"Is it not a pity that 'more than one hundred thousand children' should be daily poring over language and logic like this? "Probably no other grammar was ever so industriously spread. Such was the author's perseverance in his measures to increase the demand for his book, that even the attainment of such accuracy as he was capable of, was less a subject of concern. For, in an article designed 'to ward off some of the arrows of criticism,' an advertisement which, from the eleventh to the one hundred and fifth edition,' has been promising to the publick another and a better edition' -he plainly offers this urgent engagement, as an apology for its defects.' He scruples not to say: 'Being able to devote to this subject only a small portion of his time, snatched from the active pursuits of a business life, he hopes that the candid will set down the apology to his credit. Not that he would beg a truce with the gentlemen criticks and reviewers. Any compromise with them would betray a want of self-confidence and moral courage, which he would, by no means, be willing to avow.'— Adv. Gram., p. 7. "Now, it is well known, that his principal business was, to commend his own method of teaching grammar, and to turn this publication to profit. This honourable industry, aided as himself suggests, by not much less than one thousand written recommendations,' is said to have wrought for him, in a very few years, a degree of success and fame, at which both the eulogists of Murray and the friends of English grammar may hang their heads. As to a 'compromise' with any critic or reviewer whom he cannot bribe, it is enough to say of that, it is morally impossible. Nor was it necessary for such an author to throw the gauntlet, to prove himself not lacking in 'self-confidence.' He can show his 'moral courage,' only by daring to do right. "In 1829, after his book had gone through ten editions, and the demand for it had become so great as 'to call forth twenty-two thousand copies during the year,' the prudent author, intending to veer his course according to the trade-wind, thought it expedient to retract his former acknowledgment to our best modern philologists,' and to profess himself a modifier of the Great Compiler's code. Where then holds the anchor of his praise? Let the reader say, after weighing and comparing his pretensions: 'Aware that there is, in the publick mind, a strong predilection for the doctrines contained in Mr. Murray's grammar, he has thought proper, not merely from motives of policy, but from choice, to select his principles chiefly from that work; and, moreover, to adopt, as far as consistent with his own views, the language of that eminent philologist. In no instance has he varied from him, unless he conceived that, in so doing, some practical advantage would be gained. He hopes, therefore, to escape the censures so frequently and so justly awarded to those unfor tunate innovators who have not scrupled to alter, mutilate, and torture, the text of that able writer, merely to gratify an itching propensity to figure in the world as authors, and gain an ephemeral popularity by arrogating to themselves the credit due to another.' Kirkham's Grammar, 1829, p. 10. "Now these statements are either true or false; and I know not on which supposition they are most creditable to the writer. Had any Roman grammatist thus profited by the name of Varro or Quintilian, he would have been filled with constant dread of somewhere meeting the injured author's frowning shade! Murray simply intended to do good, and good which might descend to posterity. This intention goes far to excuse even his errors. But Kirkham says: My pretensions reach not so far. To the present generation only, I present my claims.' Elocution, p. 346. His whole design is, therefore, a paltry scheme of present income. Being no rival with him in this race, and having no personal quarrel with him on any account, I would for his sake fain rejoice at his success, and withhold my criticisms; because he is said to have been liberal with his gains, and because he has not, like some others, copied me in stead of Murray. But the vindication of a greatly injured and perverted science, constrains me to say, on this occasion, that pretensions less consistent with themselves, or less sustained by taste and scholarship, have seldom, if ever, been promulgated in the name of grammar. I have certainly no intention to say more than is due to the uninformed and the misguided; for I may be thought prejudiced, and even this freedom may be attributed to an ill motive. But facts may well be credited, in opposition to courteous flattery, when there are the author's own words and works to vouch for them in the face of day. Though a thousand of our great men may have helped a copier's weak copyist to take some practical advantage' of the world's credulity, it is safe to