Every finite Verb must agree with its subject, or nominative, in person and number:  as, “I know; thou knowst, or knowest; he knows, or knoweth”—­“The bird flies; the birds fly.”

   “Our fathers’ fertile fields by slaves are till’d,
    And Rome with dregs of foreign lands is fill’d.”
        —­Rowe’s Lucan, B. vii, l. 600.

OBSERVATIONS ON RULE XIV.

OBS. 1.—­To this general rule for the verb, there are properly no exceptions;[385] and all the special rules that follow, which prescribe the concord of verbs in particular instances, virtually accord with it.  Every finite verb, (that is, every verb not in the infinitive mood,) must have some noun, pronoun, or phrase equivalent, known as the subject of the being, action, or passion;[386] and with this subject, whether expressed or understood, the verb must agree in person and number.  The infinitive mood, as it does not unite with a nominative to form an assertion, is of course exempt from any such agreement.  These may be considered principles of Universal Grammar.  The Greeks, however, had a strange custom of using a plural noun of the neuter gender, with a verb of the third person singular; and in both Greek and Latin, the infinitive mood with an accusative before it was often equivalent to a finite verb with its nominative.  In English we have neither of these usages; and plural nouns, even when they denote no absolute plurality, (as shears, scissors, trowsers, pantaloons, tongs,) require plural verbs or pronouns:  as, “Your shears come too late, to clip the bird’s wings.”—­SIDNEY:  Churchill’s Gram., p. 30.

OBS. 2.—­When a book that bears a plural title, is spoken of as one thing, there is sometimes presented an apparent exception to the foregoing rule; as, “The Pleasures of Memory was published in the year 1792, and became at once popular.”—­Allan Cunningham.  “The ’Sentiments of a Church-of-England Man’ is written with great coolness, moderation, ease, and perspicuity.”—­Johnson’s Life of Swift.  “The ‘Pleasures of Hope’ is a splendid poem; it was written for perpetuity.”—­Samuel L. Knapp.  In these instances, there is, I apprehend, either an agreement of the verb, by the figure syllepsis, with the mental conception of the thing spoken of; or an improper ellipsis of the common noun, with which each sentence ought to commence; as, “The poem entitled,”—­“The work entitled,” &c.  But the plural title sometimes controls the form of the verb; as, “My Lives are reprinting.”—­Dr. Johnson.