Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/647

 p. 233. "Here I cannot avoid mentioning[420] the assistance I have received."--Churchill's Gram., p. iv. "It is our duty to avoid leading others into temptation,"--West's Letters, p. 33. "Nay, such a garden should in some measure avoid imitating nature."--''Kames, El. of Crit.'', ii, 251. "I can promise no entertainment to those who shun thinking."--Ib., i, 36. "We cannot help being of opinion."--ENCYC. BRIT. Murray's Gram., p. 76. "I cannot help being of opinion."--Blair's Rhet., p. 311. "I cannot help mentioning here one character more."--''Hughes. Spect.'', No. 554. "These would sometimes very narrowly miss being catched away."--Steele. "Carleton very narrowly escaped being taken."--Grimshaw's Hist., p. 111. Better, "escaped from being taken;"--or, "escaped capture."

OBS. 19.--In sentences like the following, the participle seems to be improperly made the object of the verb: "I intend doing it."--"I remember meeting him." Better, "I intend to do it."--"I remember to have met him." According to my notion, it is an error to suppose that verbs in general may govern participles. If there are any proper instances of such government, they would seem to be chiefly among verbs of quitting or avoiding. And even here the analogy of General Grammar gives countenance to a different solution; as, "They left beating of Paul."--Acts, xxi, 32. Better, "They left beating Paul;"--or, "They quit beating Paul." Greek, "[Greek: Epausanto tuptontes ton Paulon.]" Latin, "Cessaverunt percutientes Paulum."--Montanus. "Cessarunt coedere Paulum."--Beza. "Cessaverunt percutere Paulum."--Vulgate. It is true, the English participle in ing differs in some respects from that which usually corresponds to it in Latin or Greek; it has more of a substantive character, and is commonly put for the Latin gerund. If this difference does not destroy the argument from analogy, the opinion is still just, that left and quit are here intransitive, and that the participle beating relates to the pronoun they. Such is unequivocally the construction of the Greek text, and also of the literal Latin of Arias Montanus. But, to the mere English grammarian, this method of parsing will not be apt to suggest itself: because, at first sight, the verbs appear to be transitive, and the participle in ing has nothing to prove it an adjunct of the nominative, and not the object of the verb--unless, indeed, the mere fact that it is a participle, is proof of this.

OBS. 20.--Our great Compiler, Murray, not understanding this construction, or not observing what verbs admit of it, or require it, has very unskillfully laid it down as a rule, that, "The participle with its adjuncts, may be considered as a substantive phrase in the objective case, governed by the preposition or verb, expressed or understood: as, 'By promising much and performing but little, we become despicable.' 'He studied to avoid expressing himself too severely.'"--Octavo Gram., p. 194.[421] This very popular author seems never to have known that participles, as such, may be governed in English by prepositions. And yet he knew, and said, that "prepositions do not, like articles and pronouns, convert the participle itself into the nature of a substantive."--Ibid. This he avouches in the same breath in which he gives that "nature" to a participle and its adverb! For, by a false comma after much, he cuts his first "substantive phrase" absurdly in two; and doubtless supposes a false ellipsis of by before the participle performing. Of his method of resolving the second example, some notice has already been taken, in Observations 4th and 5th on Rule 5th. Though he pretends that the whole phrase is in the objective case, "the truth is, the assertion grammatically affects the first word only;" which in one aspect he regards as a noun, and in an other as a participle: whereas he himself, on the preceding page, had adopted from Lowth a different doctrine, and cautioned the learner against treating words in ing, "as if they were of an amphibious species, partly nouns and partly verbs;" that is, "partly nouns and partly participles;" for, according to Murray, Lowth, and many others, participles are verbs. The term, "substantive phrase," itself a solecism, was invented merely to cloak this otherwise bald inconsistency. Copying Lowth again, the great Compiler defines a phrase to be "two or more words rightly put together;" and, surely, if we have a well-digested system of grammar, whatsoever words are rightly put together, may be regularly parsed by it. But how can one indivisible word be consistently made two different parts of speech at once? And is not this the situation of every transitive participle that is made either the subject or the object of a verb? Adjuncts never alter either the nature or the construction of the words on which they depend; and participial nouns differ from participles in both. The former express actions as things; the latter generally attribute them to their agents or recipients.

OBS. 21.--The Latin gerund is "a kind of verbal noun, partaking of the nature of a participle."--Webster's Dict. "A gerund is a participial noun, of the neuter gender, and singular-number, declinable like a substantive, having no vocative, construed like a substantive, and governing the case of its verb."--Grant's Lat. Gram., p. 70. In the Latin gerund thus defined, there is an appearance of ancient classical authority for that "amphibious species" of words of which so much notice has already been taken. Our participle in ing, when governed by a preposition, undoubtedly corresponds very nearly, both in sense and construction, to this Latin gerund; the principal difference being, that the one is declined, like a noun, and the other is not. The analogy, however,