sees with other men’s eyes, is peculiarly liable to errors and inconsistencies:  uniformity is seldom found in patchwork, or accuracy in secondhand literature.  Correctness of language is in the mind, rather than in the hand or the tongue; and, in order to secure it, some originality of thought is necessary.  A delineation from new surveys is not the less original because the same region has been sketched before; and how can he be the ablest of surveyors, who, through lack of skill or industry, does little more than transcribe the field-notes and copy the projections of his predecessors?

14.  This author’s oversights are numerous.  There is no part of the volume more accurate than that which he literally copied from Lowth.  To the Short Introduction alone, he was indebted for more than a hundred and twenty paragraphs; and even in these there are many things obviously erroneous.  Many of the best practical notes were taken from Priestley; yet it was he, at whose doctrines were pointed most of those “positions and discussions,” which alone the author claims as original.  To some of these reasonings, however, his own alterations may have given rise; for, where he “persuades himself he is not destitute of originality,” he is often arguing against the text of his own earlier editions.  Webster’s well-known complaints of Murray’s unfairness, had a far better cause than requital; for there was no generosity in ascribing them to peevishness, though the passages in question were not worth copying.  On perspicuity and accuracy, about sixty pages were extracted from Blair; and it requires no great critical acumen to discover, that they are miserably deficient in both.  On the law of language, there are fifteen pages from Campbell; which, with a few exceptions, are well written.  The rules for spelling are the same as Walker’s:  the third one, however, is a gross blunder; and the fourth, a, needless repetition.

15.  Were this a place for minute criticism, blemishes almost innumerable might be pointed out.  It might easily be shown that almost every rule laid down in the book for the observance of the learner, was repeatedly violated by the hand of the master.  Nor is there among all those who have since abridged or modified the work, an abler grammarian than he who compiled it.  Who will pretend that Flint, Alden, Comly, Jaudon, Russell, Bacon, Lyon, Miller, Alger, Maltby, Ingersoll, Fisk, Greenleaf, Merchant, Kirkham, Cooper, R. G. Greene, Woodworth, Smith, or Frost, has exhibited greater skill?  It is curious to observe, how frequently a grammatical blunder committed by Murray, or some one of his predecessors, has escaped the notice of all these, as well as of many others who have found it easier to copy him than to write for themselves.  No man professing to have copied and improved Murray, can rationally be supposed to have greatly excelled him; for to pretend to have produced an improved copy of a compilation, is to claim a sort of authorship, even inferior to his, and utterly unworthy of any man who is able to prescribe and elucidate the principles of English grammar.