English Grammar in Familiar Lectures

English Grammar, in Familiar Lectures, by Samuel Kirkham, is accompanied by a compendium embracing a new systematic order of parsing, a new system of punctuation, exercises in false syntax, and a system of philosophical grammar, in notes. An appendix and a key to the exercises are added, designed for the use of schools and private learners. The author says the tenth and eleventh editions are believed to have been greatly improved, but that he is apprehensive that his work is not yet as accurate and as much simplified as it may be.

The grammar says the word what is generally a compound relative, including both the antecedent and the relative, and is equivalent to that which, and may be used as three kinds of a pronoun, and as an interjection. A section on the exclamatory point says the note of exclamation is applied to expressions of sudden emotion, surprise, joy, grief, &c. and sometimes to invocations and addresses. Another section says a parenthesis is a clause containing some useful remark, which may be omitted without injuring the grammatical construction.