person after them; but the nominative of a noun or pronoun of the second or third person; as, “Ah me! Oh thou! O my country!” To say, then, that interjections require particular cases after them, is synonymous with saying, that they govern those cases; and this office of the interjection is in perfect accordance with that which it performs in the Latin and many other languages.  In the examples under number 5, the first me is in the objective after “ah,” and the second me, after ah understood; thus, “Ah miserable me!” according to NOTE 2, under Rule 5.—­Happiness, under number 6, is nom. independent; Rule 5, or in the nom. after O, according to this Note.  The principle contained in the note, proves that every noun of the second person is in the nominative case; for, as the pronoun of the second person, in such a situation, is always nominative, which is shown by its form, it logically follows that the noun, under such circumstances, although it has no form to show its case, must necessarily be in the same case as the pronoun.  “Good, pleasure, ease, content, that,” the antecedent part of “whatever,” and which, the relative part, are nom. after art understood; Rule 21, and name is nom. to be understood.

The second line may be rendered thus; Whether thou art good, or whether thou art pleasure, &c. or be thy name that [thing] which [ever thing] it may be:  putting be in the imperative, agreeing with name in the third person. Something is nominative after art understood.

EXAMPLES.

1.  “All were well but the stranger.”  “I saw nobody but the stranger.”  “All had returned but he.”  “None but the brave deserve the fair.”  “The thing they can’t but purpose, they postpone.”  “This life, at best, is but a dream.”  “It affords but a scanty measure of enjoyment.”  “If he but touch the hills, they will smoke.”  “Man is but a reed, floating on the current of time.”

2.  “Notwithstanding his poverty, he is content.”

3.  “Open your hand wide.”  “The apples boil soft.”  “The purest clay is that which burns white.”  “Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”

4. “What though the swelling surge thou see?” &c. “What if the foot, ordain’d the dust to tread?” &c.

REMARKS.—­According to the principle of analysis assumed by many of our most critical philologists, but is always a disjunctive conjunction; and agreeably to the same authorities, to construe it, in any case, as a preposition, would lead to error.  See false Syntax under Rule 35.  They maintain, that its legitimate and undeviating office is, to join on a member of a sentence which expresses opposition of meaning, and thereby forms an exception to,