_horse running_ or the _horse's running_, they have in general borrowed
from Priestley, with whom the remark originated, as it here stands. It
appears that Crombie, Murray, Maunder, Lennie, Bullions, Ingersoll,
Barnard, Hiley, and others, approve the doctrine thus taught, or at least
some part of it; though some of them, if not all, thereby contradict
themselves.

ODS. 37.--By the two examples here contrasted, Priestley designed to
establish a distinction, not for these texts only, but for _all similar
expressions_--a distinction both of the noun from the participle, and of
the different senses which he supposed these two constructions to exhibit.
In all this, there is a complete failure. Yet with what remarkable
ductility and implicitness do other professed critics take for granted what
this superficial philologer so hastily prescribes! By acknowledging with
reference to such an application of them, that the two constructions above
are both _good English_, our grammarians do but the more puzzle their
disciples respecting the choice between them; just as Priestley himself was
puzzled, when he said, "So we _may either say_, I remember _it being
reckoned_, a great exploit; or, _perhaps more elegantly_, I remember _its
being reckoned_, &c."--_Gram._, p. 70. Murray and others omit this
"_perhaps_," and while they allow both forms to be good, decidedly prefer
the latter; but neither Priestley, nor any of the rest, ever pretended to
discern in these a difference of signification, or even of parts of speech.
For my part, in stead of approving either of these readings about the
"_great exploit_," I have rejected both, for reasons which have already
been given; and now as to the first two forms of the _horserace question_,
so far as they may strictly be taken for models, I cannot but condemn them
also, and for the same reasons: to which reasons may be joined the
additional one, that neither expression is well adapted to the sense which
the author himself gives to it in his interpretation. If the Doctor
designed to ask, "Do you think my horse ran well to-day?" or, "Do you think
it proper for my horse to run to-day?" he ought to have used one or the
other of these unequivocal and unobjectionable expressions. There is in
fact between the others, no such difference of meaning as he imagines; nor
does he well distinguish "the NOUN _running_" from the PARTICIPLE
_runnning_; because he apparently allows the word, in both instances, to b