them.”—­Psalms, xxxvi, 10.  “A feather will turn the scale.”—­Shak. “Return him a trespass offering.”—­1 Samuel.  “For it becomes me so to speak.”—­Dryden.  But their construction with like cases is easily distinguished by the sense; as, “When I commenced author, my aim was to amuse.”—­Kames, El. of Crit., ii, 286. “Men continue men’s destroyers.”—­Nixon’s Parser, p. 56. “’Tis most just, that thou turn rascal”—­Shak., Timon of Athens.  “He went out mate, but he returned captain.”—­Murray’s Gram., p. 182.  “After this event he became physician to the king.”—­Ib. That is, “When I began to be an author,” &c.

   “Ev’n mean self-love becomes, by force divine,
    The scale to measure others’ wants by thine.”—­Pope.

OBS. 15.—­The common instructions of our English grammars, in relation to the subject of the preceding rule, are exceedingly erroneous and defective.  For example:  “The verb TO BE, has always a nominative case after it, unless it be in the infinitive mode.”—­Lowth’s Gram., p. 77.  “The verb TO BE requires the same case after it as before it.”—­Churchill’s Gram., p. 142.  “The verb TO BE, through all its variations, has the same case after it, expressed or understood, as that which next precedes it.”—­Murray’s Gram., p. 181; Alger’s, 62; Merchant’s, 91; Putnam’s, 116; Smith’s, 97; and many others.  “The verb TO BE has usually the same case after it, as that which immediately precedes it.”—­Hall’s Gram., p. 31. “Neuter verbs have the same case after them, as that which next precedes them.”—­Folker’s Gram., p. 14.  “Passive verbs which signify naming, and others of a similar nature, have the same case before and after them.”—­Murray’s Gram., p. 182.  “A Noun or Pronoun used in predication with a verb, is in the Independent Case.  EXAMPLES—­’Thou art a scholar.’  ‘It is I.’  ‘God is love.’”—­S.  W. Clark’s Pract.  Gram., p. 149.  So many and monstrous are the faults of these rules, that nothing but very learned and reverend authority, could possibly impose such teaching anywhere.  The first, though written by Lowth, is not a whit wiser than to say, “The preposition to has always an infinitive mood after it, unless it be a preposition.”  And this latter absurdity is even a better rule for all infinitives, than the former for all predicated nominatives.  Nor is there much more fitness in any of the rest.  “The verb TO BE, through all,” or even in any, of its parts, has neither “always” nor usually a case “expressed or understood” after it; and, even when there is a noun or a pronoun put after it, the case