OBS. 25.—­A proper name taken merely as a name, or an appellative taken in any sense not strictly personal, must be represented by which, and not by who; as, “Herod—­which is but an other name for cruelty.”—­“In every prescription of duty, God proposeth himself as a rewarder; which he is only to those that please him.”—­Dr. J. Owen. Which would perhaps be more proper than whom, in the following passage:  “They did not destroy the nations, concerning whom the Lord commanded them.”—­Psalms, cvi, 34.  Dr. Blair has preferred it in the following instance:  “My lion and my pillar are sufficiently interpreted by the mention of Achilles and the minister, which I join to them.”—­Lectures, p. 151.  He meant, “whose names I connect with theirs;” and not, that he joined the person of Achilles to a lion, or that of a minister to a pillar.

OBS. 26.—­When two or more relative clauses pertain to the same antecedent, if they are connected by a conjunction, the same relative ought to be employed in each, agreeably to the doctrine of the seventh note below; but if no conjunction is expressed or understood between them, the pronouns ought rather to be different; as, “There are many things that you can speak of, which cannot be seen.”—­R W. Green’s Gram., p. 11.  This distinction is noticed in the fifth chapter of Etymology, Obs. 29th, on the Classes of Pronouns.  Dr. Priestley says, “Whatever relative be used, in a series of clauses, relating to the same antecedent, the same ought to be used in them all.  ’It is remarkable, that Holland, against which the war was undertaken, and that, in the very beginning, was reduced to the brink of destruction, lost nothing.’—­Universal History, Vol. 25, p. 117.  It ought to have been, and which in the very beginning.”—­Priestley’s Gram., p. 102.  L. Murray, (as I have shown in the Introduction, Ch. x, 22,) assumes all this, without references; adding as a salvo the word “generally,” which merely impairs the certainty of the rule:—­“the same relative ought generally to be used in them all.”—­Octavo Gram., p. 155.  And, of who and that, Cobbett says:  “Either may do; but both never ought to be relatives of the same antecedent in the same sentence.”—­Gram., 202.  The inaccuracy of these rules is as great as that of the phraseology which is corrected under them.  In the following sentence, the first relative only is restrictive, and consequently the other may be different:  “These were the officers that were called Homotimoi, and who signalized themselves afterwards so gloriously upon all occasions.”—­Rollin’s Hist., ii, 62.  See also in Rev., x, 6th, a similar example without the conjunction.

OBS. 27.—­In conversation, the possessive pronoun your is sometimes used in a droll way, being shortened into your in pronunciation, and nothing more being meant by it, than might be expressed by the article an or a:  as, “Rich honesty dwells, like your miser, sir, in a poor house; as, your pearl in your foul oyster.”—­Shakspeare.