of E. Gram., p. 62.  This definition not only confounds the participle with the participial adjective, but merges the whole of the former species in a part of speech of which he had not even recognized the latter as a subdivision:  “An adjective shows the quality of a thing.  Adjectives may be reduced to five classes:  1.  Common—­2.  Proper—­3.  Numeral—­4.  Pronominal—­5.  Compound.”—­Ib., p. 47.  Now, if “participles are adjectives,” to which of these five classes do they belong?  But there are participial or verbal adjectives, very many; a sixth class, without which this distribution is false and incomplete:  as, “a loving father; an approved copy.”  The participle differs from these, as much as it does from a noun.  But says our author, “Participles, as simple adjectives, belong to a noun; as, a loving father; an approved copy;—­as parts of the verb, they have the same government as their verbs have; as, his father, recalling the pleasures of past years, joined their party.”—­Ib., p. 170.  What confusion is this! a complete jumble of adjectives, participles, and “parts of verbs!” Again:  “Present participles are often construed as substantives; as, early rising is conducive to health; I like writing; we depend on seeing you.”—­Ib., p. 171.  Here rising and writing are nouns; but seeing is a participle, because it is active and governs you, Compare this second jumble with the definition above.  Again he proceeds:  “To participles thus used, many of our best authors prefix the article; as, ‘The being chosen did not prevent disorderly behaviour.’  Bp.  Tomline. ‘The not knowing how to pass our vacant hours.’  Seed.”—­Ib., p. 171.  These examples I take to be bad English.  Say rather, “The state of election did not prevent disorderly behaviour.”—­“The want of some entertainment for our vacant hours.”  The author again proceeds:  “If a noun limits the meaning of a participle thus used, that noun is put in the genitive; as, your father’s coming was unexected.”—­Ib., p. 171.  Here coming is a noun, and no participle at all.  But the author has a marginal note, “A possessive pronoun is equivalent to a genitive;” (ibid.;) and he means to approve of possessives before active participles:  as, “Some of these irregularities arise from our having received the words through a French medium.”—­Ib., p. 116.  This brings us again to that difficult and apparently unresolvable problem, whether participles as such, by virtue of their mixed gerundive character, can, or cannot, govern the possessive case; a question, about which, the more a man examines it, the more he may doubt.