540
follow, to be always in the objective case governed by of, understood: as, "A few [of] years,"--"A thousand [of] doors;"--like the phrases, "A couple of fowls,"--"A score of fat bullocks."--_Churchill's Gram._, p. 279. Neither solution is free from difficulty. For example: "There are a great many adjectives."--_Dr. Adam_. Now, if many is here a singular nominative, and the only subject of the verb, what shall we do with _are_? and if it is a plural adjective, what shall we do with a and _great?_ Taken in either of these ways, the construction is anomalous. One can hardly think the word "_adjectives_" to be here in the objective case, because the supposed ellipsis of the word of cannot be proved; and if many is a noun, the two words are perhaps in apposition, in the nominative. If I say, "A thousand men are on their way," the men are the thousand, and the thousand _is nothing but the men_; so that I see not why the relation of the terms may not be that of apposition. But if authorities are to decide the question, doubtless we must yield it to those who suppose the whole numeral phrase to be taken _adjectively_; as, "Most young Christians have, in the course of half a dozen years, time to read a great many pages."--Young Christian, p. 6.
"For harbour at a thousand doors they knock'd; Not one of all the thousand but was lock'd."--Dryden.
OBS. 27.--The numeral words considered above, seem to have been originally adjectives, and such may be their most proper construction now; but all of them are susceptible of being construed as nouns, even if they are not such in the examples which have been cited. Dozen, or hundred, or thousand, when taken abstractly, is unquestionably a noun; for we often speak of _dozens, hundreds_, and thousands. Few and many never assume the plural form, because they have natura