Excerpt from A Historical French GrammarA Dieu ne plaise (god forbid). C inq et trots font huit ates dens, restesir(5 and3 are 8: take 2 away, 6 remains). These are remnants of the primitive construction. Ana logy, which from the middle of the 1sth century (book II, i 198) had extended to all impersonal verbs the pronoun it of the personal verbs, failed to affect these expressions. In the 16th century other cases of omission of this pronoun were still very frequent. But, save for the above archaisms, the omission was rare in the 17th century: De cette confusion arrive (from this confusion it befalls) (pascal, Pense'es, i. M ais a quoi sert, mes Peres, d'opposer. P (but whatisthe use, Fathers, of opposing P) (id. Prov. E t quels avantages, Madame, puisque Madame y a (and what advantages, Madam, since Madam there is [=yon (moliere, vi. La Fontaine alone has a real predilection for this ellipsis: N'a pas longtemps (not long ago) (iv. Comment vous va 7 (how goes it (vu. Non sera, snr mon time (it shall not be, on my soul (iv. 346) Toujwrs falloit forger de nouveaux tours (it was ever necessary to devise new tricks) (iv. &c., About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.