Children muttering over their schoolbooks today think little of grammar. Grammar is tedious, difficult, slow; grammar is a shackle placed on language, correcting who into whom, can I into may I. Grammar and grammarians are constables, sternly watching while you split infinitives, narrowing their eyes at spliced commas while smacking semi-coloned truncheons against their palms. But that is not the truth of grammar. There was a time when grammar was wild—when it shifted shapes and unleashed new forms out of old. Grammar, like gramarye, like grimoire. What is magic but a change in the world? What
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