OBS. 3.—­Many English grammarians, and Murray at their head, deny the first person of nouns, and the gender of pronouns of the first and second persons; and at the same time teach, that, “Pronouns must always agree with their antecedents, and the nouns for which they stand, in gender, number, and person:”  (Murray’s Gr., 2d Ed., p. 111; Rev. T. Smith’s, p. 60:) and further, with redundance of expression, that, “The relative is of the same person with the antecedent, and the verb agrees with it accordingly.”—­Same.  These quotations form Murray’s fifth rule of syntax, as it stands in his early editions.[196] In some of his revisings, the author erased the word person from the former sentence, and changed with to as in the latter.  But other pronouns than relatives, agree with their nouns in person; so that his first alteration was not for the better, though Ingersoll, Kirkham, Alger, Bacon, J. Greenleaf, and some others, have been very careful to follow him in it.  And why did he never discern, that the above-named principles of his etymology are both of them contradicted by this rule of his syntax, and one of them by his rule as it now stands?  It is manifest, that no two words can possibly agree in any property which belongs not to both.  Else what is agreement?  Nay, no two things in nature, can in any wise agree, accord, or be alike, but by having some quality or accident in common.  How strange a contradiction then is this!  And what a compliment to learning, that it is still found in well-nigh all our grammars!

OBS. 4.—­If there were truth in what Murray and others affirm, that “Gender has respect only to the third person singular of the pronouns, he, she, it,” [197] no two words could ever agree in gender; because there can be no such agreement between any two of the words here mentioned, and the assertion is, that gender has respect to no others.  But, admitting that neither the author nor the numerous copiers of this false sentence ever meant to deny that gender has respect to nouns, they do deny that it has respect to any other pronouns than these; whereas I affirm that it ought to be recognized as a property of all pronouns, as well as of all nouns.  Not that the gender of either is in all instances invariably fixed by the forms of the particular words; but there is in general, if not in every possible case, some principle of grammar, on which the gender of any noun or pronoun in a sentence may be readily ascertained.  Is it not plain, that if we know who speaks or writes, who hears or is addressed, we know also the gender of the pronouns which are applied to these persons?  The poet of The Task looked upon his mother’s picture, and expressed his tender recollections of a deceased parent by way of address; and will any one pretend, that the pronouns which he applied to himself and to her, are either of the same gender, or of no gender?  If we take neither of these assumptions, must we not say, they are of different genders?  In this instance, then, let the parser call those of the first person, masculine; and those of the second, feminine:—­