BY SAMUEL U. BERRIAN, A. M.




PREFACE

The present performance is, so far as the end could be reached, the
fulfillment of a design, formed about twenty-seven years ago, of one day
presenting to the world, if I might, something like a complete grammar of
the English language;--not a mere work of criticism, nor yet a work too
tame, indecisive, and uncritical; for, in books of either of these sorts,
our libraries already abound;--not a mere philosophical investigation of
what is general or universal in grammar, nor yet a minute detail of what
forms only a part of our own philology; for either of these plans falls
very far short of such a purpose;--not a mere grammatical compend,
abstract, or compilation, sorting with other works already before the
public; for, in the production of school grammars, the author had early
performed his part; and, of small treatises on this subject, we have long
had a superabundance rather than a lack.

After about fifteen years devoted chiefly to grammatical studies and
exercises, during most of which time I had been alternately instructing
youth in four different languages, thinking it practicable to effect some
improvement upon the manuals which explain our own, I prepared and
published, for the use of schools, a duodecimo volume of about three
hundred pages; which, upon the presumption that its principles were
conformable to the best usage, and well established thereby, I entitled,
"The Institutes of English Grammar." Of this work, which, it is believed,