press "_action finished_," _action past_,--or perhaps
from only a moiety of this great error,--the notion that such a participle
cannot, in connexion with an auxiliary, constitute a passive verb of the
_present tense_,--J. W. Wright, above-mentioned, has not very unnaturally
reasoned, that, "The expression, '_I am loved_,' which Mr. Murray has
employed to exhibit the passive conjugation of the _present tense_, may
much more _feasibly_ represent _past_ than _present_ time."--See _Wright's
Philosophical Gram._, p. 99. Accordingly, in his own paradigm of the
passive verb, he has formed _this_ tense solely from what he calls the
participle _present_, thus: "I _am being smitten_, Thou _art being
smitten_," &c.--_Ib._, p. 98. His "_Passed Tense_," too, for some reason
which I do not discover, he distinguishes above the rest by a _double
form_, thus: "I _was smitten, or being smitten_; Thou _wast smitten, or
being smitten_;" &c.--P. 99. In his opinion, "Few will object to _the
propriety of_ the more familiar phraseology, '_I am in the_ ACT,--or,
_suffering_ the ACTION _of_ BEING SMITTEN;' and yet," says he, "in
substance and effect, it is wholly the same as, '_I am being smitten_,'
which is THE TRUE FORM of the verb in the _present_ tense of the _passive
voice!_"--_Ibid._ Had we not met with some similar expressions of English
or American blunderers, "the _act_ or _action of being smitten_," would be
accounted a downright Irish bull; and as to this ultra notion of
neologizing all our passive verbs, by the addition of "_being_,"--with the
author's cool talk of "_the presentation of this theory, and_ [_the_]
_consequent suppression of that hitherto employed_,"--there is a
transcendency in it, worthy of the most sublime aspirant among grammatical
newfanglers.

OBS. 13.--But, with all its boldness of innovation, Wright's Philosophical
Grammar is not a little _self-contradictory_ in its treatment of the
passive verb. The entire "suppression" of the usual form of its present
tense, did not always appear, even to this author, quite so easy and
reasonable a matter, as the foregoing citations would seem to represent it.
The passive use of the participle in _ing_, he has easily disposed of:
despite innumerable authorities for it, one false assertion, of seven
syllables, suffices to make it quite impossible.[269] But the usual passive
form, which, with some show of truth, is accused of not having always
precisely the same meaning as the p