alms_, xxix, 10.

"What war could ravish, commerce could bestow,
And _he_ return'd a _friend, who_ came a _foe_."
--_Pope_, Ep. iii, l. 206.

OBSERVATIONS ON RULE VI.

OBS. 1.--Active-transitive verbs, and their
imperfect and preperfect participles, always govern the objective case; but
active-intransitive, passive, and neuter verbs, and their participles, take
the same case after as before them, when both words refer to the same
thing. The latter are rightly supposed _not to govern_[357] any case; nor
are they in general followed by any noun or pronoun. But, because they are
not transitive, some of them become connectives to such words as are in the
same case and signify the same thing. That is, their finite tenses may be
followed by a nominative, and their infinitives and participles by a
nominative or an objective, _agreeing_ with a noun or a pronoun which
precedes them. The cases are the same, because the person or thing is one;
as, "_I_ am _he_."--"_Thou_ art _Peter_."--"Civil _government_ being the
sole _object_ of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by
common consent."--_Jefferson's Notes_, p. 129. Identity is both the
foundation and the characteristic of this construction. We chiefly use it
to affirm or deny, to suggest or question, the _sameness_ of things; but
sometimes _figuratively_, to illustrate the relations of persons or things
by comparison:[358] as, "_I_ am the true _vine_, and my _Father_ is the
_husbandman_."--_John_, xv, 1. "_I_ am the _vine, ye_ are the
_branches_."--_John_, xv, 5. Even the names of direct opposites, are
sometimes put in the same case, under this rule; as,

"By such a change thy _darkness_ is made _light_,
Thy _chaos order_, and thy _weakness might_."--_Cowper_, Vol. i, p. 88.

OBS. 2.--In this rule, the terms _after_ and _preceding_ refer rather to
the order of the sense and construction, than to the mere _placing_ of the
words; for the words in fact admit of various positions. The proper subject
of the verb is the nominative _to_ it, or _before_ it, by Rule 2d; and the
other nominative, however placed, is understood to be that which comes
_after_ it, by Rule 6th. In general, however, the proper subject _precedes_
the verb, and the other word _follows_ it, agreeably to the literal sense
of the rule. But when the proper subject is placed after the verb, as in
certain instances specified in the second observation under Rule 2d, the
ex