English. In old English it was the dative. As the dative ending has disappeared from our nouns, it is only when one of the personal pronouns is used that we can still see what the case actually is. Should we say 'He excepted' or 'Him excepted'? 'I returning' or 'Me returning'? It scarcely admits of doubt that the nominative would be preferred to the objective as the absolute case at the present day.

234. The following sentences illustrate a very common blunder in connexion with the use of the participle in a construction which is meant to be absolute but is not.

'Walking across the common, my hat was knocked off by a cricket-ball.'

As the sentence stands, walking is a participial adjunct of hat, and the construction is therefore 'My hat walking across the common was knocked off by a cricket-ball,' which is absurd. The required correction may be made in various ways: (1) By completing the absolute phrase. Add the missing pronoun and say 'I walking across the common, my hat was knocked off.' This makes the syntax regular, but the expression would be unusual. (2) By substituting I had my hat knocked off' for 'my hat was knocked off.' I is then the subject, and walking across the common is quite rightly the adjunct of I, instead of being the adjunct of my hat as before. (3) By converting the participle into a past imperfect tense indicative. Say 'As I was walking across the common, my hat was knocked off.'

'Going into the garden, the grass wetted my feet.' We may correct this by substituting (1) 'I going into the garden (absolute phrase), the grass wetted my feet,' or (2) 'Going into the garden, I wetted my feet in the grass,' or (3) 'On my going (gerund) into the garden, the grass wetted my feet.' The first expression is one which nobody would ever employ, but it is grammatically correct. A captious critic

may raise the further objection that, as my feet were wetted, probably after I had reached the garden and not on my way thither, having gone is more likely to suit the facts than going.

235. Apposition. This is a suitable point at which we may bring together remarks on Apposition that would otherwise be scattered in various parts of the book.

When one noun is used to explain the meaning of another, it is put in the same case, usually in the same number, if possible in the same gender, and is said to be in Apposition. The following sentences. contain nouns in apposition:

"Turner, the baker, lives here': Turner is the subject, the baker is in the nominative case in apposition.

'I saw Turner, the baker': both nouns are in the objective case.

'This is Turner's, the baker's, shop': both nouns are in the possessive case.

In practice we rarely employ the last form of expression. Instead of saying 'This is Turner's, the baker's, shop,' we should say 'This is Turner the baker's shop.' Here there is no apposition, but Turner-the-baker is treated as a compound noun. Identity of case is essential to apposition.

The noun in apposition usually agrees in number, but not necessarily: a collective noun in the singular may be used in apposition with a noun in the plural, and vice versâ : 'Four hundred boys, the whole school, turned out to receive him': 'This year's team, eleven well-tried men, will give a good account of themselves.'

Owing to the absence of any appropriate feminine form, it is often impossible to mark a concord of gender between the noun in apposition and the noun to which it refers. Thus we have to say 'Scott the novelist,' or 'writer,' and

'Miss Evans the novelist,' or 'writer,' as no feminine of novelist or writer exists. But we should say 'Scott the poet,' or 'author,' and 'Miss Evans the poetess,' or 'authoress,' making the noun in apposition agree as regards gender when it is practicable to do so.

236. Order of the Noun in the Nominative Case. The subject precedes the verb, as a general rule, but comes after it

i. in questions: 'Did you say so?'

ii. in commands: 'See thou to that.'

iii. in certain uses of the subjunctive mood: 'Were he here, you would not say this,' 'Would I could find him!' 'May you prosper !'

iv. when nor precedes the verb: 'I said I would not do it, nor will I,' 'He wanted only a pretext, nor was he long in finding one.'

v. in the phrases 'said I,' 'quoth he,' ' answered he,' etc.

vi. when the sentence is introduced by there, as 'There are some who deny this.'

vii. for emphasis: 'Great is Diana,' 'Indeed will I, quoth Findlay.'

Possessive Case.

237. Possession is only one of the relations indicated by nouns in the possessive case: 'John's hat' means 'the hat possessed by John'; 'the master's cane' means 'the cane possessed by the master.' But 'Byron's poems' does not mean 'the poems possessed by Byron'; 'Peel's Act' does not mean 'the Act possessed by Peel'; 'Cade's insurrection' does not mean 'the insurrection possessed by Cade'; 'an hour's detention' does not mean 'the detention possessed by an hour.' The term possessive is therefore inadequate as a description of the functions performed by this case.

