tion upon the theory of the reflective form, what is to be said of the passive participles, as versus and vertendus? Our answer is boldly, that the so-called perfect passive of the Latin was originally an active participle. We first point to those participles possessed of this form which stand in connexion with the verbs called deponent, as secutus having followed,' conspicatus having beheld,' &c.; secondly to certain participles such as cenatus, pransus, juratus, in which the active power alone survived. Thirdly, we avail ourselves of the poetical construction stratus membra sub arbuto, having spread his limbs beneath the arbute tree,' for we will not stop to refute the silly doctrine that secundum or kara is to be understood in these phrases. We have called this construction a poetical one in deference to common practice, but it must be remembered that adversum femur ictus, 'having the front of his thigh struck,' is an idiom found in prose writers. But if tied down to the poets, we should still be satisfied, inasmuch as poets, where they differ from prose writers, differ only in using more antiquated forms; and antiquity of construction is for the present argument an ad. vantage rather than the contrary. That the Latin perfect participle is much more commonly used in the passive sense is a point to be at once yielded; but the mere question of number of instances ought not to prevail in a discussion of this nature. The fact is admitted and perhaps to be explained, by the consideration that when an act is over, the thing done remains as an evidence of the act, while the agent has probably lost all traces of his connexion with it. When a person has been slain, the corpse is a visible record of the deed, but the murderer may be without any remaining marks even of blood. When a coat has been made, the coat is good evidence of what has been done, but it may be difficult to identify the tailor. Generally it is difficult after a deed to trace the agent, easy enough to see the results. And for the most part our thoughts have to deal more with the thing produced than with the producer. As regards the other participle of the Latin passive, we have historical evidence that vertendus -a -um, the so-called future participle, or to use a more correct name, imperfect participle, came into use after the gerund vertendum, and in fact grew out of the latter. Thus Plautus, Terence, and Lucretius abound in the construction with the gerund. In the Phormio* alone we find mihi habendum est compedes, 'the wearing fetters is for me'; ejus videndi cupidus, ejus retinendi copia, two phrases in which the construction is not doubtful, as ejus in both refers to a female-desirous of seeing of her," the power of retaining of her." 99 66 * Our editors often compel Terence to observe the rules of the Eton Grammar, and the laws of construction which hold in Cicero's writings. Thus we find in the text of Terence (even in Bentley's edition), iv. 4. 20:— Spatium quidem tandem apparandis nuptiis, Spatium adparandi nuptias, Vocandi, sacruficandi dabitur, as the two genitives in the second line abundantly testify. We have purposely used this vulgarism, because it accurately represents the Latin idiom. Indeed the English phrase is itself a good example of the process by which a mere abstract substantive is converted into a participle: he was doing the work, it is well known is only a corruption of he was a doing it, where a is the Old English preposition, so familiar in the phrases a-bed, a-sleep, a-foot; and the occasional insertion of of in the vulgar tongue, he was a doing of it, is another proof that doing and words of such form were in origin substantives. Nay, it seems probable that the abstract substantives in ing are ultimately identical with the infinitive mood, itself another name for an abstract substantive. But we are digressing. While Terence and the older writers used the gerund habendum mihi est compedes, in Cicero's day such phrase was almost wholly superseded by the gerundive construction, such as habendae mihi sunt compedes. Thus again this writer says ad vastandam Italiam, never ad vastandum Italiam. (See Madvig's Opuscula, vol. i. p. 380.) We now go back to a little matter which we purposely postponed. When we said that the nominative was originally the case of the agent, it was not left out of view that the nominative of a passive sentence is a sufferer instead of an agent. We are now prepared with an answer to this difficulty, in the very theory that the passive grew out of the reflective, for in a reflective sentence the nominative stands in the place of agent. We also see the reason why the reflective form prevails in such words as the Latin miror, sequor, misereor, reminiscor, the Greek λmoμaι, the Swedish hoffas, &c., for in these phrases a passive idea, or at least an involuntary act, is denoted*. On the other hand, it is an objection to our theory, that such verbs as miror, sequor, are allowed to have an accusative depending upon them, as they already possess an accusative in the suffix r, i. e. se. The older state of things is an answer to the objection. For Virgil attaches to miror a gen. justitiae, and sequor no doubt once was accompanied by a dative, like its equivalent in form and meaning the Greek noua, and its equivalent in meaning the German folgen. The doctrine that verbs of the second conjugation denote a state, the result of an act, in other words, that so far as meaning is concerned, they are akin to passives, accounts for the fact that audeo, gaudeo, pudet, piget, &c., have perfects possessed of a passive form. We close our paper with a few remarks on some points brought forward by Mr. Garnett. He objects to the common view, the fact that in many languages the personal suffixes are genitives rather than nominatives. This doctrine was not new to the writer, as he had already seen it in the pages of Carl Bock (Analysis Verbi, 12mo, Berlin 1845), neither did he feel that it constituted any serious objection to his own theory, seeing that the power of the genitive is commonly * It would be well if a student's attention were always called to the reason of the reflective forin being employed in those cases where our grammars and dictionaries throw the difficulty out of view by using the convenient term, a deponent. Thus if fruor and vescor were translated by 'I feed myself,' and fungor by 'I relieve myself,' we should see why an ablative follows these verbs to denote that with which or from which. admitted to be what we express by from, and such a meaning is in thorough keeping