and so as to be both regular and irregular;
as, _thrive, thrived_ or _throve, thriving, thrived_ or _thriven_.

IV. A _defective verb_ is a verb that forms no participles, and is used in
but few of the moods and tenses; as, _beware, ought, quoth_.

Verbs are divided again, with respect to their _signification_, into four
classes; _active-transitive, active-intransitive, passive_, and _neuter_.

I. An _active-transitive_ verb is a verb that expresses an action which has
some person or thing for its object; as, "Cain _slew Abel_."--"Cassius
_loved Brutus_."

II. An _active-intransitive_ verb is a verb that expresses an action which
has no person or thing for its object; as, "John _walks_."--"Jesus _wept_."

III. A. _passive verb_ is a verb that represents its subject, or what the
nominative expresses, as being acted upon; as, "I _am compelled_."--"Caesar
_was slain_."

IV. A _neuter verb_ is a verb that expresses neither action nor passion,
but simply being, or a state of being; as, "There _was_ light."--"The babe
_sleeps_."

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.--So various have been the views of our grammarians, respecting this
complex and most important part of speech, that almost every thing that is
contained in any theory or distribution of the English verbs, may be
considered a matter of opinion and of dispute. Nay, the essential nature of
a verb, in Universal Grammar, has never yet been determined by any received
definition that can be considered unobjectionable. The greatest and most
acute philologists confess that a faultless definition of this part of
speech, is difficult, if not impossible, to be formed. Horne Tooke, at the
close of his Diversions of Purley, cites with contempt nearly a dozen
different attempts at a definition, some Latin, some English, some French;
then, with the abruptness of affected disgust, breaks off the catalogue and
the conversation together, leaving his readers to guess, if they can, what
he conceived a verb to be. He might have added some scores of others, and
probably would have been as little satisfied with any one of them. A
definition like that which is given above, may answer in some degree the
purpose of distinction; but, after all, we must judge what is, and what is
not a verb, chiefly from our own observation of the sense and use of
words.[222]

OBS. 2.--Whether _participles_ ought to be called verbs or not, is a
question that has been much disputed, and is still variously decide