246 Miscellaneous Observatiofis. to the mode of expression so common in the mouths of illiterate persons, by which the nominative case is placed alone, and followed by a pronoun which governs the verb. John he goes^ or Mary she does^ axe the pleonastic forms which such persons constantly use in narration. Nor were they formerly, before our language had been universally reduced to the standard of empiric grammatical rules, con- fined to inaccurate speakers : as is proved by the following extract from the letter of the accomplished and the eloquent Raleigh written to his wife immediately after his trial. I cannot write much (are his words) : God he knows how hardly I steal this time while others sleep ; and it is also time that I should separate my thoughts from the world.*" Jar- diners Criminal Trials, Vol. i. p. ^55. Gr. C. L. The remarks on the Eno^lish g:enitive in our last Num- ber were almost entirely confined to their immediate object: and as that was an orthographical, not an etymological ques- tion, I did not bring forward any arguments to prove that the final s does not stand for his^ but, assuming this to be notorious, merely pointed out the general law, of which the mistake on this matter was an exemplification, that languages, when they combine, are wont to lose their grammatic forms, and to pass from the synthetic to the analytic class ; and then endeavoured, though very imperfectly, to trace the history of that mistake, to shew how it maintained its ground in spite of repeated protests against it, and to establish, what I had more directly in view, that our present practice of writing our genitives with an apostrophe emanated from it. In the passages indeed cited from our older grammarians more than one argument is urged, which, if arguments had always the same power in effect as in idea, would have set the old and correct opinion on its feet again, and put down the errour altogether. We all know however that it is often no less difficult to get rid of an errour, than it would be to
