inasmuch as it is inflected as such: but for the purposes of construction, it is a copula only, i. e. it merely denotes the agreement or disagreement between the subject and the predicate. Now the predicate need agree with the subject in case only.

1. It has no necessary concord in gender-she is a man in courage--he is a woman in effeminacy—it is a girl. 2. It has no necessary concord in number-sin is the ages of death-it is these that do the mischief.

3. It has no necessary concord in person-I am he whom you mean.

4. It has, however, a necessary concord in case. Nothing but a nominative case can, by itself, constitute a term of either kind-subject or predicate. Hence, both terms must be in the nominative, and, consequently, both in the same case. Expressions like this is for me are elliptic. The logical expression is this is a thing for me.

CHAPTER XIII.

SYNTAX OF VERBS-MOODS.

§ 577. THE infinitive mood is a noun. The current rule that when two verbs come together the latter is placed in the infinitive mood-means that one verb can govern another only by converting it into a noun,-I begin to move I begin the act of moving. Verbs, as verbs, can

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only come together in the way of apposition,—I irritate, I beat, I talk at him, I call him names, &c. The construction, however, of English infinitives is twofold. (1.) Infinitive Proper. (2.) Gerundial.

§ 578. Infinitives.-When one verb is followed by

another without the preposition to, the construction must be considered to have grown out of the A.S. form in -an.

Thou shalt not see thy brother's ox or his ass fall down by the way.
We heard him say, I will destroy the temple.

I feel the pain abate.

He bid her alight.

I would fain have any one name to me that tongue that any one can speak as he should do by the rules of grammar.

This, in the present English, is the rarer of the two

constructions.

§ 579. Gerundial.-When one verb is followed by another, preceded by the preposition to, i. e. I begin to move, the construction must be considered to have grown out of the A. S. form in -nne. This is the case with the great majority of English verbs. The following examples, from the Old English, of the gerundial construction where we have, at present, the objective, are Dr. Guest's:

1. Eilrid myght nought to stand þam ageyn.

2. Whether feith schall mowe to save him?

R. BR.

WYCLIFFE, James ii.

HIGGINS, Lady Sabrine, 4.

3. My woful child what flight maist thou to take?

4. Never to retourne no more,

Except he would his life to loose therfore.

HIGGINS, King Albanaet, 6.

5. He said he could not to forsake my love.

HIGGINS, Queen Elstride, 20.

9. Whom when on ground she grovelling saw to roll
She ran in haste.

Faëry Queen, iv. 7, 32.

§ 580. I am to speak. Three facts explain this idiom.

1. The idea of direction towards an object conveyed by the dative case and by combinations equivalent to it.

2. The extent to which the ideas of necessity, obligation, or intention are connected with the idea of something that has to be done, or something towards which some action has a tendency.

3. The fact that expressions like the one in question historically represent an original dative case or its equivalent; since to speak grows out of the Anglo-Saxon form to sprecanne, which, although called a gerund, is really a dative case of the infinitive mood.

Johnson thought that, in the phrase he is to blame, the word blame was a noun. If he meant a noun in the way that culpa is one, his view was wrong. But if he meant a noun in the way that culpare, and ad culpandum, are nouns, it was right.

I am to blame.-This idiom is one degree more complex than the previous one; since I am to blame = I am to be blamed. As early, however, as the Anglo-Saxon period, the gerunds were liable to be used in a passive. sense he is to lufigenne not he is to love, but he is to be loved.

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The principle of this confusion may be discovered by

considering that an object to be blamed is an object for some one to blame, just as an object to be loved is an object for some one to love.

§ 581. Imperatives have three peculiarities. (1.) They can in English only be used in the second person: (2.) They take pronouns after, instead of before, them: (3.) They often omit the pronoun altogether.

CHAPTER XIV.

TIME AND TENSE.

§ 582. Time is one thing; tense another. Such statements as identify them are exceptionable. The etymology of the last word is tensio, denoting a state of tension or extension, a word which like case, as applied to nouns, gives us a metaphor rather than a fact. Tense is to time, much as gender is to sex; i. e. a grammatical name for a natural condition: and as sex and gender were carefully distinguished from each other so should we carefully distinguish Tense and Time. To constitute a tense there must be an inflection. Vocat in Latin, and calls in English are tenses. Vocatus sum and I have called are combinations, which, so far as they express time, partake of the nature of

tenses.

§ 583. The following is an exhibition of some of the times in which an action may take place, as found in the English and other languages, expressed by the use of either an inflection or a combination.

Time considered in one point only

1. Present.-An action taking place at the time of speaking, and incomplete.-I am beating, I am being beaten. Not expressed, in English, by the simple present tense; since I beat means I am in the habit of beating.

2. Aorist.-An action that took place in past time, or previous to the time of speaking, and which has no connection with the time of speaking,-I struck, I was stricken. Expressed, in English, by the præterite, in Greek by the aorist. The term aorist, from the Greek a-ógioτos = undefined, is a convenient name for this sort ἀ-όριστος of time.

3. Future.-An action that has neither taken place, nor is taking place at the time of speaking, but which is stated as one which will take place.-Expressed, in English, by the combination of will or shall with an infinitive mood; in Latin and Greek by an inflection. I shall (or will) speak, xén-ow, dica-m.

None of these expressions imply more than a single action; in other words, they have no relation to any second action occurring simultaneously with them, before them, or after them,-I am speaking now, I spoke yesterday, I shall speak to-morrow.

By considering past, present, or future actions not only by themselves, but as related to other past, present, or future actions, we get fresh varieties of expression. Thus, an act may have been going on, when some other act, itself one of past time, interrupted it. Here the action agrees with a present action in being incomplete; but it differs from it in having been rendered incomplete by an action that is past. This is exactly the case with the

4. Imperfect. I was reading when he entered. Here we have two acts; the act of reading and the act of entering. Both are past as regards the time of speaking, but