ODS. 37.—­By the two examples here contrasted, Priestley designed to establish a distinction, not for these texts only, but for all similar expressions—­a distinction both of the noun from the participle, and of the different senses which he supposed these two constructions to exhibit.  In all this, there is a complete failure.  Yet with what remarkable ductility and implicitness do other professed critics take for granted what this superficial philologer so hastily prescribes!  By acknowledging with reference to such an application of them, that the two constructions above are both good English, our grammarians do but the more puzzle their disciples respecting the choice between them; just as Priestley himself was puzzled, when he said, “So we may either say, I remember it being reckoned, a great exploit; or, perhaps more elegantly, I remember its being reckoned, &c.”—­Gram., p. 70.  Murray and others omit this “perhaps,” and while they allow both forms to be good, decidedly prefer the latter; but neither Priestley, nor any of the rest, ever pretended to discern in these a difference of signification, or even of parts of speech.  For my part, in stead of approving either of these readings about the “great exploit,” I have rejected both, for reasons which have already been given; and now as to the first two forms of the horserace question, so far as they may strictly be taken for models, I cannot but condemn them also, and for the same reasons:  to which reasons may be joined the additional one, that neither expression is well adapted to the sense which the author himself gives to it in his interpretation.  If the Doctor designed to ask, “Do you think my horse ran well to-day?” or, “Do you think it proper for my horse to run to-day?” he ought to have used one or the other of these unequivocal and unobjectionable expressions.  There is in fact between the others, no such difference of meaning as he imagines; nor does he well distinguish “the NOUN running” from the PARTICIPLE runnning; because he apparently allows the word, in both instances, to be qualified by the adverb to-day.[422]

OBS. 38.—­It is clear, that the participle in ing partakes sometimes the nature of its verb and an adjective; so that it relates to a noun, like an adjective, and yet implies time, and, if transitive, governs an object, like a verb:  as, “Horses running a race.”  Hence, by dropping what here distinguishes it as a participle, the word may become an adjective, and stand before its noun; as, “A running brook.”  So, too, this participle sometimes partakes the nature of its verb and a noun; so that it may be governed by a preposition, like a noun, though in itself it has no cases or numbers, but is indeclinable:  as “In running a race.”  Hence, again, by dropping what distinguishes it as a participle, it may become a noun; as, “Running is a safer sport than wrestling.”