English: Et this whan the hungreth (PIERS PLOUGHM. p. 276.). Methursteth yit (p. 391.). That I makede man It me forthynketh, = poenitet me (p. 167.) Lene hem whan hem nedeth (p. 185.). More rare even in Old-English are personal verbs of feeling or of affection in the reflective construction: I drede me (PIERS PLOUGHM, p. 164.). I repent me (SKELTON I. 304.); the latter whereof is still in use in Modern-English: She will repent her of all past offences (FIELDING).

The notion of the activity appears as reciprocal, when mutuality of an activity, as the action of a subject upon an object and reaction of this object upon that subject, is denoted. This happens in English by the junction of one another and each other to the transitive verb: If we love one another, Nothing, in truth, can harm us (LONGFELLOW). They.. broke their spears without doing each other further injury (W. SCOTT). The kings obliging themselves to assist each other against all the rest of the world &c. (ID.).

Transitive verbs, with the exception of the reflective ones, appear in a twofold shape: that of the active and that of the passive.

The active is the verbal form whereby the grammatical subject is represented as exercising the activity: The assassins pulled off her clothes (MACAULAY). The active form also belongs to intransitive verbs. The passive lets the grammatical subject appear as undergoing the activity: They were roused from sleep by faithful servants (MACAULAY). The two kingdoms were divided from each other (W. SCOTT). As you were told before (ID.). He was succeeded by his son (ID.).

The freedom in forming the passive is far greater in English than in other tongues. Passives are formed not only from transitive verbs in the narrower and wider sense, but also from verbs in themselves intransitive, which are construed in the corresponding active form by prepositions with adverbial (objective) determinations: Starhed was soon disposed of (W. Scorr). The Highlands and Islands were particularly attended to (ID.). Had he not been called on to fill the station of a monarch.. he might.. have been regarded as an honest and humane prince (ID.). An old manor-house, and an old family of this kind, are rarely to be met with at the present day (W. IRVING). 2) Intransitive verbs are all those which denote an activity not directed to an object, and which therefore appears as concluded in itself: That evening the great minister died (MACAULAY). The punishment of some of the guilty began very early (ID.). By slow degrees the whole truth came out (ID.). They are also called neuters.

Verbs may be termed, according to their import, frequentative or iterative, diminutive, inchoative and desiderative. They belong to the class of transitives or of intransitives, notwithstanding such further notional determinations.

The specified sorts of the verb are however not distinguished from each other in such a manner as not to be capable of passing into or changing places with one another. The question whether a verb is originally transitive or intransitive in English,

is frequently not to be answered. Only by a recourse to the tongues out of which English grew can this be in many cases decided, while in others the more or less frequent or the older use of a verb as transitive or intransitive may turn the scale where forms and derivative terminations afford but little clew. No other tongue avails itself, to the same extent as the English, of the liberty of interchanging notions of activities.

An interchange of this sort is certainly known to most tongues, although not to the like extent. It rests on the one hand on the possibility that the activity which needs a completing object may also in fact be conceived by itself or abstractedly, which is ever the case when no definite object is added; but, on the other hand, the activity concluded in itself, so far as it has any result at all, or so far as it is imagined in contact with objects, may be regarded as the activity producing that result or acting immediately upon those objects. A wider limit will of course be conceded to poetry and the naive speech of common life than to the strictly measured prose. Yet even prose has possessed itself in a wider compass of these interchanges, when warranted by the living speech, and thereby has often rendered the original nature of the verb imperceptible.

Some of the demonstrable interchanges of the sorts of verbs may here be mentioned by way of example.

