OBS. 9.—­The definite article is often used by way of eminence, to distinguish some particular individual emphatically, or to apply to him some characteristic name or quality:  as, “The Stagirite,”—­that is, Aristotle; “The Psalmist,” that is, David; “Alexander the Great,”—­that is, (perhaps,) Alexander the Great Monarch, or Great Hero.  So, sometimes, when the phrase relates to a collective body of men:  as, “The Honourable, the Legislature,”—­“The Honourable, the Senate;”—­that is, “The Honourable Body, the Legislature,” &c.  A similar application of the article in the following sentences, makes a most beautiful and expressive form of compliment:  “These are the sacred feelings of thy heart, O Lyttleton, the friend.”—­Thomson.  “The pride of swains Palemon was, the generous and the rich.”—­Id. In this last example, the noun man is understood after “generous,” and again after “rich;” for, the article being an index to the noun, I conceive it to be improper ever to construe two articles as having reference to one unrepeated word.  Dr. Priestley says, “We sometimes repeat the article, when the epithet precedes the substantive; as He was met by the worshipful the magistrates.”—­Gram., p. 148.  It is true, we occasionally meet with such fulsome phraseology as this; but the question is, how is it to be explained?  I imagine that the word personages, or something equivalent, must be understood after worshipful, and that the Doctor ought to have inserted a comma there.

OBS. 10.—­In Greek, there is no article corresponding to our an or a, consequently man and a man are rendered alike; the word, [Greek:  anthropos] may mean either.  See, in the original, these texts:  “There was a man sent from God,” (John, i, 6,) and, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?”—­Heb., ii, 6.  So of other nouns.  But the definite article of that language, which is exactly equivalent to our the, is a declinable word, making no small figure in grammar.  It is varied by numbers, genders, and cases; so that it assumes more than twenty different forms, and becomes susceptible of six and thirty different ways of agreement.  But this article in English is perfectly simple, being entirely destitute of grammatical modifications, and consequently incapable of any form of grammatical agreement or disagreement—­a circumstance of which many of our grammarians seem to be ignorant; since they prescribe a rule, wherein they say, it “agrees,” “may agree,” or “must agree,” with its noun.  Nor has the indefinite article any variation of form, except the change from an to a, which has been made for the sake of brevity or euphony.