Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/650

 entertainment for our vacant hours." The author again proceeds: "If a noun limits the meaning of a participle thus used, that noun is put in the genitive; as, your father's coming was unexected."--Ib., p. 171. Here coming is a noun, and no participle at all. But the author has a marginal note, "A possessive pronoun is equivalent to a genitive;" (ibid.;) and he means to approve of possessives before active participles: as, "Some of these irregularities arise from our having received the words through a French medium."--Ib., p. 116. This brings us again to that difficult and apparently unresolvable problem, whether participles as such, by virtue of their mixed gerundive character, can, or cannot, govern the possessive case; a question, about which, the more a man examines it, the more he may doubt.

OBS. 27.--But, before we say any thing more about the government of this case, let us look at our author's next paragraph on participles: "An active participle, preceded by an article or by a genitive, is elegantly followed by the preposition of, before the substantive which follows it; as, the compiling of that book occupied several years; his quitting of the army was unexpected."--Allen's Gram., p. 171. Here the participial nouns compiling and quitting are improperly called active participles, from which they are certainly as fairly distinguished by the construction, as they can be by any means whatever. And this complete distinction the author considers at least an elegance, if not an absolute requisite, in English composition. And he immediately adds: "When this construction produces ambiguity, the expression must be varied."--Ib., p. 171. This suggestion is left without illustration; but it doubtless refers to one of Murray's remarks, in which it is said: "A phrase in which the article precedes the present participle and the possessive preposition follows it, will not, in every instance, convey the same meaning as would be conveyed by the participle without the article and preposition. 'He expressed the pleasure he had in the hearing of the philosopher,' is capable of a different sense from, 'He expressed the pleasure he had in hearing the philosopher.'"--Murray's Octavo Gram., p. 193; R. C. Smith's Gram., 161; Ingersoll's, 199; and others. Here may be seen a manifest difference between the verbal or participial noun, and the participle or gerund; but Murray, in both instances, absurdly calls the word hearing a "present participle;" and, having robbed the former sentence of a needful comma, still more absurdly supposes it ambiguous: whereas the phrase, "in the hearing of the philosopher," means only, "in the philosopher's hearing;" and not, "in hearing the philosopher," or, "in hearing of the philosopher." But the true question is, would it be right to say, "He expressed the pleasure he had in the philosopher's hearing him?" For here it would be equivocal to say, "in the philosopher's hearing of him;" and some aver, that of would be wrong, in any such instance, even if the sense were clear. But let us recur to the mixed example from Allen, and compare it with his own doctrines. To say, "from our having received of the words through a French medium," would certainly be no elegance; and if it be not an ambiguity, it is something worse. The expression, then, "must be varied." But varied how? Is it right without the of, though contrary to the author's rule for elegance?

OBS. 28.--The observations which have been made on this point, under the rule for the possessive case, while they show, to some extent, the inconsistencies in doctrine, and the improprieties of practice, into which the difficulties of the mixed participle have betrayed some of our principal grammarians, bring likewise the weight of much authority and reason against the custom of blending without distinction the characteristics of nouns and participles in the same word or words; but still they may not be thought sufficient to prove this custom to be altogether wrong; nor do they pretend to have fully established the dogma, that such a construction is in no instance admissible. They show, however, that possessives before participles are seldom to be approved; and perhaps, in the present instance, the meaning might be quite as well expressed by a common substantive, or the regular participial noun: as, "Some of these irregularities arise from our reception of the words--or our receiving of the words--through a French medium." But there are some examples which it is not easy to amend, either in this way, or in any other; as, "The miscarriages of youth have very much proceeded from their being imprudently indulged, or left to themselves."--Friends' N. E. Discipline, p. 13. And there are instances too, of a similar character, in which the possessive case cannot be used. For example: "Nobody will doubt of this being a sufficient proof."--Campbell's Rhet., p. 66. "But instead of this being the fact of the case, &c."--Butlers Analogy, p. 137. "There is express historical or traditional evidence, as ancient as history, of the system of religion being taught mankind by revelation."--Ibid. "From things in it appearing to men foolishness."--Ib., p. 175. "As to the consistency of the members of our society joining themselves to those called free-masons."--N. E. Discip., p. 51. "In either of these cases happening, the person charging is at liberty to bring the matter before the church, who are the only judges now remaining."--Ib., p. 36; Extracts, p. 57. "Deriving its efficacy from the power of God fulfilling his purpose."--Religious World, Vol. ii, p. 235. "We have no idea of any certain portion of time intervening between the time of the action and the time of speaking of it."--Priestley's Gram., p. 33: Murray's, i, 70; Emmons's, 41; and others. The following example therefore, however the participle may seem to be the leading word in sense, is unquestionably wrong; and that in more respects than one: "The reason and time of the Son of God's becoming man."--Brown's Divinity, p. xxii. Many writers would here be satisfied with merely omitting the possessive sign; as does Churchill, in the following example: "The chief cause of this appears to me to lie in grammarians having considered them solely as the signs of tense."--New Gram., p. 243. But this sort of construction, too, whenever the noun before the participle is not the leading word in sense, is ungrammatical. In stead, therefore, of stickling for choice between two such errors, we ought to adopt some better expression; as, "The reason and time of the Saviour's