with his own definition of a nominative as an agent. In pudet me ejus, I am ashamed of him,' or 'he fills me with shame,' we have a genitive fulfilling the office of a nominative. Another statement put forward by Mr. Garnett, that in many languages an abstract substantive supplies the place of a verb, as giving or gift of me this,' for 'I give this,' is no way at variance with all we have contended for, since it is a mere matter of definition whether the abstract idea 'giving' be called a verb or an abstract substantive. Nomen actionis is for us not a bad definition of a verb. Of course when from a verb we subtract all that denotes person and time, we arrive at a residuum, which one person may call an abstract substantive, and another, a verb or symbol of an act. To the third class of his examples, where sentences expressing a mere state are quoted, our reply is, that such sentences are of secondary formation, and no part of the primitive stratum of language. VOL. V. PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY. MAY 9, 1851. No. 109. PROFESSOR KEY, in the Chair. Maurice Day was elected a Member of the Society. Two papers were then read :- 1. “On the Origin of certain Anglo-Saxon Idioms." By Edwin Guest, Esq. Some two years ago a paper was read before the Society, on "A peculiar use of the patronymical termination ing." In this paper were cited numerous examples in which words affected with the ending ing appeared to have all the force of genitive cases. Thus the phrase Ceolmunding haga was used to designate a haga or tenement known, from other sources, to have been the property of a nobleman named Ceolmund; Wulferding lea, to designate a place which belonged to Wulfherd; Oswalding villa, a vila or manor belonging to bishop Oswald: and Cyneburging tun. stead where the princess Cyneburh established discussing various theories which seemed to p of this singular usage, Mr. Kemble concludes hi servation, "It seems most probable that some fee of the genitive case itself as the generative case, lurks at the foundation of this usage, and that as the simple genitive may replace the patronymic, so the patronymic may be used to denote a simple genitive." (Phil. Proc. vol. iv. p. 10.) town or homerery. After xplanation vith the ob of the power In a subsequent paper (vol. iv. p. 83) the subject was re-opened by Mr. Watts. This gentleman is inclined to consider Ceolmunding, Wulfherding, &c. as adjectives rather than as genitive cases. He observes, that Russian adjectives ending in ov and ovich are often used independently, as if they were substantives. Thus in such phrases as Petr suin Alexandrov or Petr suin Alexandrovich, which literally signify Peter, the Alexandrine son, the word suin is generally omitted, and Alexandrov or Alexandrovich appear as if they were substantives in apposition to Petr. The result has been that the termination vich "has often, like ing, been mistaken for a word denoting son, and one English author has thought he could trace an analogy between witz, a mere erroneous spelling of it, and the Norman fitz." Mr. Watts considers it "not improbable that the Anglo-Saxon ing may have had an origin and history very similar" to those of the Russian terminations ov and ovich. A short time since the writer's attention was particularly called to the consideration of these two papers, and a different explanation of this singular usage suggested itself, which he now submits to the notice of the Society. He inclines to think, in opposition to Mr. Watts, that ing is really the ending of the common Anglo-Saxon patronymic, VOL. V. K and originally signified a son'; but at the same time he has great difficulty in considering words like Ceolmunding, Wulferding, &c. as genitive cases. It is admitted on all hands that when ing is affixed to the proper name of a man, it may signify the son or descendant of such person, as Wodening the son of Woden, Escing-as the sons or descendants of Æsc; and that, when affixed to the name of a place, it signifies the people living in such place, as Centing-as the men of Kent, Britfording-as the men of Britford, &c. It would seem also, that sometimes when affixed to the names of men, this ending has the same latitude of meaning as in the examples last quoted. In the Gleeman's Song is the passage oswine weold eowum. and ytum gefwulf, &c. hnæf hocingum. helm wulfingum, &c. Oswine ruled the Eows, and Gefwulf the Yts, &c. Hnæf the Hocings, Helm the Wulfings, &c. From Beowulf we learn that Hnæf was the son of Hildeburh, the daughter of Hoce; and we may conclude that the Hocings whom he governed were--not the actual descendants of his grandfather, but-the people, the clan of Hoce, perhaps the inhabitants of some military settlement which that chieftain had founded. In his late work, The Saxons in England,' Mr. Kemble explains a vast number of our local names which take this ending, as indicating those communities of families or households which he supposes to have constituted "the mark"; and he traces the heroic races of Saxon poetry-the Harlings, the Walsings, &c.--in the names of our modern English villages. The author cannot but consider these latter speculations at least as doubtful; and more particularly as we sometimes find the ending ingas applied to designate the inhabitants of a mere tun or homestead. If the inhabitants of Ethelswio's tun were called Æthelswide tuningas, it seems reasonable to infer that the Wulfingas might denote the family, the mere household, of one of the many proprietors who bore the name of Wulf. On such a supposition, they would of course be quite unconnected with the Wulfings who figure in Anglo-Saxon poetry. The writer is inclined to believe that this very general use of the patronymic form will help us to the true explanation of the idiom whose meaning and origin we have been discussing. It is consistent with the character of the Anglo-Saxon language, to express by means of a compound phrase the force and meaning of a genitive case; thus Bensinga-tun, the town or homestead of the Bensings, would be represented to the full extent of its meaning by the compound Bensing-tun. According to this law, Ceolmunding-haga might indicate the haga or tenement of the Ceolmundings-that is, of the household which Ceolmund had placed therein for the protection of his property; Wulferding-lea would designate the lea or meadow of Wulfherd's people, and Cyneburging-tun, the town or homestead appertaining to the religious society founded by Cyne-burh. As possession on the part of a servant indicates property in the master, |