aver, in the face of dignity still greater, that testimonials more fallacious have seldom mocked the cause of learning. They did not read his book. ་ "Notwithstanding the author's change in his professions, the work is now essentially the same as it was at first; except that its errors and contradictions have been greatly multiplied, by the addition of new matter inconsistent with the old. He evidently cares not what doctrines he teaches, or whose; but, as various theories are noised abroad, seizes upon different opinions, and mixes them together, that his books may contain something to suit all parties. A System of Philosophical Grammar,' though but an idle speculation, even in his own account, and doubly bsurd in him, as being flatly contradictory to his main text, has been thought worthy of insertion. And what his title-page denominates A New System of Punctuation, though mostly in the very words of Murray, was next invented to supply a deficiency which he at length discovered. To admit these, and some other additions, the comprehensive system of grammar' was gradually extended from 144 small duodecimo pages, to 228, of the ordinary size. And, in this compass, it was finally stereotyped in 1829; so that the ninety-four editions published since have nothing new for history. Once "But the publication of an other work, 'An Essay on Elocution,' shows the progress of the author's mind. Nothing can be more radically opposite, than are some of the elementary doctrines which this gentleman is now teaching; nothing more strangely inconsistent, than are some of his declarations and professions. For instance: A consonant is a letter that cannot be perfectly sounded without the help of a vowel.' Kirkham's Grammar, p. 19. Again: A consonant is not only capable of being perfectly sounded without the help of a vowel, but, moreover, of forming, like a vowel, a separate syllable.' Kirkham's Elocution, p. 32. more. Upon his own rules, he comments thus, and comments truly, because he had written them badly: 'But some of these rules are foolish, trifling, and unimportant. Elocution, p. 97. Again: 'Rules 10 and 11, rest on a sandy foundation. They appear not to be based on the principles of the language.' Grammar, p. 59. These are but specimens of his own frequent testimony against himself! But upon the credulity of ignorance, his high-sounding certificates and unbounded boasting can impose any thing. They overrule all in favour of one of the worst grammars extant-of which he says: It is now studied by more than one hundred thousand children and youth; and is more extensively used than all other English grammars published in the United States.' Elocution, p. 347. The booksellers say, he receives ten cents a copy, on this modification of Murray's Grammar, and that he reports the sale of sixty thousand in a year. Be it so- or double, if he and the public please. Murray had so little originality in his work, or so little selfishness in his design, that he would not take any thing; and his may ultimately prove the better bargain. "A man may boast and bless himself as he pleases, his fortune surely can never be worthy of an other's envy, so long as he finds it inadequate to his own great merits, and unworthy of his own poor gratitude. As a grammarian, Kirkham claims to be second only to Lindley Murray; and says: 'Since the days of Lowth, no other work on grammar, Murray's only excepted, has been so favourably received by the publick as his own. As a proof of this, he would mention, that within the last six years, it has passed through fifty editions.' Preface to Elocution, p. 12. And, at the same time, and in the same preface, he complains, that, 'Of all the labours done under the sun, the labours of the pen meet with the poorest reward.' Ibid. p. 5. This too clearly favours the report, that his books were not written by himself, but by others whom he hired. Possibly, the anonymous helper may here have penned, not his employer's feeling, but a line of his own experience. But I choose to ascribe the passage to the professed author, and to hold him answerable for the inconsistency. I am glad of his present success. It is the only thing which makes him worthy of the notice here taken of him. But I cannot sympathize with his complaint, because he never sought any but the poorest reward;' and all he sought, he found. In his last 'Address to Teachers,' he says: 'He may doubtless be permitted emphatically to say with Prospero, Your breath has filled my sails.'' Elocution, p. 18. If this boasting has any truth in it, he ought to be satisfied. But it is written, 'He that loveth silver, shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance, with increase.' Let him remember this. He now announces three or four other works as forthcoming shortly. What these will achieve, the world will see. But I must confine myself to the Grammar. "In this volume, scarcely any thing is found where it might be expected. 