exercise, will show him exactly the number, the order, and the proper
phraseology, of the particulars to be stated; so that he may go through the
explanation with every advantage which a book can afford. There is no hope
of him whom these aids will not save from "plunging into chaos."

"Of all the works of man, language is the most enduring, and partakes the
most of eternity. And, as our own language, so far as thought can project
itself into the future, seems likely to be coeval with the world, and to
spread vastly beyond even its present immeasurable limits, there cannot
easily be a nobler object of ambition than to purify and better
it."--_Philological Museum_, Vol. i, p. 665.

It was some ambition of the kind here meant, awakened by a discovery of the
scandalous errors and defects which abound in all our common English
grammars, that prompted me to undertake the present work. Now, by the
bettering of a language, I understand little else than the extensive
teaching of its just forms, according to analogy and the general custom of
the most accurate writers. This teaching, however, may well embrace also,
or be combined with, an exposition of the various forms of false grammar by
which inaccurate writers have corrupted, if not the language itself, at
least their own style in it.

With respect to our present English, I know not whether any other
improvement of it ought to be attempted, than the avoiding and correcting
of those improprieties and unwarrantable anomalies by which carelessness,
ignorance, and affectation, are ever tending to debase it, and the careful
teaching of its true grammar, according to its real importance in
education. What further amendment is feasible, or is worthy to engage
attention, I will not pretend to say; nor do I claim to have been competent
to so much as was manifestly desirable within these limits. But what I