Grammar: Moonlighting verbs

Participles are verbs working side jobs as adjectives or nouns. All that is needed to change a verb to a noun or a modifier is a common suffix: –ing, –d, –ed, –t, –n, or –en.

Participles are moonlighting verbs 

From A New English Grammar for Schools, by Thomas Harvey:

1. Verbs can act as adjectives.

I saw a boy writing with a pencil.

In this sentence “writing” denotes what the boy was doing, but it does not affirm anything of the boy. It modifies “boy,” like an adjective.

I saw a letter, written by a boy.

In this sentence “written” is used as a modifier of “letter.” Both of these words are derived from the verb “to write,” and each of them modifies a noun.

They partake both of the properties of the verb and the adjective; i.e. they express action, and they modify nouns.

 

2. Verbs can act as nouns.

a. Subject nouns

Texting friends during school hours is forbidden.

In this sentence “texting” is used like a noun, as the subject, yet it is modified by an objective element, like a verb.

b. Object nouns

I dislike reading novels.

In this sentence “reading” is used as a noun might be, as an objective element, yet it is modified as though it were a verb.

3. Such verbs are called participles, 

a word which means partaking of.

a. Present participle

Some participles end in –ing; they are called present participles.

as, “I saw a bird flying.” “Flying must be delightful.”

b. Perfect participle

Some participles end in –d, –ed, –t, –n, or –en; they are called perfect participles.

as, “The fish was eaten.”

A participle is a word derived from a verb,
and partaking of the properties of a verb and of an adjective or a noun;

The boys are running.

“Running” is a participle, used as a predicate, and its relation to “boys” is affirmed by the copula, “are.” As it takes the copula and the participle together to express action and affirm it, both of which offices are performed by the verb “runs,” the combined expression “are running” is called the verb.

Exercise:

Point out the participles in the following sentences:

1. A light was seen, shining from afar.
2. He sent me a shell, picked up on the seashore.
3. A deer was killed by a man, running at full speed.
4. The house struck by lightning belonged to Mr. Ellis.
5. The letter, folded neatly, was put into an envelope.
6. My photograph, taken twenty years ago, has been lost.
7. The enemy, driven from the field, rallied at the fort.
8. My little family were gathered round a charming fire, telling stories of the past and laying schemes for the future.
9. When we visited our trap, we found a poor hedgehog caught by his forepaw.
10. The spider spinning his web was an inspiration to Bruce.
11. The great tree, swaying fearfully, soon yielded to the blast.
12. The camels, loaded with rich goods, picked their way slowly over the desert.
13. Just before midnight, we saw the moon rising above the mountains.
14. When we departed, the sun was seen far above the horizon.
15. The penny was given willingly, but the pound grudgingly.

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[Key: noun/pronoun     copula (being/linking verb)     verb/participle     object     adjective ]
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Poetry: Letter from young Emily Dickinson

The only known prose attributed to Emily Dickinson is that which is found in her letters to family and friends.

The following letter to a schoolmate, written by Dickinson when she was fourteen years old, contains evidence of her precocious verbal prowess.

Letter from young Emily Dickinson

From The Letters of Emily Dickinson, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd.

Before the era of outer envelopes, the letter is quaintly written on a large square sheet, and so folded that the fourth page forms a cover bearing the address. Most of the remaining letters to Dickinson’s friend are thus folded, and sealed either with wax or wafers, — occasionally with little rectangular or diamond papers bearing mottoes stamped in gold.

 The handwriting is almost microscopic,
the pages entirely filled:

Amherst, Feb. 23, 1845.

Dear A., — After receiving the smitings of conscience for a long time, I have at length succeeded in stifling the voice of that faithful monitor by a promise of a long letter to you; so leave everything and sit down prepared for a long siege in the shape of a bundle of nonsense from friend E.

...I keep your lock of hair as precious as gold ,and a great, deal more so. I often look at it when I go to my little lot of treasures, and wish the owner of that glossy lock were here. Old Time wags on pretty much as usual at Amherst, and I know of nothing that has occurred to break the silence; however, the reduction of the postage has excited my risibles somewhat. Only think! We can send a letter before long for five little coppers only, filled with the thoughts and advice of dear friends. But I will not get into a philosophizing strain just yet. There is time enough for that upon another page of this mammoth sheet...

Your beau ideal D. I have not seen lately. I presume he was changed into a star some night while gazing at them, and placed in the constellation Orion between Bellatrix and Betelgeux. I doubt not if he was here he would wish to be kindly remembered to you.

What delightful weather we have had for a week! It seems more like smiling May crowned with flowers than cold, arctic February wading through snowdrifts. I have heard some sweet little birds sing, but I fear we shall have more cold weather and their little bills will be frozen up before their songs are finished. My plants look beautifully. Old King Frost has not had the pleasure of snatching any of them in his cold embrace as yet, and I hope will not...

Do you love your little niece J. as well as ever? Your soliloquy on the year that is past and gone was not unheeded by me. Would that we might spend the year which is now fleeting so swiftly by to better advantage than the one which we have not the power to recall! Now I know you will laugh, and say I wonder what makes Emily so sentimental. But I don’t care if you do, for I sha’n’t hear you.

