NOTES TO RULE X.

NOTE 1.—­A pronoun should not be introduced in connexion with words that belong more properly to the antecedent, or to an other pronoun; as, “And then there is good use for Pallas her glass.”—­Bacon’s Wisdom, p. 22.  Say—­“for Pallas’s glass.”

   “My banks they are furnish’d with bees,
    Whose murmur invites one to sleep.”—­Shenstone, p. 284.

This last instance, however, is only an example of pleonasm; which is allowable and frequent in animated discourse, but inelegant in any other.  Our grammarians have condemned it too positively.  It occurs sundry times in the Bible; as, “Know ye that the LORD he is God.”—­Psalms, c, 3.

NOTE II.—­A change of number in the second person, or even a promiscuous use of ye and you in the same case and the same style, is inelegant, and ought to be avoided; as, “You wept, and I for thee”—­“Harry, said my lord, don’t cry; I’ll give you something towards thy loss.”—­Swift’s Poems, p. 267. “Ye sons of sloth, you offspring of darkness, awake from your sleep.”—­Brown’s Metaphors, p. 96.  Our poets have very often adopted the former solecism, to accommodate their measure, or to avoid the harshness of the old verb in the second person singular:  as, “Thy heart is yet blameless, O fly while you may!”—­Queen’s Wake, p. 46.

   “Oh!  Peggy, Peggy, when thou goest to brew,
    Consider well what you’re about to do.”—­King’s Poems, p. 594.

    “As in that lov’d Athenian bower,
    You learn’d an all-commanding power,
    Thy mimic soul, O nymph endear’d! 
    Can well recall what then it heard.”—­Collins, Ode to Music.

NOTE III.—­The relative who is applied only to persons, and to animals or things personified; and which, to brute animals and inanimate things spoken of literally:  as, “The judge who presided;”—­“The old crab who advised the young one;”—­“The horse which ran away;”—­“The book which was given me.”

NOTE IV.—­Nouns of multitude, unless they express persons directly as such, should not be represented by the relative who:  to say, “The family whom I visited,” would hardly be proper; that would here be better.  When such nouns are strictly of the neuter gender, which may represent them; as, “The committees which were appointed.”  But where the idea of rationality is predominant, who or whom seems not to be improper; as, “The conclusion of the Iliad is like the exit of a great man out of company whom he has entertained magnificently.”—­Cowper. “A law is only the expression of the desire of a multitude who have power to punish.”—­Brown’s Philosophy of the Mind.