El. of Crit., Vol. i, p. 252.  “The public ear will not easily bear what is slovenly and incorrect.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 12.  “He who buys what he does not need, will often need what he cannot buy.”—­Student’s Manual, p. 290. “What is just, is honest; and again, what is honest, is just.”—­Cicero.  “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.”—­Rev., ii, 7, 11, 17, 29; iii, 6, 13, 22.

OBS. 9.—­This pronoun, what, is usually of the singular number, though sometimes plural:  as, “I must turn to the faults, or what appear such to me.”—­Byron.  “All distortions and mimicries, as such, are what raise aversion instead of pleasure.”—­Steele.  “Purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects.”—­Wordsworth’s Pref., p. xix.  “Every single impression, made even by the same object, is distinguishable from what have gone before, and from what succeed.”—­Kames, El. of Crit., Vol. i, p. 107.  “Sensible people express no thoughts but what make some figure.”—­Ib., Vol. i, p. 399.  The following example, which makes what both singular and plural at once, is a manifest solecism:  “What has since followed are but natural consequences.”—­J.  C. CALHOUN, Speech in U. S. Senate, March 4, 1850.  Here has should be have; or else the form should be this:  “What has since followed, is but a natural consequence.”

OBS. 10.—­The common import of this remarkable pronoun, what, is, as we see in the foregoing examples, twofold; but some instances occur, in which it does not appear to have this double construction, but to be simply declaratory; and many, in which the word is simply an adjective:  as, “What a strange run of luck I have had to-day!”—­Columbian Orator, p. 293.  Here what is a mere adjective; and, in the following examples, a pronoun indefinite:—­

   “I tell thee what, corporal, I could tear her.”—­Shak.

    “He knows what’s what, and that’s as high
    As metaphysic wit can fly.”—­Hudibras.

OBS. 11.—­What is sometimes used both as an adjective and as a relative at the same time, and is placed before the noun which it represents; being equivalent to the adjective any or all, and the simple relative who, which[190] or that:  as, “What money we had, was taken away.”  That is, “All the money that we had, was taken away.” “What man but enters, dies.”  That is, “Any man who enters, dies.”  “It was agreed that what goods were aboard his vessels, should be landed.”—­Mickle’s India, p. 89. “What appearances of worth afterwards succeeded, were drawn from thence.”—­Internal Policy of Great Britain, p. 196.  That is,