partly built_;" though, for practical
purposes, perhaps, we need not always be very nice in choosing between
them. For the sake of variety, however, if for nothing else, it is to be
hoped, the doctrine above-cited, which limits half our passive verbs of the
present tense, _to the progressive form only_, will not soon be generally
approved. It impairs the language more than unco-passives are likely ever
to corrupt it.

OBS. 18.--"No _startling novelties_ have been introduced," says the preface
to the "Analytical and Practical Grammar of the English Language." To have
shunned all shocking innovations, is only to have exercised common
prudence. It is not pretended, that any of the Doctor's errors here
remarked upon, or elsewhere in this treatise, will _startle_ any body; but,
if errors exist, even in plausible guise, it may not be amiss, if I tell of
them. To suppose every verb or participle to be either "_transitive_" or
"_intransitive_," setting all _passives_ with the former sort, all
_neuters_ with the latter; (p. 59;)--to define the _transitive_ verb or
participle as expressing always "_an act_ DONE _by one person or thing to
another_;" (p. 60;)--to say, after making passive verbs transitive, "The
object of a transitive verb is in the _objective case_," and, "A verb that
does not make sense with an objective after it, is intransitive;" (p.
60;)--to insist upon a precise and almost universal _identity of "meaning_"
in terms so obviously _contrasted_ as are the two voices, "active" and
"passive;" (pp. 95 and 235;)--to allege, as a general principle, "that
whether we use the active, or the passive voice, _the meaning is the same_,
except in some cases in the present tense;" (p. 67;)--to attribute to the
forms naturally opposite in voice and sense, that sameness of meaning which
is observable only in certain _whole sentences_ formed from them; (pp. 67,
95, and 235;)--to assume that each "VOICE is a particular _form of the
verb_," yet make it include _two cases_, and often a preposition before one
of them; (pp. 66, 67, and 95;)--to pretend from the words, "The PASSIVE
VOICE represents the subject of the verb as _acted upon_," (p. 67,) that,
"_According to the_ DEFINITION, the passive voice expresses, passively,
_the same thing_ that the active does actively;" (p. 235;)--to affirm that,
"'Caesar _conquered_ Gaul,' and 'Gaul _was conquered_ by Caesar,' express
_precisely the same idea_,"--and then say, "It will be felt at once