Such _Nouns_ and _Verbs_ as we defective find, No _Grammar_ Rule did their attendance bind. They were excepted, and exempted hence, But _Supines_, all did blame for negligence. _Verbs_ Offspring, _Participles_ hand-in-hand, Follow, and by the [f.]ame direction [f.]tand: The re[f.]t Promi[f.]cuou[f.]ly did croud and cumber, Such Multitudes of each, they wanted Number. Next to the Corps to make th' attendance even, _Jove, Mercury, Apollo_ came from heaven. And _Virgil, Cato_, gods, men, Rivers, Winds, With _Elegies_, Tears, Sighs, came in their kinds. _Ovid_ from _Pontus_ ha[f.]t's Apparell'd thus, In Exile-weeds bringing _De Tri[f.]tibus_: And _Homer_ [f.]ure had been among the Rout, But that the Stories [f.]ay his Eyes were out. _Queens, Cities, Countries, I[f.]lands_, Come All Trees, Birds, Fi[f.]hes, and each Word in _Um_. What _Syntax_ here can you expect to find? Where each one bears [f.]uch di[f.]compo[f.]ed mind. Figures of Diction and Con[f.]truction, Do little: Yet [f.]tand [f.]adly looking on. That [f.]uch a Train may in their motion _chord_, _Pro[f.]odia_ gives the mea[f.]ure Word for Word. _Sic Mæ[f.]tus Cecinit_, Benj. Tomp[f.]on.] ] The custom was in Boston--until this century--to study through the grammar three times before any application to parsing. Far better wit than any found in an old-time jest book was the sub-title of a very turgid Latin grammar, "A delysious Syrupe newly Claryfied for Yonge Scholars yt thurste for the Swete Lycore of Latin Speche." The first English Grammar used in Boston public schools and retained in use till this century, was _The Young Lady's Accidence, or a Short and Easy Introduction to English Grammar, design'd principally for the use of Young Learners, more especially for those of the Fair Sex, though Proper for Either_. It is said that a hundred thousand copies of it were sold. It was a very little grammar about four or five inches long and two or three wide, and had only fifty-seven pages, but it was a very good little grammar when compared with its fellows, being simple and clearly worded. The fashion of the day was to set everything in rhyme as an aid to memory; and even so unpoetical a subject as English Grammar did not escape the rhyming writer. In the _Grammar of the English Tongue_, a large and formidable book in fine type, all the rules and lists of exceptions and definitions were in verse. A single specimen, the definition of a letter, will show the best style of composition, which, when it struggled with moods and tenses, was absolutely meaningless. "A Letter is an uncompounded Sound Of which there no Division can be Found, Those Sounds to Certain Characters we fix, Which in the English Tongue are Twenty-Six."