OBS. 34.—­Any phraseology that conveys not the intended idea, or that involves such an absurdity as that of calling a lady an “incident” is doubtless sufficiently reprehensible; but, compared with a rule of grammar so ill-devised as to mislead the learner nine times in ten, an occasional ambiguity or solecism is a mere trifle.  The word walking, preceded by a possessive and followed by a preposition, as above, is clearly a noun, and not a participle; but these authors probably intend to justify the use of possessives before participles, and even to hold all phraseology of this kind “unobjectionable.”  If such is not their design, they write as badly as they reason; and if it is, their doctrine is both false and inconsistent.  That a verbal noun may govern the possessive case, is certainly no proof that a participle may do so too; and, if these parts of speech are to be kept distinct the latter position must be disallowed:  each must “abide by its own construction,” as says Lowth.  But the practice which these authors speak of, as an innovation of “some late writers,” and “an idle affectation of the Latin idiom,” is in fact a practice as different from the blunder which they quote, or feign, as their just correction of that blunder is different from the thousand errors or irregularities which they intend to shelter under it.  To call a lady an “incident,” is just as far from any Latin idiom, as it is from good English; whereas the very thing which they thus object to at first, they afterwards approve in this text:  “What think you of my horse running to-day?” This phraseology corresponds with “the Latin idiom;” and it is this, that, in fact, they begin with pronouncing to be “less correct” than, “What think you of my horse’s running to-day?”

OBS. 35.—­Between these expressions, too, they pretend to fix a distinction of signification; as, if “the horse’s running to-day,” must needs imply a past action, though, (they suppose,) “the pupil’s composing frequently,” or, “the horse running to-day,” signifies a future one.  This distinction of time is altogether imaginary; and the notion, that to prefer the possessive case before participles, is merely to withstand an error of “some late writers,” is altogether false.  The instructions above cited, therefore, determine nothing rightly, except the inaccuracy of one very uncommon form of expression.  For, according to our best grammarians, the simple mode of correction there adopted will scarcely be found applicable to any other text.  It will not be right where the participle happens to be transitive, or even where it is qualified by an adverb.  From their subsequent examples, it is plain that these gentlemen think otherwise; but still, who can understand what they mean by “the common mode of expression?” What, for instance, would they substitute for the following very inaccurate expression from the critical belles-lettres of Dr.