four kinds of pronouns, viz., the personal, the possessive, the relative, and the adjective pronouns.”—­Murray’s Gram., 2d Edition, p. 37.  “The Possessive Pronouns are such as principally relate to possession or property.  There are seven of them; viz. my, thy, his, her, our, your, their.  The possessives his, mine, thine, may be accounted either possessive pronouns, or the possessive cases of their respective personal pronouns.”—­Ib., p. 40.  He next idly demonstrates that these seven words may come before nouns of any number or case, without variation; then, forgetting his own distinction, adds, “When they are separated from the noun, all of them, except his, vary their terminations; as, this hat is mine, and the other is thine; those trinkets are hers; this house is ours, and that is yours; theirs is more commodious than ours”—­Ib., p. 40.  Thus all his personal pronouns of the possessive case, he then made to be inflections of pronouns of a different class! What are they now?  Seek the answer under the head of that gross solecism, “Adjective Pronouns.”  You may find it in one half of our English grammars.

OBS. 8.—­Any considerable error in the classing of words, does not stand alone; it naturally brings others in its train.  Murray’s “Adjective Pronouns,” (which he now subdivides into four little classes, possessive, distributive, demonstrative, and indefinite,) being all of them misnamed and misplaced in his etymology, have led both him and many others into strange errors in syntax.  The possessives only are “pronouns;” and these are pronouns of the possessive case.  As such, they agree with the antecedent nouns for which they stand, in person, number, and gender; and are governed, like all other possessives, by the nouns which follow them.  The rest are not pronouns, but pronominal adjectives; and, as such, they relate to nouns expressed or understood after them.  Accordingly, they have none of the above-mentioned qualities, except that the words this and that form the plurals these and those.  Or, if we choose to ascribe to a pronominal adjective all the properties of the noun understood, it is merely for the sake of brevity in parsing.  The difference, then, between a “pronominal adjective” and an “adjective pronoun,” should seem to be this; that the one is an adjective, and the other a pronoun:  it is like the difference between a horserace and a racehorse.  What can be hoped from the grammarian who cannot discern it?  And what can be made of rules and examples like the following?  “Adjective pronouns must agree, in number, with their substantives:  as, ’This book, these books; that sort, those sorts; another road, other