OBS. 4.—­The active participles, admitting, allowing, considering, granting, speaking, supposing, and the like, are frequently used in discourse so independently, that they either relate to nothing, or to the pronoun I or we understood; as, “Granting this to be true, what is to be inferred from it?”—­Murray’s Gram., p. 195.  This may be supposed to mean, “I, granting this to be true, ask what is to be inferred from it?” “The very chin was, modestly speaking, as long as my whole face.”—­Addison.  Here the meaning may be, “I, modestly speaking, say.”  So of the following examples:  “Properly speaking, there is no such thing as chance.”—­W.  Allen’s Gram., p. 172.  “Because, generally speaking, the figurative sense of a word is derived from its proper sense.”—­Kames, El. of Crit., i, 190.  “But, admitting that two or three of these offend less in their morals than in their writings, must poverty make nonsense sacred?”—­Pope’s Works, Vol. iii, p. 7.  Some grammarians suppose such participles to be put absolute in themselves, so as to have no reference to any noun or pronoun; others, among whom are L. Murray and Dr. James P. Wilson, suppose them to be put absolute with a pronoun understood.  On the former supposition, they form an other exception to the foregoing rule; on the latter, they do not:  the participle relates to the pronoun, though both be independent of the rest of the sentence.  If we supply the ellipsis as above, there is nothing put absolute.

OBS. 5.—­Participles are almost always placed after the words on which their construction depends, and are distinguished from adjectives by this position; but when other words depend on the participle, or when several participles have the same construction, the whole phrase may come before the noun or pronoun:  as, “Leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself the miseries of confinement.”—­Sterne.

   “Immured in cypress shades, a sorcerer dwells.”—­Milton.

    “Brib’d, bought, and bound, they banish shame and fear;
    Tell you they’re stanch, and have a soul sincere.”—­Crabbe.

OBS. 6.—­When participles are compounded with something that does not belong to the verb, they become adjectives; and, as such, they cannot govern an object after them.  The following construction is therefore inaccurate:  “When Caius did any thing unbecoming his dignity.”—­Jones’s Church History, i, 87.  “Costly and gaudy attire, unbecoming godliness.”—­Extracts, p. 185.  Such errors are to be corrected by Note 15th to Rule 9th, or by changing the particle un to not:  as, “Unbecoming to his dignity;” or, “Not becoming his dignity.”