VERBS.—­“Verbs express, not only the state or manner of being, but, likewise, all the different actions and movements of all creatures and things, whether animate or inanimate.”—­Ib., p. 62.  “It can be easily shown, that from the noun and verb, all the other parts of speech have sprung.  Nay, more. They may even be reduced to one. Verbs do not, in reality, express actions; but they are intrinsically the mere NAMES of actions.”—­Ib., p. 37.

PHILOSOPHICAL GRAMMAR.—­“I have thought proper to intersperse through the pages of this work, under the head of ‘Philosophical Notes,’ an entire system of grammatical principles, as deduced from what appears[11] to me to be the most rational and consistent philosophical investigations.”—­ Ib., p. 36.  “Johnson, and Blair, and Lowth, would have been laughed at, had they essayed to thrust any thing like our modernized philosophical grammar down the throats of their cotemporaries.”—­Ib., p. 143.

Is it not a pity, that “more than one hundred thousand children and youth” should be daily poring over language and logic like this?

27.  For the sake of those who happily remain ignorant of this successful empiricism, it is desirable that the record and exposition of it be made brief.  There is little danger that it will long survive its author.  But the present subjects of it are sufficiently numerous to deserve some pity.  The following is a sample of the gentleman’s method of achieving what he both justly and exultingly supposes, that Johnson, or Blair, or Lowth, could not have effected.  He scoffs at his own grave instructions, as if they had been the production of some other impostor.  Can the fact be credited, that in the following instances, he speaks of what he himself teaches?—­of what he seriously pronounces "most rational and consistent?"—­of what is part and parcel of that philosophy of his, which he declares, “will in general be found to accord with the practical theory embraced in the body of his work?”—­See Kirkham’s Gram., p. 36.

“Call this ’philosophical parsing, on reasoning principles, according to the original laws of nature and of thought,’ and the pill will be swallowed, by pedants and their dupes, with the greatest ease imaginable.”—­Kirkham’s Gram., p. 144.  “For the satisfaction of those teachers who prefer it, and for their adoption, too, a modernized philosophical theory of the moods and tenses is here presented.  If it is not quite so convenient and useful as the old one, they need not hesitate to adopt it.  It has the advantage of being new; and, moreover, it sounds large, and will make the commonalty stare.  Let it be distinctly understood that you teach ’[Kirkham’s] philosophical grammar, founded on reason and common sense,’ and you will pass for a very learned man, and make all the good housewives wonder at the rapid march of intellect, and the vast improvements of the age.”—­Ib., p. 141.