241 an personal pronouns , Oct. 17. 



My bouse Is better than thine i ' but thine .s finer than nhie, or. 

 My house is better than thy house ; but thy house is finer than my hiuse or. 

 My bt-use h helKr ihtn the house of thee i but f^j ioajc is finer than /if 

 home of me. 



The word thine, therefore, in this example, is 

 nearly equivalent to " thy house, or the honst of thee," 

 and mine, to " my house, or the the house of me.'''' 



Again, fhould we attempt to baniQi the words 

 7nine, thine, and the others ranged in the last clafs, 

 and substitute those of l\\tfrst clafs in their stead, 

 we fliould find a great want in language. 



Thus, continuing the same phrase, 



" My house is better than thy; but thy is finer than my." 



We immediately recognise, that, unlefs the word 

 Jjonse be added to the words thy and my, the sense 

 must be incomplete, which is not in the least necefsary 

 when mine, thine, and others of the same clafs are 

 employed. 



By this kind of analysis we are led to perceive, 

 that the words belonging to the^r^^ of these clafses, 

 7ny, thy, &:c. cannot with propriety be called pro- 

 nouns, seeing they do not come in the the place of 

 any noun wha|:tver. But that, instead of a noun, 

 they only supply the place of a pronoun itself; and 

 that the very pronoun, whose place this word occu- 

 pies, is not itself the substitute of a noun on this oc- 

 casion ; but merely the substitute of a defnitive on- 

 ly. To make all this plain, let us suppose in this 

 case the speaker to be fames, and the person addref- 

 sied to be fohn, then the phrase " my house," would 

 be exactly the same with " 'Jameses house," The word 

 my is therefore an exact substitute for the word 

 James''s, which I had occasion to fhow on a former 

 occasion, is not a noun, but a definitive only. In 