1. a) The transitive active becomes intransitive, when no appropriate object is given to it, although this cannot, of course, be absent from the activity: About, seek, fire, kill! (SHAKSP. J. C.). Instances of this sort are to be met with everywhere. B) The transitive active becomes intransitive, where the activity could have no other object than the subject itself; wherefore this is also regarded as a transition into the reflective meaning. In Highdutch verbs like nahen, flüchten, stürzen, fürchten, münden, and the like, which run parallel to sich nahen, and the like, form an analogy to this usage. In English reflective formations likewise sometimes run parallel to these intransitives, although they have been more restricted in later times: Yeomen.. were induced to enlist (MACAULAY). When the troops had retired, the Macdonalds crept out of the caverns of Glencoe (ID.). She could not refrain from crying out &c. (FIELDING). I will prove in the end more faithful than any of them (W. SCOTT). Russell meanwhile was preparing for an attack (MACAULAY). Two large brooks which unite to form the river Tile (W. SCOTT). He stole away to England (MACAULAY). The warlike inhabitants.. gathered fast to Surrey's standard (W. Scorт). Mark you he keeps aloof from all the revels (L. BYRON). Instances of this sort are also very frequent. If they can be interchanged with the reflective construction, we must not attribute to them quite the same mode of apprehension. The identity of the objective value does not decide grammatically the identity of the apprehension. These verbs are to be conceived as such whose reference to outward independent objects is hindered by the context, and therefore must be deemed to be concluded within the subject.

Single verbs, which may be referred here, as in: I shame To wear a heart so white (SHAKSP. Macb.) have remained true to their origin, the Anglosaxon scamjan, erubescere, being intransitive, and not having received the common transitive meaning till later.

7) Different from the usage just mentioned is the employment of the transitive active as intransitive, when an activity seems imputed to the subject, whose object it rather is. A transmutation of the active into the passive being here sometimes, though by no means universally, possible, this has been conceived as a transition into the passive meaning: What a delicious fragrance springs From the deep flagon, while it fills (LONGFELLOW). I published some tracts which, as they never sold, I have the consolation of thinking were read only by the happy Few (GOLDSMITH). If the cakes at tea ate short and crisp, they were made by Olivia (ID.). A godly, thorough Reformation, Which always must be carried on, And still be doing never done (BUTLER). While any favourite air is singing (SHERIDAN). While this ballad was reading, Sophia seemed to mix an air of tenderness with her approbation (GOLDSMITH). While a treaty of union. . was negotiating (RoBERTSON). A great experiment was making (MACAULAY). For you I've a draught that long has been brewing (LONGFELLOW). The periphrastic verbal forms with the participle in ing have especially been thus employed from olden times. The use of these verbs is to be explained by the subject's being considered. the mediate author of the activity of which itself is the object. Thus the transitive-active borders partly on the reflective, partly on the passive and on the factitive meaning. Compare above: it fills it fills itself, il filled, makes itself filled.

=

2. a) The intransitive verb receives the character of the transitive active, if the result of the activity is made its object. Thus the verb is often put to a substantive of the same stem, denoting the activity in the abstract form: Ye all live loathsome, sneaking, servile lives (OTWAY). He had rather die a thousand deaths (FIELDING). To let them die the death (L. BYRON). How many old men . . sank down and slept their last sleep in the snow (MACAULAY); as happened early with intransitive and transitive verbs. Old-English: He aschede po pat same asking (ROB. OF GLOUCESTER I. 30.); po kyng sende ys sonde (156.). Suiche domes to deme (II. 562.). Yet objects of another sort than products of the activity may also be considered: In every tear that I do weep (SHAKSP. Love's L. L. 4, 3.). Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums (MILTON). What he lived was more beautiful than what he wrote (LEWES). The realm itself. . yawns dungeons at each step for thee and me (L. BYRON). Thou didst not say so." But thou lookedst it (ID.). Does the prophet doubt, To whom the very stars shine victory? (ID.)

Mätzner, engl. Gr. I.

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$) or the activity is referred to an object independent of it, which it touches or upon which it mediately acts, and which is only considered as that immediately aimed at or hit by the activity: To sit a horse (WEBST.). Thou day! That slowly walk' st the waters! March March on (L. BYRON). Thou shalt make mighty engines swim the sea (BRYANT). There's not a ship that sails the ocean (LONGFELLOW). We.. fought the powers Sent by your emperor to raise our siege (OTWAY). Fight the ship as long as she can swim (MACAULAY). While thou foughtst and foughtst the christian cause (J. Hughes); when, as in the last instances, the sort of reference to the object may be different.

y) or the notion of the activity is taken as factitive in its reference to an object, that is, as effecting the activity originally contained in the verb: I have travelled my uncle Toby .. in a chariot and four (STERNE). During twenty six hours he rained shells and redhot bullets on the city (MACAULAY). Even at the base of Pompey's statua, Which all the while ran blood, great Cæsar fell (SHAKSP. J. C.). Men, who.. have danced their babes Upon their knees (L. BYRON). Many verbs, originally intransitive, are thus treated, as, to issue, to lean (Anglosaxon hlinjan), to prosper &c. Here belongs also the case in which an intransitive verb is at the same time conceived as effecting a predicative determination of the object: I have walked my clothes dry (BULWER).

