Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/390

 apparently made between a passive verb, and the participle chiefly constituting it; and here, too, through a fancied ellipsis of "being" before the latter, most, if not all, of his other positions concerning passives, are again disastrously overthrown by something worse--a word "imperceptibly understood." "I am smitten;' I was smitten;' &c., are," he says, "the universally acknowledged forms of the VERBS in these tenses, in the passive voice:--not of the PARTICIPLE. In all verbal constructions of the character of which we have hitherto treated, (see page 103) and, where the ACTIONS described are continuous in their operations,--the participle BEING is imperceptibly omitted, by ellipsis."--P. 144.

OBS. 15.--Dr. Bullions has stated, that, "The present participle active, and the present participle passive, are not counterparts to each other in signification; [,] the one signifying the present doing, and the other the present suffering of an action, [;] for the latter always intimates the present being of an ACT, not in progress, but completed."--''Prin. of Eng. Gram.'', p. 58. In this, he errs no less grossly than in his idea of the "action or the suffering" expressed by "a perfect participle," as cited in OBS. 5th above; namely, that it must have ceased. Worse interpretation, or balder absurdity, is scarcely to be met with; and yet the reverend Doctor, great linguist as he should be, was here only trying to think and tell the common import of a very common sort of English participles; such as, "being loved" and "being seen." In grammar, "an act," that has "present being," can be nothing else than an act now doing, or "in progress;" and if, "the present being of an ACT not in progress," were here a possible thought, it surely could not be intimated by any such participle. In Acts, i, 3 and 4, it is stated, that our Saviour showed himself to the apostles, "alive after his passion, by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God; and, being assembled together with them commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem." Now, of these misnamed "present participles," we have here one "active," one "passive," and two others--(one in each form--) that are neuter; but no present time, except what is in the indefinite date of "pertaining." The events are past, and were so in the days of St. Luke. Yet each of the participles denotes continuance: not, indeed, in or to the present time, but for a time. "Being seen" means continuing to be seen; and, in this instance, the period of the continuance was "forty days" of time past. But, according to the above-cited "principle of English Grammar," so long and so widely inculcated by "the Rev. Peter Bullions, D. D., Professor of Languages," &c.,--a central principle of interpretation, presumed by him to hold "always"--this participle must intimate "the present being of an act, not in progress, but completed;"--that is, "the present being of" the apostles' act in formerly seeing the risen Saviour!

OBS. 16.--This grammarian has lately taken a deal of needless pains to sustain, by a studied division of verbs into two classes, similar to those which are mentioned in OBS. 13th above, a part of the philosophy of J. W. Wright, concerning our usual form of passives in the present tense. But, as he now will have it, that the two voices sometimes tally as counterparts, it is plain that he adheres but partially to his former erroneous conception of a perfect or "past" participle, and the terms which hold it "in any connexion." The awkward substitutes proposed by the Irish critic, he does not indeed countenance; but argues against them still, and, in some respects, very justly. The doctrine now common to these authors, on this point, is the highly important one, that, in respect to half our verbs, what we commonly take for the passive present, is not such--that, in "the second class, (perhaps the greater number,) the present-passive implies that the act expressed by the active voice has ceased. Thus, 'The house is built.' * * * Strictly speaking, then," says the Doctor, "the PAST PARTICIPLE with the verb TO BE is not the present tense in the passive voice of verbs thus used; that is, this form does not express passively the doing of the act."--''Bullions's Analyt. and Pract. Grammar'', Ed. of 1849, p. 235. Thus far these two authors agree; except that Wright seems to have avoided the incongruity of calling that "the present-passive" which he denies to be such. But the Doctor, approving none of this practitioner's "remedies," and being less solicitous to provide other treatment than expulsion for the thousands of present passives which both deem spurious, adds, as from the chair, this verdict: "These verbs either have no present-passive, or it is made by annexing the participle in ing, in its passive sense, to the verb to be; as, 'The house is building.'"--Ib., p. 236.

OBS. 17.--It would seem, that Dr. Bullions thinks, and in reality Wright also, that nothing can be a present passive, but what "expresses passively the DOING of the act." This is about as wise, as to try to imagine every active verb to express actively the receiving of an act! It borders exceedingly hard upon absurdity; it very much resembles the nonsense of "expressing receptively the giving of something!" Besides, the word "DOING," being used substantively, does not determine well what is here meant; which is, I suppose, continuance, or an unfinished state of the act received--an idea which seems adapted to the participle in ing, but which it is certainly no fault of a participle ending in d, t, or n, not to suggest. To "express passively the doing of the act," if the language means any thing rational, may be, simply to say, that the act is or was done. For "doings" are, as often as any-wise, "things done," as buildings are fabrics built; and "is built," and "am smitten," the gentlemen's choice examples of false passives, and of "actions finished,"--though neither of them necessarily intimates either continuance or cessation of the act suffered, or, if it did, would be the less or the more passive or present,--may, in such a sense, "express the doing of the act," if any passives can:--nay, the "finished act" has such completion as may be stated with degrees of progress or of frequency; as, "The house is partly built."--"I am oftener smitten." There is, undoubtedly, some difference between the assertions, "The house is building,"--and, "The house is partly built;" though, for practical purposes, perhaps, we need