e verb, the _Passive Voice_. These
terms are borrowed from the Latin and Greek grammars, and, except as
serving to diversify expression, are of little or no use in English
grammar. Some grammarians deny that there is any propriety in them, with
respect to any language. De Sacy, after showing that the import of the verb
does not always follow its form of voice, adds: "We must, therefore,
carefully distinguish the Voice of a Verb from its signification. To
facilitate the distinction, I denominate that an _Active_ Verb which
contains an Attribute in which the action is considered as performed by the
Subject; and that a _Passive_ Verb which contains an Attribute in which the
action is considered as suffered by the Subject, and performed upon it by
some agent. I call that voice a _Subjective_ Voice which is generally
appropriated to the Active Verb, and that an _Objective_ Voice which is
generally appropriated to the Passive Verb. As to the Neuter Verbs, if they
possess a peculiar form, I call it a Neuter Voice."--_Fosdick's
Translation_, p. 99.

OBS. 19.--A recognition of the difference between actives and passives, in
our original classification of verbs with respect to their signification,--
a principle of division very properly adopted in a great majority of our
grammars and dictionaries, but opinionately rejected by Webster, Bolles,
and sundry late grammarians,--renders it unnecessary, if not improper, to
place Voices, the Active Voice and the Passive, among the _modifications_
of our verbs, or to speak of them as such in the conjugations. So must it
be in respect to "a Neuter Voice," or any other distinction which the
classification involves. The significant characteristic is not overlooked;
the distinction is not neglected as nonessential; but it is transferred to
a different category. Hence I cannot exactly approve of the following
remark, which "the Rev. W. Allen" appears to cite with approbation: "'The
distinction of active or passive,' says the accurate Mr. Jones, '_is not
essential_ to verbs. In the infancy of language, it was, in all
probability, not known. In Hebrew, the difference but imperfectly exists,
and, in the early periods of it, probably did not exist at all. In Arabic,
the only distinction which obtains, arises from the vowel points, a late
invention compared with the antiquity of that language. And in our own
tongue, the names of _active_ and _passive_ would have remained unknown, if
they had not been