OBS. 11.—­As an or a conveys the idea of unity, of course it applies to no other than nouns of the singular number. An eagle is one eagle, and the plural word eagles denotes more than one; but what could possibly be meant by “ans eagles,” if such a phrase were invented?  Harris very strangely says, “The Greeks have no article correspondent to an or a, but supply its place by a NEGATION of their article.  And even in English, where the article a cannot be used, as in plurals, its force is exprest by the same NEGATION.”—­Harris’s Hermes, p. 218.  What a sample of grammar is this!  Besides several minor faults, we have here a nonentity, a NEGATION of the Greek article, made to occupy a place in language, and to express force! The force of what?  Of a plural an or a,! of such a word as ans or aes! The error of the first of these sentences, Dr. Blair has copied entire into his eighth lecture.

OBS. 12.—­The following rules of agreement, though found in many English grammars, are not only objectionable with respect to the sense intended, but so badly written as to be scarcely intelligible in any sense:  1.  “The article a or an agrees with nouns in the singular number only, individually, or collectively:  as, A Christian, an infidel, a score, a thousand.” 2.  “The definite article the may agree with nouns in the singular AND[135] plural number:  as, The garden, the houses, the stars.”—­Murray’s Gram., 8vo, p. 170; 12mo, 139; Fish’s Murray, 98; a Teacher’s, 45.  For the purpose of preventing any erroneous construction of the articles, these rules are utterly useless; and for the purpose of syntactical parsing, or the grammatical resolution of this part of speech, they are awkward and inconvenient.  The syntax of the articles may be much better expressed in this manner:  “Articles relate to the nouns which they limit,” for, in English, the bearing of the articles upon other words is properly that of simple relation, or dependence, according to the sense, and not that of agreement, not a similarity of distinctive modifications.

OBS. 13.—­Among all the works of earlier grammarians, I have never yet found a book which taught correctly the application of the two forms of the indefinite article an or a.  Murray, contrary to Johnson and Webster, considers a to be the original word, and an the euphonic derivative.  He says:  “A becomes an before a vowel, and before a silent h.  But if the h be sounded, the a only is to be used.”—­Murray’s Gram., p. 31.  To this he adds, in a marginal note, “A instead of an is now used before words beginning with u long.  It is used before one.  An must be used before words WHERE the h is not silent,