OBS. 11.—­When the antecedent is put by metonymy for a noun of different properties, the pronoun sometimes agrees with it in the figurative, and sometimes in the literal sense; as, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.  As they called them, so they went from them:  [i. e., When Moses and the prophets called the Israelites, they often refused to hear:] they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burnt incense to graven images.  I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them.”—­Hosea, xi, 1, 2, 3.  The mixture and obscurity which are here, ought not to be imitated.  The name of a man, put for the nation or tribe of his descendants, may have a pronoun of either number, and a nation may be figuratively represented as feminine; but a mingling of different genders or numbers ought to be avoided:  as, “Moab is spoiled, and gone up out of her cities, and his chosen young men are gone down to the slaughter.”—­Jeremiah, xlviii, 15.

   “The wolf, who [say that] from the nightly fold,
    Fierce drags the bleating prey, ne’er drunk her milk,
    Nor wore her warming fleece.”—­Thomson’s Seasons.

    “That each may fill the circle mark’d by Heaven,
    Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
    A hero perish or a sparrow fall.”—­Pope’s Essay on Man.

    “And heaven behold its image in his breast.”—­Ib.

    “Such fate to suffering worth is given,
    Who long with wants and woes has striven.”—­Burns.

OBS. 12.—­When the antecedent is put by synecdoche for more or less than it literally signifies, the pronoun agrees with it in the figurative, and not in the literal sense; as,

   “A dauntless soul erect, who smiled on death.”—­Thomson

“But to the generous still improving mind, That gives the hopeless heart to sing for joy, To him the long review of ordered life Is inward rapture only to be felt.”—­Id.  Seasons.

OBS. 13.—­Pronouns usually follow the words which they represent; but this order is sometimes reversed:  as, “Whom the cap fits, let him put it on.”—­“Hark! they whisper; angels say,” &c.—­Pope. “Thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion.”—­Old Test.  And in some cases of apposition, the pronoun naturally comes first; as, “I Tertius”—­“Ye lawyers.”  The pronoun it, likewise, very often precedes the clause or phrase which it represents; as, “Is it not manifest, that the generality of people speak and write very badly?”—­Campbell’s Rhet., p. 160; Murray’s Gram., i, 358.  This arrangement is too natural to be called a transposition.  The most common form of the real inversion is that of the antecedent and relative in poetry; as,