“I turn me from the martial roar.”—­Scott’s L. L., p. 97.

    “Hush thee, poor maiden, and be still.”—­Ib., p. 110.

    “Firmer he roots him the ruder it blow.”—­Ib., p. 49.

OBS. 31.—­To accommodate the writers of verse, the word ever is frequently contracted into e’er, pronounced like the monosyllable air.  An easy extension of this license, gives us similar contractions of all the compound relative pronouns; as, whoe’er or whosoe’er, whose’er or whosesoe’er, whome’er or whomsoe’er, whiche’er or whichsoe’er, whate’er or whatsoe’er.  The character and properties of these compounds are explained, perhaps sufficiently, in the observations upon the classes of pronouns.  Some of them are commonly parsed as representing two cases at once; there being, in fact, an ellipsis of the noun, before or after them:  as,

   “Each art he prompts, each charm he can create,
    Whate’er he gives, are given for you to hate.”—­Pope’s Dunciad.

OBS. 32.—­For a form of parsing the double relative what, or its compound whatever or whatsoever, it is the custom of some teachers, to suggest equivalent words, and then proceed to explain these, in lieu of the word in question.  This is the method of Russell’s Gram., p. 99; of Merchants, p. 110; of Kirkham’s, p. 111; of Gilbert’s, p. 92.  But it should be remembered that equivalence of meaning is not sameness of grammatical construction; and, even if the construction be the same, to parse other equivalent words, is not really to parse the text that is given.  A good parser, with the liberty to supply obvious ellipses, should know how to explain all good English as it stands; and for a teacher to pervert good English into false doctrine, must needs seem the very worst kind of ignorance.  What can be more fantastical than the following etymology, or more absurd than the following directions for parsing? “What is compounded of which that.  These words have been contracted and made to coalesce, a part of the orthography of both being still retained:  what—­wh[ich—­t]hat; (which-that.) Anciently it appeared in the varying forms, tha qua, qua tha, qu’tha, quthat, quhat, hwat, and finally what.”—­Kirkham’s Gram., p. 111.  This bald pedantry of “tha qua, qua tha,” was secretly borrowed from the grammatical speculations of William S. Cardell:[217] the “which-that” notion contradicts it, and is partly of the borrower’s own invention.  If what is a compound, it was compounded more than a thousand years ago; and, of course, long before any part of the English language existed as such.  King Alfred used it, as he found it, in the Saxon form of hwaet.  The Scotch afterwards spelled it quhat.  Our English grammarians have improperly called it a compound; and Kirkham, still more absurdly, calls the word others a compound, and mine, thine, ours, yours, &e. compounds.[218]