lly decide the question. The double
construction which may be given to infinitive verbs; the Greek idiom which
allows to such verbs an article before them and an objective after them;
the mixed character of the Latin gerund, part noun, part verb; the use or
substitution of the participle in English for the gerund in Latin;--all
these afford so many reasons by analogy, for allowing that our
participle--except it be the perfect--since it participates the properties
of a verb and a noun, as well as those of a verb and an adjective, may
unite in itself a double construction, and be taken substantively in one
relation, and participially in an other. Accordingly some grammarians so
define it; and many writers so use it; both parties disregarding the
distinction between the participle and the participial noun, and justifying
the construction of the former, not only as a proper participle after its
noun, and as a gerundive after its preposition; not only as a participial
adjective before its noun, and as a participial noun, in the regular syntax
of a noun; but also as a mixed term, in the double character of noun and
participle at once. Nor are these its only uses; for, after an auxiliary,
it is the main verb; and in a few instances, it passes into a preposition,
an adverb, or something else. Thus have we from the verb a single
derivative, which fairly ranks with about half the different parts of
speech, and takes distinct constructions even more numerous; and yet these
authors scruple not to make of it a hybridous thing, neither participle nor
noun, but constructively both. "But this," says Lowth, "is inconsistent;
let it be either the one or the other, and abide by its proper
construction."--_Gram._, p. 82. And so say I--as asserting the general
principle, and leaving the reader to judge of its exceptions. Because,
without this mongrel character, the participle in our language has a
multiplicity of uses unparalleled in any other; and because it seldom
happens that the idea intended by this double construction may not be
otherwise expressed more elegantly. But if it sometimes seem proper that
the gerundive participle should be allowed to govern the possessive case,
no exception to my rule is needed for the _parsing_ of such possessive;
because whatever is invested with such government, whether rightly or
wrongly, is assumed as "the name of something possessed."

OBS. 18.--The reader may have observed, that in the use of particip