OBS. 27.—­The possessive termination is so far from being liable to suppression by ellipsis, agreeably to the nonsense of those interpreters who will have it to be “understood” wherever the case occurs without it, that on the contrary it is sometimes retained where there is an actual suppression of the noun to which it belongs.  This appears to be the case whenever the pronominal adjectives former and latter are inflected, as above.  The inflection of these, however, seems to be needless, and may well be reckoned improper.  But, in the following line, the adjective elegantly takes the sign; because there is an ellipsis of both nouns; poor’s being put for poor man’s, and the governing noun joys being understood after it:  “The rich man’s joys increase, the poor’s decay.”—­Goldsmith.  So, in the following example, guilty’s is put for guilty person’s: 

   “Yet, wise and righteous ever, scorns to hear
    The fool’s fond wishes, or the guilty’s prayer.”
        —­Rowe’s Lucan, B. v, l. 155.

This is a poetical license; and others of a like nature are sometimes met with.  Our poets use the possessive case much more frequently than prose writers, and occasionally inflect words that are altogether invariable in prose; as,

   “Eager that last great chance of war he waits,
    Where either’s fall determines both their fates.”
        —­Ibid., B. vi, l. 13.

OBS. 28.—­To avoid a concurrence of hissing sounds, the s of the possessive singular is sometimes omitted, and the apostrophe alone retained to mark the case:  as, “For conscience’ sake.”—­Bible. “Moses’ minister.”—­Ib. “Felix’ room.”—­Ib. “Achilles’ wrath.”—­Pope. “Shiraz’ walls.”—­Collins. “Epicurus’ sty.”—­Beattie. “Douglas’ daughter.”—­Scott.  “For Douglas’ sake.”—­Ib. “To his mistress’ eyebrow.”—­Shak.  This is a sort of poetic license, as is suggested in the 16th Observation upon the Cases of Nouns, in the Etymology.  But in prose the elision should be very sparingly indulged; it is in general less agreeable, as well as less proper, than the regular form.  Where is the propriety of saying, Hicks’ Sermons, Barnes’ Notes, Kames’ Elements, Adams’ Lectures, Josephus’ Works, while we so uniformly say, in Charles’s reign, St. James’s Palace, and the like?  The following examples are right:  “At Westminster and Hicks’s Hall.”—­Hudibras.  “Lord Kames’s Elements of Criticism.”—­Murray’s Sequel, p. 331.  “Of Rubens’s allegorical pictures.”—­Hazlitt.  “With respect to Burns’s early education.”—­Dugald Stewart. “Isocrates’s pomp;”—­“Demosthenes’s life.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 242.  “The repose of Epicurus’s gods.”—­Wilson’s Heb.  Gram., p. 93.