The national literature of a country is in the keeping, not of the people at large, but of authors and teachers.

But a grammarian presumes to be a judge of authorship, and a teacher of teachers; and is it to the honour of England or America, that in both countries so many are countenanced in this assumption of place, who can read no language but their mother tongue?
English Grammar is not properly an indigenous production, either of this country or of Britain; because it is but a branch of the general science of philology--a new variety, or species, sprung up from the old stock long ago transplanted from the soil of Greece and Rome.
27.

It is true, indeed, that neither any ancient system of grammatical instruction nor any grammar of an other language, however contrived, can be entirely applicable to the present state of our tongue; for languages must needs differ greatly one from an other, and even that which is called the same, may come in time to differ greatly from what it once was.

But the general analogies of speech, which are the central principles of grammar, are but imperfectly seen by the man of one language.

On the other hand, it is possible to know much of those general principles, and yet be very deficient in what is peculiar to our own tongue.