The Grammar of English Grammars

grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.

"Who to the life an exact piece would make,
Must not from others' work a copy take."—Cowley

It is the first of what have been called the seven sciences, or liberal branches of knowledge; namely, grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music

"ars rectè scribendi, rectèque loquendi" the art of writing and speaking correctly.

"So let great authors have their due, that Time, who is the author of authors, be not deprived of his due, which is, farther and farther to discover truth."—LORD BACON.

5. By the adding of ly or ish

you plead so much for it? why do ye preach it up?"--Barclay's

ill I send upon you famine, an

1. Language, in the proper sense of the term, is peculiar to man; so that, without a miraculous assumption of human powers, none but human beings can make words the vehicle of thought. An imitation of some of the articulate sounds employed in speech, may be exhibited by parrots, and sometimes by domesticated ravens, and we know that almost all brute animals have their peculiar natural voices, by which they indicate their feelings, whether pleasing or painful. But language is an attribute of reason, and differs essentially not only from all brute voices, but even from all the chattering, jabbering, and babbling of our own species, in which there is not an intelligible meaning, with division of thought, and distinction of words.

Grammarians are the guardians, not the authors, of language.