“Above, below, without, within, around,
    Confus’d, unnumber’d multitudes are found.”—­Pope, on Fame.

OBS. 6.—­It comports with the name and design of this work, which is a broad synopsis of grammatical criticism, to notice here one other absurdity; namely, the doctrine of “sentential nouns.”  There is something of this in several late grammars:  as, “The prepositions, after, before, ere, since, till, and until, frequently govern sentential nouns; and after, before, since, notwithstanding, and some others, frequently govern a noun or pronoun understood.  A preposition governing a sentential noun, is, by Murray and others, considered a conjunction; and a preposition governing a noun understood, an adverb.”—­J.  L. PARKHURST:  in Sanborn’s Gram., p. 123.  “Example:  ‘He will, before he dies, sway the sceptre.’ He dies is a sentential noun, third person, singular number; and is governed by before; before he dies, being equivalent in meaning to before his death.”—­Sanborn, Gram., p. 176. “’After they had waited a long time, they departed.’  After waiting.”—­Ib. This last solution supposes the phrase, “waiting a long time,” or at least the participle waiting, to be a noun; for, upon the author’s principle of equivalence, “they had waited,” will otherwise be a “sentential” participle—­a thing however as good and as classical as the other!

OBS. 7.—­If a preposition can ever be justly said to take a sentence for its object, it is chiefly in certain ancient expressions, like the following:  “For in that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.”—­Rom., vi, 10.  “My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh.”—­Gen., vi, 3.  “For, after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”—­1 Cor., i, 21.  Here, in, for, and after, are all followed by the word that; which Tooke, Webster, Frazee, and some others, will have to be “a substitute,” or “pronoun,” representing the sentence which follows it, and governed by the preposition.  But that, in this sense, is usually, and perhaps more properly, reckoned a conjunction.  And if we take it so, in, for, and after, (unless the latter be an adverb,) must either be reckoned conjunctions also, or be supposed to govern sentences.  The expressions however are little used; because “in that” is nearly equivalent to as; “for that” can be better expressed by because; and “after that,” which is equivalent to [Greek:  epeide], postquam, may well be rendered by the term, seeing that, or since. “Before that Philip called thee,” is a similar example; but “that”