbs, the defective included, is about 176.”—­Lowth’s Gram., Philad., 1799, p. 59.  Lindley Murray copied the first and the last of these three sentences, but made the latter number “about 177.”—­Octavo Gram., p. 109; Duodecimo, p. 88.  In the latter work, he has this note:  “The whole number of words, in the English language, is about thirty-five thousand.”—­Ib. Churchill says, “The whole number of verbs in the English language, according to Dr. Ward, is about 4,300.  The irregulars, including the auxilaries [sic—­KTH], scarcely exceed 200.”—­New Gram., p. 113.  An other late author has the following enumeration:  “There are in the English language about twenty thousand five hundred nouns, forty pronouns, eight thousand verbs, nine thousand two hundred adnouns, two thousand six hundred adverbs, sixty-nine prepositions, nineteen conjunctions, and sixty-eight interjections; in all, above forty thousand words.”—­Rev. David Blair’s Gram., p. 10.  William Ward, M. A., in an old grammar undated, which speaks of Dr. Lowth’s as one with which the public had “very lately been favoured,” says:  “There are four Thousand and about Five Hundred Verbs in the English [language].”—­Ward’s Practical Gram., p. 52.

[132] These definitions are numbered here, because each of them is the first of a series now begun.  In class rehearsals, the pupils may be required to give the definitions in turn; and, to prevent any from losing the place, it is important that the numbers be mentioned.  When all have become sufficiently familiar with the definitions, the exercise may be performed without them. They are to be read or repeated till faults disappear—­or till the teacher is satisfied with the performance.  He may then save time, by commanding his class to proceed more briefly; making such distinctions as are required in the praxis, but ceasing to explain the terms employed; that is, omitting all the definitions, for brevity’s sake. This remark is applicable likewise to all the subsequent praxes of etymological parsing.]