What are you doing this winter? I am about everything. I am now working a pair of slippers to adorn my father’s feet. I wish you would come and help me finish them... Although it is late in the day, I am going to wish you a happy New Year, — not but what I think your New Year will pass just as happily without it, but to make a little return for your kind wish, which so far in a good many respects has been granted, probably because you wished that it might be so... I go to singing-school Sabbath evenings to improve my voice. Don’t you envy me?...

I wish you would come and make me a long visit. If you will, I will entertain you to the best of my abilities, which you know are neither few nor small. Why can’t you persuade your father and mother to let you come here to school next term, and keep me company, as I am going? Miss —, I presume you can guess who I mean, is going to finish her education next summer. The finishing stroke is to be put on at Newton. She will then have learned all that we poor foot-travellers are toiling up the hill of knowledge to acquire. 

Wonderful thought!
Her horse has carried her along so swiftly that she has nearly gained the summit, and we are plodding along on foot after her. 

Well said and sufficient this. We’ll finish an education sometime, won’t we? You may then be Plato, and I will be Socrates, provided you won’t be wiser than I am. Lavinia just now interrupted my flow of thought by saying give my love to A. I presume you will be glad to have someone break off this epistle. All the girls send much love to you. And please accept a large share for yourself. From your beloved

Emily E. Dickinson.

Please send me a copy of that Romance you were writing at Amherst. I am in a fever to read it. I expect it will be against my Whig feelings.

After this postscript many others follow, across the top, down the edges, tucked in wherever space will allow.

Poetry: Emily Dickinson concealed her mind

A recluse by temperament and habit, Emily Dickinson literally spent years without setting her foot beyond the doorstep, and many more years during which her walks were strictly limited to her father’s grounds.

Dickinson habitually hid her mind,

like her person, from all but a very few friends; but she is revealed to us in her poetry.

From the preface by Thomas Wentworth Higginson to the 1892 edition of Poems by Emily Dickinson:

Dickinson’s work was

1. Poetry torn up by the roots

In many cases these verses will seem to the reader like poetry torn up by the roots, with rain and dew and earth still clinging to them, giving a freshness and a fragrance not otherwise to be conveyed.

2. Poetry of shipwreck

In other cases, as in the few poems of shipwreck or of mental conflict, we can only wonder at the gift of vivid imagination by which this recluse woman can delineate, by a few touches, the very crises of physical or mental struggle.

3. Poetry of lyric strain

And sometimes again we catch glimpses of a lyric strain, sustained perhaps but for a line or two at a time, and making the reader regret its sudden cessation.

4. Poetry of extraordinary grasp and insight

But the main quality of these poems is that of extraordinary grasp and insight, uttered with an uneven vigor sometimes exasperating, seemingly wayward, but really unsought and inevitable.

After all, when a thought takes one’s breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence. As Ruskin wrote,

“No weight nor mass nor beauty of execution can outweigh
one grain or fragment of thought.”

It was with great difficulty that she was persuaded to print, during her lifetime, three or four poems.

Yet she wrote verses in great abundance; and though curiously indifferent to all conventional rules, had yet a rigorous literary standard of her own, and often altered a word many times to suit an ear which had its own tenacious fastidiousness.

The verses of Emily Dickinson belong emphatically to what Emerson long since called “The Poetry of the Portfolio,” — something produced absolutely without the thought of publication, and solely by way of expression of the writer’s own mind.

In the case of Emily Dickinson, there was absolutely no choice in the matter; she must write thus, or not at all.

Miss Dickinson was born in Amherst, Mass., Dec. 10, 1830, and died there May 15, 1886. Her father, Hon. Edward Dickinson, was the leading lawyer of Amherst, and was treasurer of the well-known college there situated. It was his custom once a year to hold a large reception at his house, attended by all the families connected with the institution and by the leading people of the town.

On these occasions his daughter Emily emerged from her wonted retirement and did her part as gracious hostess; nor would any one have known from her manner, I have been told, that this was not a daily occurrence.

The annual occasion once past, she withdrew again into her seclusion, and except for a very few friends was as invisible to the world as if she had dwelt in a nunnery. For myself, although I had corresponded with her for many years, I saw her but twice face to face, and brought away the impression of something as unique and remote as Undine or Mignon or Thekla.

It is believed that the thoughtful reader will find in Dickinson’s poems a quality more suggestive of the poetry of William Blake than of anything to be elsewhere found,

—flashes of wholly original and profound insight into nature and life; words and phrases exhibiting an extraordinary vividness of descriptive and imaginative power, yet often set in a seemingly whimsical or even rugged frame.

Grammar: Adjective Elements 2

 

Kinds of Adjectives

From A New English Grammar for Schools, by Thomas Harvey:

Review:

Samuel’s hat is torn.

What kind of element is the noun “Samuel’s”? Why?

Mr. Smith, the mason,  is sick.

