22.  Kirkham’s treatise is entitled, “English Grammar in familiar Lectures, accompanied by a Compendium;” that is, by a folded sheet.  Of this work, of which I have recently seen copies purporting to be of the “SIXTY-SEVENTH EDITION,” and others again of the “HUNDRED AND FIFTH EDITION,” each published at Baltimore in 1835, I can give no earlier account, than what may be derived from the “SECOND EDITION, enlarged and much improved,” which was published at Harrisburg in 1825.  The preface, which appears to have been written for his first edition, is dated, “Fredericktown, Md., August 22, 1823.”  In it, there is no recognition of any obligation to Murray, or to any other grammarian in particular; but with the modest assumption, that the style of the “best philologists,” needed to be retouched, the book is presented to the world under the following pretensions: 

“The author of this production has endeavoured to condense all the most important subject-matter of the whole science, and present it in so small a compass that the learner can become familiarly acquainted with it in a short time.  He makes but small pretensions to originality in theoretical matter.  Most of the principles laid down, have been selected from our best modern philologists.  If his work is entitled to any degree of merit, it is not on account of a judicious selection of principles and rules, but for the easy mode adopted of communicating these to the mind of the learner.”—­Kirkham’s Grammar, 1825, p. 10.

23.  It will be found on examination, that what this author regarded as "all the most important subject-matter of the whole science” of grammar, included nothing more than the most common elements of the orthography, etymology, and syntax, of the English tongue—­beyond which his scholarship appears not to have extended.  Whatsoever relates to derivation, to the sounds of the letters, to prosody, (as punctuation, utterance, figures, versification, and poetic diction,) found no place in his “comprehensive system of grammar;” nor do his later editions treat any of these things amply or well.  In short, he treats nothing well; for he is a bad writer.  Commencing his career of authorship under circumstances the most forbidding, yet receiving encouragement from commendations bestowed in pity, he proceeded, like a man of business, to profit mainly by the chance; and, without ever acquiring either the feelings or the habits of a scholar, soon learned by experience that, “It is much better to write than [to] starve.”—­Kirkham’s Gram., Stereotyped, p. 89.  It is cruel in any man, to look narrowly into the faults of an author who peddles a school-book for bread.  The starveling wretch whose defence and plea are poverty and sickness, demands, and must have, in the name of humanity, an immunity from criticism, if not the patronage of the public.  Far be it from me, to notice any such