us no other definitions or explanations of the persons than the foregoing erroneous assertions; and, if I mistake not, all the rest who are here named, have been content to define them only as he did.  Some others, however, have done still worse:  as, “There are three personal pronouns; so called, because they denote the three persons, who are the subjects of a discourse, viz. 1st. I, who is the person speaking; 2d thou, who is spoken to; 3d he, she, or it, who is spoken of, and their plurals, we, ye or you, they.”—­Bingham’s Accidence, 20th Ed., p. 7.  Here the two kinds of error which I have just pointed out, are jumbled together.  It is impossible to write worse English than this!  Nor is the following much better:  “Of the personal pronouns there are five, viz. I, in the first person, speaking; Thou, in the second person, spoken to; and He, she, it, in the third person, spoken of.”—­Nutting’s Gram., p. 25.

OBS. 5.—­In written language, the first person denotes the writer or author; and the second, the reader or person addressed:  except when the writer describes not himself, but some one else, as uttering to an other the words which he records.  This exception takes place more particularly in the writing of dialogues and dramas; in which the first and second persons are abundantly used, not as the representatives of the author and his reader, but as denoting the fictitious speakers and hearers that figure in each scene.  But, in discourse, the grammatical persons may be changed without a change of the living subject.  In the following sentence, the three grammatical persons are all of them used with reference to one and the same individual:  “Say ye of Him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I said I am the Son of God?”—­John, x, 36.

OBS. 6.-The speaker seldom refers to himself by name, as the speaker; and, of the objects which there is occasion to name in discourse, but comparatively few are such as can ever be supposed to speak.  Consequently, nouns are rarely used in the first person; and when they do assume this relation, a pronoun is commonly associated with them:  as, “I John,”—­“We Britons.”  These words I conceive to agree throughout, in person, number, gender, and case; though it must be confessed, that agreement like this is not always required between words in apposition.  But some grammarians deny the first person to nouns altogether; others, with much more consistency, ascribe it;[140] while very many are entirely silent on the subject.  Yet it is plain that both the doctrine of concords, and the analogy of general grammar, require its admission.  The reason of this may be seen in the following examples:  “Themistocles ad te veni.”  “I Themistocles have