What feature is common to all these uses of the socalled possessive case? The common feature is this: the noun in the possessive has the limiting force of an adjective. Just as 'John's hat' is a particular kind of hat, so 'Byron's poems' are a particular kind of poems,

'Cade's insurrection' is a particular kind of insurrection, and 'an hour's detention' a particular kind of detention.

The Latin word for 'kind' is genus, and we might therefore call the case which marks the kind the generic case. Perhaps this is what the Roman grammarians thought they were doing when they called it the genitive case. But 'genitive' in its proper sense has a much narrower meaning and signifies 'belonging to birth or origin.' It is appropriate to describe the case of father's when we speak of 'the father's son,' because the son derives his birth or origin from the father; but it is not appropriate to describe the case of son's when we speak of 'the son's father,' because the father did not derive his birth or origin from the son1. Now the term 'generic' would describe the case equally well in both instances: 'the father's son' is a particular kind of son, 'the son's father' is a particular kind of father. We cannot however displace either the term 'possessive' or the term 'genitive,' though each is insufficient as a description of the relations often marked by words in the possessive or genitive case. With these criticisms on the terms we will go on to consider the syntax of the so-called possessive case.

The Substitute for the Inflected Posses

238. sive Case.

The preposition of, with the objective case of the noun which follows it, takes the place of the inflected possessive and is used in many instances in which the inflected form would be inadmissible. Thus instead of saying 'the master's cane' we can say 'the cane of the master'; for 'Byron's poems,' 'Cade's insurrection,' 'an hour's detention,' we can say 'the poems of Byron,' 'the insurrection of Cade,' 'a detention of an hour.' It is only the inflected form however that is to be called a possessive case: 'of Byron' must not be parsed as the possessive, but 'Byron' must be parsed as the objective governed by the preposition of. For if 'of Byron' is entitled to the name 'possessive case,' 'to Byron' has an equally good claim to the name 'dative,' and 'from Byron' to the name 'ablative.' But if 'to Byron' and 'from Byron' are cases, on what ground are we to

1 See Max Müller's Lectures on the Science of Language, 1st series, p. 105.

refuse to describe as cases the combinations 'about Byron,' 'through Byron,' 'in Byron,' 'on Byron,' and so forth?

239. Subjective and Objective Genitive. The genitive case is described as subjective or objective according as the noun in the genitive stands for the subject or for the object of the action denoted by the word on which it depends. Thus 'Carlyle's praises' may signify either (1) Carlyle praised somebody': here Carlyle is the subject of the proposition, and the genitive is subjective: or (2) 'Somebody praised Carlyle': here Carlyle is the object of the proposition, and the genitive is objective. The expression is used in the former way when we say 'Carlyle's praises were rarely bestowed': it is used in the latter way when we say 'Carlyle's praises were loudly sung.' 'Ravaillac's murder' is subjective, Henry IV.'s murder' is objective. Not that we can combine the two inflected forms in the same sentence and say 'Ravaillac's Henry IV.'s murder.' We should have to employ the preposition of to denote the objective relation and say 'Ravaillac's murder of Henry IV.,' 'Ruskin's praises of Carlyle.' Speaking generally, we may say that the inflected form is subjective in modern English. The form made by combination with the preposition of admits of the same double use: 'the persecution of the Puritans' is objective when we say 'The persecution of the Puritans drove them to Massachusetts': it is subjective when we say "The Quakers of New England suffered from the persecution of the Puritans.'

240. How are we to explain such expressions as 'a novel of Scott's,' 'a play of Shakespeare's'?

They are not pleonastic, that is to say, they do not contain any redundancy or excess of expression. On the contrary they are elliptical, a noun being left out on which the noun in the possessive case depends. The complete expression would be a novel of Scott's novels,' 'a play of Shakespeare's plays.' Hence we cannot properly say 'a father of John's,' though we can say 'a brother of John's,' for 'a father of John's fathers'