if the accent is on the second syllable; as, an heroic action, an historical account.”—­Ib. This explanation, clumsy as it is, in the whole conception; broken, prolix, deficient, and inaccurate as it is, both in style and doctrine; has been copied and copied from grammar to grammar, as if no one could possibly better it.  Besides several other faults, it contains a palpable misuse of the article itself:  “the h” which is specified in the second and fifth sentences, is the “silent h” of the first sentence; and this inaccurate specification gives us the two obvious solecisms of supposing, “if the [silent] h be sounded,” and of locating “words WHERE the [silent] h is not silent!” In the word humour, and its derivatives, the h is silent, by all authority except Webster’s; and yet these words require a and not an before them.

OBS. 14.—­It is the sound only, that governs the form of the article, and not the letter itself; as, “Those which admit of the regular form, are marked with an R.”—­Murray’s Gram., p. 101. “A heroic poem, written by Virgil.”—­Webster’s Dict. “Every poem of the kind has no doubt a historical groundwork.”—­Philological Museum, Vol. i, p. 457.  “A poet must be a naturalist and a historian.”—­Coleridge’s Introduction, p. 111.  Before h in an unaccented syllable, either form of the article may be used without offence to the ear; and either may be made to appear preferable to the other, by merely aspirating the letter in a greater or less degree.  But as the h, though ever so feebly aspirated has something of a consonant sound, I incline to think the article in this case ought to conform to the general principle:  as, “A historical introduction has, generally, a happy effect to rouse attention.”—­ Blair’s Rhet., p. 311.  “He who would write heroic poems, should make his whole life a heroic poem.”—­See Life of Schiller, p. 56.  Within two lines of this quotation, the biographer speaks of “an heroic multitude!” The suppression of the sound of h being with Englishmen a very common fault in pronunciation, it is not desirable to increase the error, by using a form of the article which naturally leads to it.  “How often do we hear an air metamorphosed into a hair, a hat into a gnat, and a hero into a Nero!”—­Churchill’s Gram., p. 205.  Thus:  “Neither of them had that bold and adventurous ambition which makes a conqueror an hero.”—­Bolingbroke, on History, p. 174.