with you to-morrow;" in the second and third person, shall promises, commands, threatens; as, "They shall be rewarded; Thou shalt not bear false witness; The soul that sinneth, it shall die." These distinctions, however, are frequently unobserved, and, in many writers and speakers, the one is used indiscriminately for the other.

19. Some grammarians lay it down that there are only the present and past tenses, and in the case of such expressions as "I had written," make had, the verb, in the past tense, and written, the participle, agreeing with the noun, standing as a name for the thing written. That this is liable to serious objection, will be shewn in the chapter on adjectives, under which head the participle naturally falls.

20. Of the construction and government of the infinitive mood, notice will be taken in that part of this work which will treat of the syntactical relationship of words.

21. The terms active and passive, as applied to verbs, have really no meaning. In the expressions, "The sun shines; water is conveyed in pipes," the subjects, sun, water, are the active and passive words respectively, although grammarians have agreed to apply the name to the verb.

22. "We were shewn a coal pit ;" "The house is building;" such expressions, though common even in the best writers, are manifestly erroneous in principle and irreconcileable with the grammatical construction of the passive verb. It will be shewn in the syntax of the transitive verbs, that some of them apparently govern two objective cases, as in the expression, "He gave me a book," where me, however, is governed by the preposition to, of which there is an ellipsis. The class of expressions objected to probably arose from the surface consideration of me, as the direct object, which in the conversion of the sentence from active to passive, would in that case be changed into the subject I, which would produce the expression, "I was given a book." In the case of the first-named example, the expression should be, "A coal pit was shewn to us;' of the latter," Somebody is building the house," or "The house is being built;" this latter form is frequently used.

QUESTIONS FOR EXAMINATION ON THE VERB.

What is the definition of verb? Why has this name been applied to this class of words? What is the characteristic office of the verb ? Give a list of verbs. What has the verb To be been called? What is always its peculiar function? Subdivide all the other verbs into two classes. What is the essential difference between the active and passive verb? Shew that no verb is really active or passive. (See Observation 21.) Give a list of active and passive verbs. For what kind of active verbs can the passive verbs be substituted? How is the passive verb formed? Name the perfect, potential, passive form, first singular, of the following verbs:-To receive, To open; the second future passive of the following,-To absolve, To create. Change the following sentence, so that the verb thereof may be in the passive form,-" Cranmer had written a very manly letter to the Queen." What words undergo a change of construction in such cases, and what do not? Change the following, so that the verb thereof may be in the active form,-"A most severe law was passed against the Catholics by the Protestants.' Why is it, that a sentence having an intransitive verb in it, cannot be changed into the passive form? What is the essential difference between the transitive and intransitive verb ? The origin of these names? What is Adam Smith's remark, and why, as to the date of the first formation of verbs? What sort of words may be supposed to have been first used? What is Latham's remark as to the great difference between a verb and a noun ? From what essential characteristic of the verb has it the idea of tense, mood, person, and time connected with it? Of mood, tense, number, person, gender, case, which belongs to the noun? Which to the verb? Which is common to both? Shew, by example, what is meant by saying that a verb is inflected in person, number, mood, and tense. Give instances of the verb being in the same form in the singular and plural number. How is the number of the verb to be determined in such cases? How many persons have verbs?

Numbers? Moods? The origin of the latter word? Name the essential difference between the different moods, and the derivation of the name of each. The meaning of the word tense? Its derivation ? How many tenses, strictly speaking, are there? How many are there said to be? Give the essential characteristic of each. Why are the imperfect and first future called indefinite? Name the auxiliary verbs. What is the conjugation of the verb in an enlarged sense, and what in a minor sense? What difference in signification results from the combination of the present, and perfect or past participle with the verb to be? How do regular and irregular verbs differ? Conjugate the following verbs in a minor sense, i. e., by giving their radical parts-signify, love, work, bring. Classify the first named, as regards the formation of its past tense, and give the probable reason of such formation. State the rule, and give examples, for the formation of the compound tenses in the several moods. How is the emphatic, and how the progressive, form of the verb formed?

What

idea, not found in the simple form, is conveyed by these forms? Conjugate the following verbs at large, actively and passively, in the simple, progressive, and emphatic forms,-To hear, To contend, To see.

The following is a specimen of the mode of parsing the verb: "The negotiations which had still been pending, now went on with vigour." "Had been pending," is a verb, as expressing an act: active, as expressing an act performed by the subject (negotiations), which, for the more easy understanding of the verb as active, may be supposed to be some material thing: an intransitive verb, the act expressed by it not affecting the object, but being confined to the subject: indicative mood, a positive assertion (that they had been pending) being thereby made: pluperfect tense, as being formed by the past tense of the verb To have (see the rule for the formation of the pluperfect): progressive form, as combining the present participle of the verb to pend with the verb to be.

NOTE. The number and person of the verb may be omitted, except in the case of those parts, the number and person of which are discerned by their form. The government of the verb in number and person will be stated in

E

the rules on Syntax, as then will cognisance be more properly taken of such items.

According to the previous specimen, point out and the several verbs in the following sentences:

parse

"Richard lost no time in giving the sanction of a coronation to his title."

"The gifts and promises of the King had gained Clifford, who communicated to him the names of the leading English Yorkists. And on the same day the Lord Fitzwalter and several others were arrested on a charge of treason."

"If we may credit the following story, the King himself equalled his agents in the art of taking advantage of the letter of the law."

"I really am at a loss to draw any sort of parallel between the public merits of his Grace, by which he justifies the grants he holds, and these services of mine, on the favourable construction of which I have obtained what his Grace so much disapproves."

ON THE PRONOUN.

A PRONOUN, (pro=for, nomen=name,) as the term implies, is a word used as a substitute for the noun. In the expression, "John is a good boy, he is always prepared with his lessons," he is a pronoun, standing for the noun John, which latter, by its frequent and close repetition, would offend the ear. There are two kinds of pronouns,— personal and relative.

PERSONAL PRONOUNS.

The personal pronouns are-I, thou, he, she, it, with their plurals. I represents the first person, or the speaker; thou the second person, or the party addressed; and he, she, it, are pronouns, of the third person, representing the person or thing which is the subject of conversation. No satisfactory reason has been assigned, nor indeed appears capable of being assigned, for the application of the term personal to the pronouns above mentioned; and it would be easy to show that the pronouns arranged under the head relative are as personal as the personal pronouns them

selves. If there be, as there are, three parties in all conversations, the speaker, the individual spoken to, and the individual spoken of, and if it be required, as it is, for convenience sake, to adopt an expedient whereby marks for such parties may be used, no doubt such words asI, thou, he, &c. &c., answer the purpose, and thereby become exceedingly useful; but why they should, therefore, be called personal rather than who, which, &c., which represent equally the aforesaid parties, it is hard to determine. The personal pronouns are thus declined :

First Personal Pronoun,

I.

:

Second Personal Pronoun,

THOU.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE PERSONAL PRONOUNS.

1. The possessive cases of these pronouns (singular and plural) are called possessive pronouns, i. e., personal pronouns in the possessive case.

2. Ye and you, it appears, are the nominatives plural of the second pronoun, thou, which is rarely used, except for emphasis-you, though plural, taking its place.

3. Mine and thine were formerly used before a vowel or an h, as, "Blot out all mine iniquities;" "My son, give me thine heart." The words my and thy are used instead thereof in the present day.

22

4. The possessive cases of the personal pronouns are not written, like those of nouns, with the apostrophe: thusher's, it's, our's, your's, their's, should be hers, its, ours, yours, theirs.