. The comic English grammar; a new and facetious introduction to the English tongue . f objects which areneither males nor females: as, a toast, a tankard,a pot, a pipe, a pudding, a pie, a sausage, a roll, amuffin, a crumpet, a puff, a cheesecake, a bun, anapricot, an orange, a lollipop, a cream, an ice, ajelly, &c. &c. &c. We might go on to enumerate an infinity of ob-jects of the neuter gender, of all sorts and kinds;but in the selection of the foregoing examples wehave been guided by two considerations :— 1. The desire of exciting agreeable emotions inthe mind of the reader. 2. The wish to
. The comic English grammar; a new and facetious introduction to the English tongue . f objects which areneither males nor females: as, a toast, a tankard,a pot, a pipe, a pudding, a pie, a sausage, a roll, amuffin, a crumpet, a puff, a cheesecake, a bun, anapricot, an orange, a lollipop, a cream, an ice, ajelly, &c. &c. &c. We might go on to enumerate an infinity of ob-jects of the neuter gender, of all sorts and kinds;but in the selection of the foregoing examples wehave been guided by two considerations :— 1. The desire of exciting agreeable emotions inthe mind of the reader. 2. The wish to illustrate the following propo-sition, That almost everything nice is also neu-ter. Except, however, a nice young lady, a nice duck, F 50 THE COMIC ENGLISH GRAMMAR. and one or two other nice things, which we donot at present remember. Some neuter substantives are by a figure ofspeech converted into the mascuhne or femininegender: thus we say of the sun, that when lieshines upon a Sociahst, he shines upon a thief; andof the moon, that she affects the minds of A son A LIST. There are certain nouns with whicli notions ofstrength, vigour, and the hke quahties, are morej)articularly connected; and these are the neutersubstantives which arc figuratively rendered mas-culine. On the other hand, beauty, amiability, and ETYMOLOGY. 51 SO forth, are held to invest words with a femininecharacter. Thus the sun is said to be masculine,and the moon feminine. But for our own part, andour view is confirmed by the discoveries of astro-nomy, we believe that the sun is called mascuHnefrom his supporting and sustaining the moon, and
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