6) Allied to the usage last mentioned is the transition of the intransitive active into the reflective form by the addition of a personal pronoun: Good Margaret, run thee to the parlour (SHAKSP. Much Ado &c.). Hie thee home (SMART), Anglosaxon hycgan, studere. Fare thee well, and think of death (J. HuGHES). Sit thee down (SHAKSP.). Go flee thee away into the land of Judah (BIBLE). They sate them down beside the stream (SOUTHEY). These and similar turns, still employed, chiefly in the imperative, are censured by modern grammarians. They are familiar to Old-English: This knave goth him up ful sturdily (CHAUCER 3434.). Expressions like: Here will we rest us (LONGFELLOW); Old-English: Where oure Lady rested hire (MAUNDEV. p. 71.), are originally regular; Anglosaxon He hine reste (Exod. 31, 17.), as well as the Old-English: He went him home. The Old-English: haste thee has been formed after the Old-French se haster.

b) With regard to the subject of the sentence we distinguish personal and impersonal verbs.

1) Personal verbs are those referred to a determinate person or thing as their subject: The revolution had been accomplished (MACAULAY). What is your illness? - It has no name" (LONGFELLOW). 2) We call impersonal those having no determinate subject. Their subject, not decidedly present in imagination, is indicated by the neuter it, and they stand only in the third person singular.

a) Those verbs are impersonal in the narrowest sense, which can occur only in sentences without a subject definitely imagined. Here belong some of those which denote effects in the domain of nature, to which we abscribe no clearly conceived subject, as in: it rains, it lightens, it thunders, it hails, it snows, it freezes, it thaws, it blows &c. Old-English: Now it schyneth, now it reyneth faste (CHAUCER 1537.). They are however at the same time partly personal. Hence all verbs are in a wider sense impersonal which, although in themselves used personally, are referred to activities whose subject is unclear to the imagination, or, although demonstrable, is yet for the moment unclear or indifferent to the speaker. Here also are found verbs with a predicative completion: It is very cold (SHAKSP. Haml.). How dark it grows (LONGFELLOW). It is growing dark (ID.). The limit of the linguistic usage is hard to specify. There manifestly belong here sentences like: How fares it with the holy monks of Hirschau? (LONGFELLOW.) Is it come to this? (SMART.) Thus it was now in England (MACAULAY). Reflective verbs used impersonally, with which even the subject it may be wanting, and which are not at the same time referred to a logical subject in the sentence or clause, as in the Old-English me hungreth, me thursteth, are unknown to Modern-English; since expressions like methinks, meseems relate to such a subject. In sentences like woe is me! compare the Old-English: Wo worth! Ever worthe thaym wo! (TOWNEL. MYST. p. 270.), woe (Anglosaxon vâva, vâ, miseria) is, properly, the subject. 6) We must distinguish from impersonal sentences of the sort specified sentences, similar in form, in which the grammatical subject it points to a logical subject contained in the sentence or clause. The logical subject is in this case frequently an infinitive or a dependent sentence: It is hard to go, but harder to stay (LONGFELLOW). It was an aged man who spoke (ID.). It was observed that two important classes took little or no part in the festivities (MACAULAY). It belongs to syntax to discuss this more particularly.

The Forms of the English Verb in general.

The various relations which the verb receives inside the sentence, are expressed by its various forms, the conjugations. English is poor in simple forms of this sort, frequently availing itself of so called auxiliary verbs, to express periphrastically the syntactical relations expressed, in tongues richer in forms, by the verbal stem and its termination. Many of these forms are at the same time susceptible of various relations, and therefore in themselves unclear, so that they only become completely intelligible in the entire context of the sentence.

The English conjugations rest upon the Anglosaxon; the influence of the Old-French upon the passive formation could hardly be pointed out, although the auxiliary verb veordan, has been abandoned.