MODERN GRAMMAR.
LTO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOE:9
Sin,—" 0 Ma! baby tore it." The change to "Me tore it" will mark a new stage in" baby's "psychological development; and the final "I tore it" is the sign of an advance far greater than the former. Had Mr. Joseph John Murphy been lately reading "The Philosophy of Consciousness" (in an old volume of Blackwood) he would perhaps have found in "it's I" some- thing more distinctive than mere Latinism. Contrast with "It's me, only poor little me," as a small person's answer to a peremptory "Who's there?" from behind a closed door,—put in contrast with that (if I may ise the words for such a par- pose) "It is I: be not afraid," and surely we feel that the two forma are far from being merely interchangeable. In "It's I "—I myself, I, ipsissimus, abrierarop—the speaker is, with more or less emphasis, at his proper subjective centre. In "It's me," he regards the situation from the other interlo- cutor's point of view, sets him in the subjective centre, and displaces himself to some point in the objective circumference. The case is not unlike that of the letter-writer who, in his "While I was writing this," takes his tense as from his reader's time and position instead of from his own.
In "Me, me, adsum qui feci, in me convertite ferram," "ego, ego," would be forbidden by reasons other than metrical or grammatical. The speaker is eagerly offering himself as an object of attack. His "Me, me," has no feeling or forethought of the coming "in me."—I am, Sir, &c.,
F. W. HARPER, ex-Vicar of Selby.
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