“Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find,
    Why [thou art] form’d so weak, so little, and so blind”
        —­Pope.

OBS. 2.—­Because qualities belong only to things, most grammarians teach, that, “Adjectives are capable of being added to nouns only.”—­Buchanan’s Syntax, p. 26.  Or, as Murray expresses the doctrine:  “Every adjective, and every adjective pronoun, belongs to a substantive, expressed or understood.”—­Octavo Gram., p. 161.  “The adjective always relates to a substantive.”—­Ib., p. 169.  This teaching, which is alike repugnant to the true definition of an adjective, to the true rule for its construction, and to all the exceptions to this rule, is but a sample of that hasty sort of induction, which is ever jumping to false conclusions for want of a fair comprehension of the facts in point.  The position would not be tenable, even if all our pronouns were admitted to be nouns, or “substantives;” and, if these two parts of speech are to be distinguished, the consequence must be, that Murray supposes a countless number of unnecessary and absurd ellipses. It is sufficiently evident, that in the construction of sentences, adjectives often relate immediately to pronouns, and only through them to the nouns which they represent.  Examples:  “I should like to know who has been carried off, except poor dear me.”—­Byron.  “To poor us there is not much hope remaining.”—­Murray’s Key, 8vo, p 204.  “It is the final pause which alone, on many occasions, marks the difference between prose and verse.”—­Murray’s Gram., p. 260.  “And sometimes after them both.”—­Ib., p. 196.  “All men hail’d me happy.”—­Milton.  “To receive unhappy me.”—­Dryden.  “Superior to them all.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 419. “They returned to their own country, full of the discoveries which they had made.”—­Ib., p. 350. “All ye are brethren.”—­Matt., xxiii, 8.  “And him only shalt thou serve.”—­Matt., iv, 10.

   “Go wiser thou, and in thy scale of sense
    Weigh thy opinion against Providence.”—­Pope.

OBS. 3.—­When an adjective follows a finite verb, and is not followed by a noun, it generally relates to the subject of the verb; as, “I am glad that the door is made wide.”—­“An unbounded prospect doth not long continue agreeable.”—­Kames, El. of Crit., i, 244.  “Every thing which is false, vicious, or unworthy, is despicable to him, though all the world should approve it.”—­Spectator, No. 520.  Here false, vicious, and unworthy, relate to which; and despicable relates to thing.  The practice of Murray and his