What kind of element is the noun “mason”? It is called an appositive, because it is set off by commas and renames or describes a noun that comes in front of it.

The words “Samuel’s” and “mason” are nouns. Nouns, then, are adjective elements when they modify nouns.

 

1. Assumed adjective elements

An adjective element is a word or a group of words that modifies a noun or any expression used as a noun. It may be an adjective, a noun, or a pronoun, but its relation to the noun it modifies is always assumed, never affirmed:

good man 
Mr. Meyers, the barber,
my friend Hiram

2. Affirmed adjective  elements

An adjective whose relation to the noun is affirmed is the predicate, not an adjective element.

Mr. Meyers is a barber.
Hiram is my friend.

3. When diagramming, an adjective element is placed below the term which it modifies,

and in the angle formed by a vertical and a horizontal line. Several elements of the same kind may sometimes be placed in the same angle.

Exercises:

ripe apples
John’s apples 

“Ripe” is an adjective element (why?); it is an adjective (why?); “John’s” is an adjective element (why?); but it is a noun (why?).

1. Express orally or in writing five sentences in which the subjects are limited by adjective elements denoting quality.

Ex. — “Cross dogs bite.”
“Cold days will come.”

2. Express orally or in writing five sentences in which the subjects are limited by adjective elements denoting number.

Ex. — “Two boys fought.”
“Three men left.”

3. Express orally or in writing five sentences in which the subjects are limited by words that merely point them out.

Ex. —“That boy is studious.”
“This boy is lazy.”

4. Express orally or in writing five sentences in which the subjects are limited by nouns.

Ex. — “Jeff’s uncle is rich.”
“Mr. Todd, the lawyer, is young.”

5. Express orally or in writing five sentences in which the subjects and objects are both limited by adjective elements.

Ex. — “Emma’s mother bought a new bonnet.”

6. Diagram some of the sentences you wrote.

 

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[Key: noun     copula (being/linking verb)     verb     object     adjective ]

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Bibliomania: The degenerate bibliophile

 

The Frenchman Antoine Marie Henri Boulard spent his adult life indulging his passion for acquiring books. CharlesNodier called him 

The “degenerate bibliophile”

From “Bibliomania,” by Max Sander, published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Volume 34, Issue 3, and the preface to The Bibliomanic, by Charles Nodier:

Here we have a youthful prodigy of erudition and zeal for learning.

Boulard was gifted enough to be able to take over his father's law office when he was only eighteen. In 1803 he was elected a member of the Corps Législatif, published works on history and linguistics, and since he was a rich man, established a school for teaching drawing to poor children. His passion for wild book buying made him turn over his office to his son and from then on, no longer hampered by the demands of a profession, he devoted all of his time to book buying.

Quality did not matter to him, only quantity.

He bought books by units of measure, by the cubic foot, and by the yard; strolling up and down as he bought books, he always carried a stick with a measuring scale carved upon it. He had his tailor make him a special coat with many pockets, each a specific size for various books-octavo, quarto and folio. When he went home in the evening, the tall man loaded with books looked like a walking tower, according to a contemporary writer. In a very short time his house was crammed with books from the attic to the cellar, so that his poor wife had to find some way to keep him from buying still more. She persuaded him to start a catalogue, and for some time this expedient worked.

If, for a while, tired of writing, he went for a walk, he carefully avoided the streets where the bookshops were.

But if we try to escape the way of temptation, the devil brings it to us. One fine morning he met a boy pushing a hand-barrow loaded with books. What was he doing with them? Boulard asked. The boy answered that he was a clerk at a grocer's and the books were to be used for making paper-bags. Boulard followed the clerk, bought the books and barrow from the grocer, and that was the end of his catalogue. He was again in the grip of his passion.

From then on, he did not come home for days;

he had to make up for lost time. His wife suspected some love affair, perhaps with a tenant in one of her husband's houses, and sent the maid after him to spy. The girl reported that her employer remained for hours in one house, always the same one. Madame Boulard hurried there to wrest her poor husband from the claws of some bad woman. She found no tenants, not to mention tenantesses; the house, however, was stuffed from top to bottom with books.

On a cold day in April, 1825, he came home, so loaded down with books that he was streaming with perspiration. Instead of changing his clothes, he went ahead with the storing of his books.

Boulard grew ill, and no longer able to go out, had the books brought to his bed.

He handled them, asked their price, and held them up with admiring affection. As his memory became more and more impaired, he would buy the same book three or four times over. His family, not desiring to oppose the fervor of his wishes which were turning violently to certain fixed ideas, conceived the plan of showing him a great part of his own books which he no longer recognized as if they were new acquisitions. This gave him a joyous surprise at every moment, and in 1825, Boulard, having thus delightfully reviewed all his past life, died of pneumonia over a book.

Five of his houses were found crammed with books. There were eight hundred thousand of them, and most were of the big folio format he cherished most. 

One hundred and fifty thousand were sold to grocers for paperbags. Those remaining were catalogued from 1828 until 1833. There were five volumes of catalogues, and the books were sold at auction.