Now, what can be more idle, than for teachers to reject the common classification of words, and puzzle the heads of school-boys with speculations like these?
It is easy to admit all that etymology can show to be true, and still justify the old arrangement of the elements of grammar.
And if we depart from the common scheme, where shall we stop?
Some have taught that the parts of speech are only _five_; as did the latter stoics, whose classes, according to Priscian and Harris, were these: articles, nouns appellative, nouns proper, verbs, and conjunctions.

Others have made them _four_; as did Aristotle and the elder stoics, and, more recently, Milnes, Brightland, Harris, Ware, Fisher, and the author of a work on Universal Grammar, entitled Enclytica.

Yet, in naming the four, each of these contrives to differ from _all the rest!_ With Aristotle, they are, "nouns, verbs, articles, and conjunctions;" with Milnes, "nouns, adnouns, verbs, and particles;" with Brightland, "names, qualities, affirmations, and particles;" with Harris, "substantives, attributives, definitives, and connectives;" with Ware, "the name, the word, the assistant, the connective;" with Fisher, "names, qualities, verbs, and particles;" with the author of Enclytica, "names, verbs, modes, and connectives." But why make the classes so numerous as four?
Many of the ancients, Greeks, Hebrews, and Arabians, according to Quintilian, made them _three_; and these three, according to Vossius, were nouns, verbs, and particles.
"Veteres Arabes, Hebraei, et Graeci, tres, non amplius, classes faciebant; l.
Nomen, 2.

Verbum, 3.

Particula seu Dictio."-- _Voss.