By the force of a late popular example, still too widely influential, grammatical authorship has been reduced, in the view of many, to little or nothing more than a mere serving-up of materials anonymously borrowed; and, what is most remarkable, even for an indifferent performance of this low office, not only unnamed reviewers, but several writers of note, have not scrupled to bestow the highest praise of grammatical excellence! And thus the palm of superior skill in grammar, has been borne away by a _professed compiler_; who had so mean an opinion of what his theme required, as to deny it even the common courtesies of compilation! What marvel is it, that, under the wing of such authority, many writers have since sprung up, to improve upon this most happy design; while all who were competent to the task, have been discouraged from attempting any thing like a complete grammar of our language?
What motive shall excite a man to long-continued diligence, where such notions prevail as give mastership no hope of preference, and where the praise of his ingenuity and the reward of his labour must needs be inconsiderable, till some honoured compiler usurp them both, and bring his "most useful matter" before the world under better auspices?
If the love of learning supply such a motive, who that has generously yielded to the impulse, will not now, like Johnson, feel himself reduced to an "humble drudge"-- or, like Perizonius, apologize for the apparent folly of devoting his time to such a subject as grammar?
25.

The first edition of the "Institutes of English Grammar," the doctrinal parts of which are embraced in the present more copious work, was published in the year 1823; since which time, (within the space of twelve years,) about forty new compends, mostly professing to be abstracts of _Murray_, with improvements, have been added to our list of English grammars.

The author has examined as many as thirty of them, and seen advertisements of perhaps a dozen more.

Being various in character, they will of course be variously estimated; but, so far as he can judge, they are, without exception, works of little or no real merit, and not likely to be much patronized or long preserved from oblivion.

For which reason, he would have been inclined entirely to disregard the petty depredations which the writers of several of them have committed upon his earlier text, were it not possible, that by such a frittering-away of his work, he himself might one day seem to some to have copied that from others which was first taken from him.