THE REFORMED GRAMMAR OR PHILOSOPHICAL TEST OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION; WRITTEN FOR THE Assistance of teachers and satisfaction of learners. BY GERALD MURRAY. Price, Bound, Four Shillings. LONDON: PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR, BY DARTON AND CLARK, HOLBORN HILL. 1847 PREFACE. THE Author's aim in publishing the present work, is to excite in youth a passion for grammatical knowledge, to facilitate its acquisition, to multiply the number of those who study the English language critically and with pleasure, to raise learners from the degradation of being mere senseless parrots, to the dignity of rational youth, by substituting the exercise of reason for the slavish abuses of the memory. How the work will answer eht design teachers will decide. The author knows their independence and impartiality, and confidently submits his humble efforts to their unbiased decision. He owns no man's grammatical infallibility, and is convinced that the present work must have its imperfections. The author of a school book, who familiarizes learners with the misapplication of words, who sterilizes their minds by unmeaning assertions, poisons genius, renders ignorance impregnable, knowledge inaccessible, and prepares victims for imposition in later years. As the interests of learners will be best promoted by the earliest exposure of the errors in all books for their instruction, the author invites the strictest investigation into the truth of what he has written. Much of the argumentative matter, and many of the quotations from other grammars, which the establishment of his system renders indispensable in this edition, |