'The author,' as he tells us in his preface, has not followed the common artificial and unnatural arrangement adopted by most of his predecessors;' yet he has endeavoured to pursue a more judicious one, namely, the order of the understanding.” Grammar, p. 12. But if this is the order of his understanding, he is greatly to be pitied. A book more confused in its plan, more wanting in method, more imperfect in distinctness of parts, more deficient in symmetry, or more difficult of reference, shall not easily be found in stereotype. Let the reader try to follow us here. Bating twelve pages at the beginning, occupied by the title, recommendations, advertisement, contents, preface, hints to teachers, and advice to lecturers; and fifty-four at the end, embracing syntax, orthography, orthoepy, provincialisms, prosody, punctuation, versification, rhetoric, figures of speech, and a Key, all in the sequence here given; the work consists of fourteen chapters of grammar, absurdly called 'Familiar Lectures.' The first treats of sundries, under the name of orthography; and the last is three pages and a half on derivation. In the remaining twelve, the etymology and syntax of the ten parts of speech are commingled; and an attempt is made to teach simultaneously all that the author judged important in either. Hence he gives us, in a strange congeries, rules, remarks, illustrations, false syntax, systematic parsing, exercises in parsing, two different orders of notes, three different orders of questions, and a variety of other titles merely occasional. All these things, being additional to his main text, are to be connected, in the mind of the learner, with the parts of speech successively, in some new and inexplicable catenation found only in the arrangement of the lectures. The author himself could not see through the chaos. He accordingly made his table of contents a meagre alphabetical index. Having once attempted in vain to explain the order of his instructions, he actually gave the matter up in despair! "In length, these pretended lectures vary, from three or four pages, to eight-andthirty. Their subjects run thus: 1. Language, Grammar, Orthography; 2. Nouns and Verbs; 3. Articles; 4. Adjectives; 5. Participles; 6. Adverbs; 7. Prepositions; 8. Pronouns; 9. Conjunctions; 10. Interjections and Nouns; 11. Moods and Tenses; 12. Irregular Verbs; 13. Auxiliary, Passive, and Defective Verbs; 14. Derivation. Which, now, is 'more judicious,' such confusion as this, or the arrangement which has been common from time immemorial? Has grammar really been made easy by this confounding of its parts? Or are we lured by the name Familiar Lectures' - —a term manifestly adopted as a mere decoy, and, with respect to the work itself, totally inappropriate? If these chapters have ever been actually delivered as a series of lectures, the reader must have been employed on some occasions eight or ten times as long as on others. 'People,' says Dr. Johnson, 'have now-a-days got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as a private reading of the books from which the lectures are taken. I know of nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shown. You may teach chymistry by lectures-you might teach the making of shoes by lectures.' Boswell's Life of Johnson. "With singular ignorance and untruth, this gentleman claims to have invented a better method of analysis than had ever been practised before. Of other grammarians, his preface avers: They have all overlooked what the author considers a very important object; namely, a systematick order of parsing.'- Grammar, p. 9. And, in his 'Hints to Teachers,' presenting himself as a model, and his book as a paragon, he says: 'By pursuing this system, he can, with less labour, advance a pupil farther in the practical knowledge of this abstruse science, in two months, than he could in one year, when he taught in the old way.' Grammar, p. 12. What his 'old way' was, does not appear. Doubtless, something sufficiently bad. But to this gasconade the simple-minded have given credit- because the author showed certificates that testified to his great success, and called him 'amiable and modest! But who can look into the book, or into the writer's pretensions in regard to his predecessors, and conceive of the merit which has made him-'preeminent by so much odds? Was Murray less praiseworthy, less amiable, or less modest? In illustration of my topic, and for the sake of literary justice, I have selected that honoured compiler to show the abuses of praise; let the history of this his vaunting modifier cap the climax of vanity. In general, his amendments of 'that eminent philolo gist,' are not more skilful than the following touch upon an eminent dramatist; and here, it is plain, he has mistaken