it: this participle, being the basis of three tenses always, and of all the tenses sometimes, is now allowed by the Doctor to lend the term "perfect" to the three,--"Present-perfect, Past-perfect, Future-perfect,"--even when itself is named otherwise!
OBS. 12.--From the erroneous conception, that a perfect participle must, in every connexion, express "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 progressive used passively,--that is, of not always denoting continuance in the state of receiving continued action,--and which is, for that remarkable reason, judged worthy of rejection, is nevertheless admitted to have, in very many instances, a conformity to this idea, and therefore to "belong [thus far] to the present tense."--P. 103. This contradicts to an indefinite extent, the proposition for its rejection. It is observable also, that the same examples, 'I am loved' and 'I am smitten,'--the same "tolerated, but erroneous forms," (so called on page 103,) that are given as specimens of what he would reject,--though at first pronounced "equivalent in grammatical construction," censured for the same pretended error, and proposed to be changed alike to "the true form" by the insertion of "being,"--are subsequently declared to "belong to" different classes and different tenses. "I am loved," is referred to that "numerous" class of verbs, which "detail ACTION of prior, but retained, endured, and continued existence; and therefore, in this sense, belong to the present tense." But "I am smitten," is idly reckoned of an opposite class, (said by Dr. Bullions to be "perhaps the greater number,") whose "ACTIONS described are neither continuous in their nature, nor progressive in their duration; but, on the contrary, completed and perfected; and [which] are consequently descriptive of passed time and ACTION."--Wright's Gram., p. 103. Again: "In what instance soever this latter form and signification can be introduced, their import should be, and, indeed, ought to be, supplied by the perfect tense construction:--for example, 'I am smitten,' [should] be, 'I have been smitten.'"--Ib. Here is self-contradiction indefinitely extended in an other way. Many a good phrase, if not every one, that the author's first suggestion would turn to the unco-passive form, his present "remedy" would about as absurdly convert into "the perfect tense."
OBS. 14.--But Wright's inconsistency, about this matter, ends not here: it runs through all he says of it; for, in this instance, error and inconsistency constitute his whole story. In one place, he anticipates and answers a question thus: "To what tense do the constructions, 'I am pleased;' 'He is expected;' 'I am smitten;' 'He is bound;' belong?" "We answer:--So far as these and like constructions are applicable to the delineation of continuous and retained ACTION, they express present time; and must be treated accordingly."--P. 103. This seems to intimate that even, "I am smitten," and its likes, as they stand, may have some good claim to be of the present tense; which suggestion is contrary to several others made by the author. To expound this, or any other passive term, passively, never enters his mind: with him, as with sundry others, "ACTION," "finished ACTION," or "progressive ACTION," is all any passive verb or participle ever means! No marvel, that awkward perversions of the forms of utterance and the principles of grammar should follow such interpretation. In Wright's syntax a very queer distinction is
