O. Churchill, two of the best authors that have ever written on English grammar.  Of the participle the latter gives no formal definition, but he represents it as “a form, in which the action denoted by the verb is capable of being joined to a noun as its quality, or accident.”—­Churchill’s New Gram., p. 85.  Again he says, “That the participle is a mere mode of the verb is manifest, if our definition of a verb be admitted.”—­Ib., p. 242.  While he thus identifies the participle with the verb, this author scruples not to make what he calls the imperfect participle perform all the offices of a noun:  saying, “Frequently too it is used as a noun, admits a preposition or an article before it, becomes a plural by taking s at the end, and governs a possessive case:  as, ’He who has the comings in of a prince, may be ruined by his own gaming, or his wife’s squandering.’”—­Ib., p. 144.  The plural here exhibited, if rightly written, would have the s, not at the end, but in the middle; for comings-in, (an obsolete expression for revenues,) is not two words, but one.  Nor are gaming and squandering, to be here called participles, but nouns.  Yet, among all his rules and annotations, I do not find that Churchill any where teaches that participles become nouns when they are used substantively.  The following example he exhibits for the express purpose of showing that the nominatives to “is” and “may be” are not nouns, but participles:  “Walking is the best exercise, though riding may be more pleasant.”—­Ib., p. 141.  And, what is far worse, though his book is professedly an amplification of Lowth’s brief grammar, he so completely annuls the advice of Lowth concerning the distinguishing of participles from participial nouns, that he not only misnames the latter when they are used correctly, but approves and adopts well-nigh all the various forms of error, with which the mixed and irregular construction of participles has filled our language:  of these forms, there are, I think, not fewer than a dozen.

OBS. 26.—­Allen’s account of the participle is no better than Churchill’s—­and no worse than what the reader may find in many an English Grammar now in use.  This author’s fault is not so much a lack of learning or of comprehension, as of order and discrimination.  We see in him, that it is possible for a man to be well acquainted with English authors, ancient as well as modern, and to read Greek and Latin, French and Saxon, and yet to falter miserably in describing the nature and uses of the English participle.  Like many others, he does not acknowledge this sort of words to be one of the parts of speech; but commences his account of it by the following absurdity:  “The participles are adjectives derived from the verb; as, pursuing, pursued, having pursued.”—­Elements