two nouns for adjectives, and converted into bad English a beautiful passage, the sentiment of which is worthy of an author's recollection : "The evil deed or deeds that men do, lives after them, Kirkham's Grammar, p. 75." After the lucid construction given to the above couplet, we shall look to see 'Cats eats mice' defended as an elegant sentence, and the early piscatory announcement, 'Shads is come!' cited as an example of grammatical correctness. ERATO, NUMBER THREE. BY WILLIAM D. GALLAGHER. pp. 60. Cincinnati: ALEXANDER FLASH. MR. GALLAGHER goes on from strength to strength. We can call to mind no young American poet, whose improvement has been more marked, or one who has profited so largely by the suggestions of honest but friendly criticism. It is impossible to avoid noticing a great and distinctive merit in all our author's productions. He feels what he writes. He throws his whole soul into his verse; and hence the animated tone of his musings, and the vivid distinctness of his descriptions. He affects no faint emotions; his impressions are hearty and homespun; his characters marked with force, and evidently drawn from nature. If he portrays a domestic scene, instead of a 'babbling, jingling simplicity,' assumed for the occasion, he brings together an assemblage of honest common-life traits and incidents, which the reader cannot fail to recognize and acknowledge, at once; and when, as in the volume before us, he depicts the murderous events connected with the early border history of the West, he has an artist-like faculty of grouping, and the power to make his readers see what they can scarcely doubt he has seen himself. But we cannot applaud the subject which Mr. GALLAGHER has chosen for the principal poem in the little work under notice, however little we may find to condemn in the manner of its handling. It is a 'Tale of the Dark and Bloody Ground,' and, as may readily be inferred, is sanguinary in no small degree. We are beginning to be a-weary of novels and poems which turn upon Indian massacres, and wild scenes of blood and carnage. We repeat, we fear the Indian soil, so industriously cultivated by native laborers in the field of fictitious literature, is in great danger of being exhausted from over-cropping: and were it otherwise, considerations of policy should deter us from relying too exclusively upon a single mine of romantic wealth, how rich soever it may be. We have marked several passages in 'Cadwallen,' the main poem of the collection; and regret that we are obliged to limit ourselves to the few which follow. The subjoined is from a fine apostrophe to the West, with which the poem opens: VOL. IX. "LAND of the West!-Green Forest-Land! Thine early day!-it nursed a band Of men who ne'er their lineage shamed: The iron-nerved, the bravely good, Who neither spared nor lavished blood Aye ready, morn, or night, or noon; Fleet in the race, firm in the field, Their sinewy arms their only shield- The men of Daniel Boon! Their dwelling-place-the 'good green wood;' The murmuring and majestic flood, The deep and solemn shade: Where to them came the Word of God, Breathed in the thunder's voice aloud, Other than fitting root, or stone, With the scant wood-moss overgrown. As pass the stars at rise of sun,- Of Time, and sinking, one by one; Yet lingering here and there a few, Of the domain they won, in strife Peace unto those that sleep beneath us! All honor to the few that yet do linger with us!" The attack of the 'Station' on the Elkhorn, which is described with much graphic power, is followed by vengeful preparations on the part of the survivors: "THERE was a speedy gathering then, Of fiery youths and fearless men, Ne'er had fair Elkhorn's bloody shore So fit for daring deeds. Here was th' appointed rendezvous- Brave spirits, they came rushing in: And when they saw what strife had been, And stood where white men's precious blood Had flowed, and stained that gentle flood, Each took that oath of vengeance dread Late uttered on the Indian's head." After a spirited debate in council, they set forth-Cadwallen, whose betrothed has been taken prisoner, leading the band: "Now breaks the young and dewy day; But while they speed, as quick as thought Thy priming is damp-and the figure is gone! "The ground they first appeared on, lies Though on a gloomy shore: Half circling it, but then unseen, A rocky, and dark, and deep ravine. Have at them, friends!' loud shouted Rodd; Strike home, my braves! and trust in God.' 'An ambush several whispered now, With quivering lip, and pallid brow. 'On! on!' said he. How short their breath! 'Tis a decoy! 'Twere madness great! Than thus to seal our own, perhaps each Station's fate.' "Rodd praised, cursed, entreated; but still they stood, That lined the darkly rolling flood. To his temples mounted his fiery blood; "Cadwallen looked hastily round him then, |