story.
35. But the publication of an other work designed for schools, "An Essay an 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 Gram., 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. Take a second example. He makes "ADJECTIVE PRONOUNS" a prominent division and leading title, in treating of the pronouns proper; defines the term in a manner peculiar to himself; prefers and uses it in all his parsing; and yet, by the third sentence of the story, the learner is conducted to this just conclusion: "Hence, such a thing as an adjective-pronoun cannot exist."--Grammar, p. 105. Once more. Upon his own rules, or such as he had borrowed, he comments thus, and comments truly, because he had either written them badly or made an ill choice: "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! Nor shall he find refuge in the impudent falsehood, that the things which I quote as his, are not his own.[14] These contradictory texts, and scores of others which might be added to them, are as rightfully his own, as any doctrine he has ever yet inculcated. But, upon the credulity of ignorance, his high-sounding certificates and unbounded boasting can impose any thing. They overrule all in favour of cue 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 from his publishers ten cents a copy, on this work, and that he reports the sale of sixty thousand copies per annum. Such has of late been his public boast. I have once had the story from his own lips, and of course congratulated him, though I dislike the book. Six thousand dollars a year, on this most miserable modification of Lindley Murray's Grammar! 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.
36. 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. Willing to illustrate by the best and fairest examples these fruitful means of grammatical fame, I am glad of his present success, which, through this record, shall become yet more famous. 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 more than all he sought, he found. In his last "Address to Teachers," he says, "He may doubtless
