Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/653

 distinction of time is altogether imaginary; and the notion, that to prefer the possessive case before participles, is merely to withstand an error of "some late writers," is altogether false. The instructions above cited, therefore, determine nothing rightly, except the inaccuracy of one very uncommon form of expression. For, according to our best grammarians, the simple mode of correction there adopted will scarcely be found applicable to any other text. It will not be right where the participle happens to be transitive, or even where it is qualified by an adverb. From their subsequent examples, it is plain that these gentlemen think otherwise; but still, who can understand what they mean by "the common mode of expression?" What, for instance, would they substitute for the following very inaccurate expression from the critical belles-lettres of Dr. Blair? "A mother accusing her son, and accusing him of such actions, as having first bribed judges to condemn her husband, and having afterwards poisoned him, were circumstances that naturally raised strong prejudices against Cicero's client."--Blair's Lectures, p. 274. Would they say. "A mother's accusing her son, &c., were circumstances," &c.? Is this their "common mode of expression?" and if it is, do they not make "common" what is no better English than the Doctor's? If, to accuse a son, and to accuse him greatly, can be considered different circumstances of the same prosecution, the sentence may be corrected thus: "A mother's accusing of her son, and her charging of him with such actions, as those of having first bribed judges to condemn her husband, and having afterwards poisoned him, were circumstances that naturally raised strong prejudices against Cicero's client."

OBS. 36.--On several occasions, as in the tenth and twelfth observations on Rule 4th, and in certain parts of the present series, some notice has been taken of the equivalence or difference of meaning, real or supposed, between the construction of the possessive, and that of an other case, before the participle; or between the participial and the substantive use of words in ing. Dr. Priestley, to whom, as well as to Dr. Lowth, most of our grammarians are indebted for some of their doctrines respecting this sort of derivatives, pretends to distinguish them, both as constituting different parts of speech, and as conveying different meanings. In one place, he says, "When a word ending in ing is preceded by an article, it seems to be used as a noun; and therefore ought not to govern an other word, without the intervention of a preposition."--Priestley's Gram., p. 157. And in an other: "Many nouns are derived from verbs, and end in ing, like participles of the present tense. The difference between these nouns and participles is often overlooked, and the accurate distinction of the two senses not attended to. If I say, What think you of my horse's running to-day, I use the NOUN running, and suppose the horse to have actually run; for it is the same thing as if I had said, What think you of the running of my horse. But if I say, What think you of my horse running to-day, I use the PARTICIPLE, and I mean to ask, whether it be proper that my horse should run or not: which, therefore, supposes that he had not then run."--Ib., p. 122. Whatever our other critics say about the horse running or the horse's running, they have in general borrowed from Priestley, with whom the remark originated, as it here stands. It appears that Crombie, Murray, Maunder, Lennie, Bullions, Ingersoll, Barnard, Hiley, and others, approve the doctrine thus taught, or at least some part of it; though some of them, if not all, thereby contradict themselves.

ODS. 37.--By the two examples here contrasted, Priestley designed to establish a distinction, not for these texts only, but for ''all similar expressions''--a distinction both of the noun from the participle, and of the different senses which he supposed these two constructions to exhibit. In all this, there is a complete failure. Yet with what remarkable ductility and implicitness do other professed critics take for granted what this superficial philologer so hastily prescribes! By acknowledging with reference to such an application of them, that the two constructions above are both good English, our grammarians do but the more puzzle their disciples respecting the choice between them; just as Priestley himself was puzzled, when he said, "So we may either say, I remember it being reckoned, a great exploit; or, perhaps more elegantly, I remember its being reckoned, &c."--Gram., p. 70. Murray and others omit this "perhaps," and while they allow both forms to be good, decidedly prefer the latter; but neither Priestley, nor any of the rest, ever pretended to discern in these a difference of signification, or even of parts of speech. For my part, in stead of approving either of these readings about the "great exploit," I have rejected both, for reasons which have already been given; and now as to the first two forms of the horserace question, so far as they may strictly be taken for models, I cannot but condemn them also, and for the same reasons: to which reasons may be joined the additional one, that neither expression is well adapted to the sense which the author himself gives to it in his interpretation. If the Doctor designed to ask, "Do you think my horse ran well to-day?" or, "Do you think it proper for my horse to run to-day?" he ought to have used one or the other of these unequivocal and unobjectionable expressions. There is in fact between the others, no such difference of meaning as he imagines; nor does he well distinguish "the NOUN running" from the PARTICIPLE running; because he apparently allows the word, in both instances, to be qualified by the adverb to-day.[422]