OBS. 14.—­We have, then, in this new American form of “The Principles of English Grammar,” Lennie’s very compact little book, altered, enlarged, and bearing on its title-page (which is otherwise in the very words of Lennie) an other author’s name, and, in its early editions, the false and self-accusing inscription, “(ON THE PLAN OF MURRAY’S GRAMMAR.)” And this work, claiming to have been approved “by the most competent judges,” now challenges the praise not only of being “better adapted to the use of academies and schools than any yet published” but of so presenting “the rules and principles of general grammar, as that they may apply to, and be in perfect harmony with, the grammars of the dead languages”—­ Recommendations, p. iv.  These are admirable professions for a critical author to publish; especially, as every rule or principle of General Grammar, condemning as it must whoever violates it, cannot but “be in perfect harmony with” every thing that is true.  In this model for all grammars, Latin, Greek, &c., the doctrines of punctuation, of abbreviations, and of capital letters, and also sections on the rhetorical divisions of a discourse, the different kinds of composition, the different kinds of prose composition, and the different kinds of poetry, are made parts of the Syntax; while his hints for correct and elegant writing, and his section on the composition of letters and themes, which other writers suppose to belong rather to syntax, are here subjoined as parts of Prosody.  In the exercises for parsing appended to his Etymology, the Doctor furnishes twenty-five Rules of Syntax, which, he says, “are not intended to be committed to memory, but to be used as directions to the beginner in parsing the exercises under them.”—­E.  Gram., p. 75.  Then, for his syntax proper, he copies from Lennie, with some alterations, thirty-four other rules, nine of which are double, and all are jumbled together by both authors, without any regard to the distinction of concord and government, so common in the grammars of the dead languages, and even, so far as I can discover, without any principle of arrangement whatever.  They profess indeed to have placed those rules first, which are eaisest [sic—­KTH] to learn, and oftenest to be applied; but the syntax of articles, which even on this principle should have formed the first of the series, is placed by Lennie as the thirty-fourth rule, and by his amender as the thirty-second.  To all this complexity the latter adds twenty-two Special Rules, with an abundance of “Notes” “Observations” and “Remarks” distinguished by these titles, on some principle which no one but the author can understand.  Lastly, his method of syntactical parsing is not only mixed up with etymological questions and answers, but his directions for it, with their exemplification, are perplexingly at variance with his own specimen of the performance.  See his book, pages 131 and 133.  So much for this grand scheme.