character, except with kindness and charity.  Nor need I be told, that tenderness is due to the “young;” or that noble results sometimes follow unhopeful beginnings.  These things are understood and duly appreciated.  The gentleman was young once, even as he says; and I, his equal in years, was then, in authorship, as young—­though, it were to be hoped, not quite so immature.  But, as circumstances alter cases, so time and chance alter circumstances.  Under no circumstances, however, can the artifices of quackery be thought excusable in him who claims to be the very greatest of modern grammarians.  The niche that in the temple of learning belongs to any individual, can be no other than that which his own labours have purchased:  here, his own merit alone must be his pedestal.  If this critical sketch be unimpeachably just, its publication requires no further warrant.  The correction has been forborne, till the subject of it has become rich, and popular, and proud; proud enough at least to have published his utter contempt for me and all my works.  Yet not for this do I judge him worthy of notice here, but merely as an apt example of some men’s grammatical success and fame.  The ways and means to these grand results are what I purpose now to consider.

24.  The common supposition, that the world is steadily advancing in knowledge and improvement, would seem to imply, that the man who could plausibly boast of being the most successful and most popular grammarian of the nineteenth century, cannot but be a scholar of such merit as to deserve some place, if not in the general literary history of his age, at least in the particular history of the science which he teaches.  It will presently be seen that the author of “English Grammar in Familiar Lectures,” boasts of a degree of success and popularity, which, in this age of the world, has no parallel.  It is not intended on my part, to dispute any of his assertions on these points; but rather to take it for granted, that in reputation and revenue he is altogether as preeminent as he pretends to be.  The character of his alleged improvements, however, I shall inspect with the eyes of one who means to know the certainty for himself; and, in this item of literary history, the reader shall see, in some sort, what profit there is in grammar.  Is the common language of two of the largest and most enlightened nations on earth so little understood, and its true grammar so little known or appreciated, that one of the most unscholarly and incompetent of all pretenders to grammar can have found means to outrival all the grammarians who have preceded him?  Have plagiarism and quackery become the only means of success in philology?  Are there now instances to which an intelligent critic may point, and say, “This man, or that, though he can scarcely write a page of good English, has patched up a grammar, by the help of Murray’s text only, and thereby made himself rich?” Is there such a charm in the name of Murray, and the word improvement, that by these two implements alone, the obscurest of men, or the absurdest of teachers, may work his passage to fame; and then, perchance, by contrast of circumstances, grow conceited and arrogant, from the fortune of the undertaking?  Let us see what we can find in Kirkham’s Grammar, which will go to answer these questions.