" But who will contend, that they speak pure English?
But perhaps the advocates of what _they_ call a philosophical
development of language, will say, that by their resolution of
sentences, they merely supply an ellipsis. If, by an ellipsis, they
mean such a one as is necessary, to the grammatical construction, I
cannot accede to their assumption. In teaching grammar, as well as
in other things, we ought to avoid extremes:--we ought neither to
pass superficially over an ellipsis necessary to the sense of a
phrase, nor to put modern English to the blush, by adopting a mode
of resolving sentences that would entirely change the character of
our language, and carry the learner back to the Vandalic age.
_But_ comes from the Saxon verb, _beon-utan_, to be-out. "All were
well _but (be-out, leave-out)_ the stranger." "Man is _but_ a reed,
floating on the current of time." Resolution: "Man is a reed,
floating on the current of time; _but (be-out_ this fact) he is not
a stable being."
_And--aned, an'd, and_, is the past part. of _ananad_, to add, join.
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