The Rudiments of English Grammar and Composition

In the passive voice of these Verbs the personal object becomes the subject of the Verb, and the thing is still expressed in the objective.

When you are asked this question next, say. . .-Shakespeare.

OBJECTIVE OF TIME, SPACE, AND PRICE. 127. The extent of time, space, and price is often expressed by an objective case unsupported by any Preposition : TIME. We have toiled all night.

I see it more clearly every day.

He is ten years old.

Queen Victoria has reigned thirty-eight years.

The objective answers not only the question How long? but also the question When?

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost.—Shakespeare.
A sadder and a wiser man

He rose the morrow morn.- -Coleridge.

Ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.-Matt. xxiv. 42. SPACE. They went a day's journey.

The camp was five miles from Rome.

The fleet was nearly ten leagues distant.
He will not draw back an inch.

PRICE.

This hat cost me fourteen shillings.

Coffee is eighteenpence a pound.

Observe that, in the sentence I earn a pound a day, the first a is from the Anglo-Saxon numeral ân, meaning ope, and the second a is from the Anglo-Saxon Preposition on, when used in expressions like on daeg, daily, every day.

128. The objective is sometimes found with Nouns where we might expect a prepositional phrase with of:

On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye.—Tennyson.

By a fresh fountain side

They sat them down. -Milton.

I had been now thirteen days on shore, and had been eleven times on board the ship.-Defoe.

OBJECTIVE OF MANNER.

129. Such expressions as hand in hand, face to face, side by side, appear in a sentence without any Verb or Preposition on which they can be said to depend; and they are explained as phrases, of which the first word is an objective case expressing the manner of an action:

Philosophy, that does not dream or stray,

Walks arm in arm with nature all his way.-Cowper.
Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast,

Yet neither conquering nor conquered.-Shakespeare. NOTE. For another explanation, see § 168, 3.

DATIVE CASE.

130. When the dative stands for the person interested in an action, we can generally put in its place a prepositional phrase involving to or for, or for the use of, or for the benefit of; thus

Solve me this problem, that is, for me.

They made themselves aprons, that is, for themselves.
Jacob took him rods of green poplar, that is, for himself.
She left him all her property, that is, for his use.

Choose you this day whom ye will serve, that is, for yourselves. Josh. xxiv. 15.

Sir, I desire you, do me right and justice.-Shakespeare.

NOTE 1.--Occasionally the dative stands for the person suffering loss or injury from the action :

His fame had raised him up enemies.-Macaulay.

NOTE 2. By a construction coming, through the AngloSaxon, from the Latin, a dative follows some Adjectives, as like and near:

What though my winged hours of bliss have been
Like angel-visits, few and far between.-Campbell.
I have heard thee say

No grief did ever come so near thy heart,

As when thy lady and thy true love died.-Shakespeare. NOTE 3.-We have the remains of an old dative in the words methinks, it seems to me, and methought, it seemed to me.

APPOSITION.

131. A Noun, standing in the same case, and describing more fully the name, office, or character of any Noun in a sentence is said to be in apposition to that Noun:

I, Paul, have written it with mine own hand.

The Noun in apposition may be qualified by Adjectives or prepositional phrases:

Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more:
Macbeth hath murdered sleep-the innocent sleep.

Shakespeare.

Canute, the greatest and most powerful monarch of his time, sovereign of Denmark and Norway, as well as of England, could not fail of meeting with adulation from his courtiers. Hume.

Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

Pale in her anger, washes all the air.-Shakespeare. Spain, the western extremity of the (Roman) empire, of Europe, and of the ancient world, has, in every age, invariably preserved the same natural limits; the Pyrenean mountains, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic Ocean.Gibbon.

Rome, the capital of a great monarchy, was incessantly filled with subjects and strangers from every part of the world.-Gibbon.

Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the Roman slave.-Gibbon.

132. Instead of a Noun in apposition we may have (1) A Numeral :

When shall we three meet again ?-Shakespeare.

(2) An Infinitive sentence:

The antique Persians taught three useful things,

To draw the bow, to ride, and speak the truth.-Byron. (3) An Adjective preceded by the definite Article:

O high-minded Moray, the exiled, the dear,

In the blush of the dawning the standard uprear.-Scott. (4) A sentence introduced by That, explaining such expressions as The hope, The belief:

Friends I am with you all, and love you all,

Upon this hope, that you shall give me reasons,

Why and wherein Caesar was dangerous.-Shakespeare. The belief again gained ground that the king had been privy to the murder of the archbishop, and that these disasters were a judgment upon him.-Hume.

III. The Predicate.

133. The word Predicate is used throughout this book for that part of a simple sentence, which is connected with the Subject of the sentence by the Copula, as in § 11.

The ordinary copula is some part of the auxiliary Verb BE, as in the sentences I am happy; thou art wretched; he is poor; we are foolish.

The employment of the Verb BE to form the copula must be carefully distinguished from its use to imply existence; as

I think; therefore I am:

where I am means I exist.

In Dryden's line

Whatever is, is in its causes just:

the first is stands for exists, the second is stands for the copula.