If Dr. Lowth considered them “as perfectly similar,” he was undoubtedly very wrong in this matter:  though not more so than these gentlemen, who resolve to interpret them as being perfectly and constantly dissimilar.  Dr. Adam says, “There are, both in Latin and [in] English, substantives derived from the verb, which so much resemble the Gerund in their signification, that frequently they may be substituted in its place.  They are generally used, however, in a more undetermined sense than the Gerund, and in English, have the article always[426] prefixed to them.  Thus, with the gerund, Detector legendo Ciceronem, I am delighted with reading Cicero.  But with the substantive, Delector lectione Ciceronis, I am delighted with the reading of Cicero.”—­Lat. and Eng.  Gram., p. 142.  “Gerunds are so called because they, as it were, signify the thing in gerendo, (anciently written gerundo,) in doing; and, along with the action, convey an idea of the agent.”—­Grant’s Lat.  Gram., p. 70; Johnson’s Gram.  Com., p. 353. “The reading of Cicero,” does not necessarily signify an action of which Cicero is the agent, as Crombie, Churchill, and Hiley choose to expound it; and, since the gerundive construction of words in ing ought to have a definite reference to the agent or subject of the action or being, one may perhaps amend even some of their own phraseology above, by preferring the participial noun:  as, “No mistake can arise from the using of either form.”—­“And riches [turn our thoughts too much] upon the enjoying of our superfluities.”—­“Even when no mistake could arise from the interchanging of them.”  Where the agent of the action plainly appears, the gerundive form is to be preferred on account of its brevity; as, “By the observing of truth, you will command respect;” or, “By observing truth, &c.”—­Kirkham’s Gram., p. 189.  Here the latter phraseology is greatly preferable, though this author did not perceive it.  “I thought nothing was to be done by me before the giving of you thanks.”—­Walker’s Particles, p. 63.  Say,—­“before giving you thanks;” for otherwise the word thanks has no proper construction, the pronoun alone being governed by of—­and here again is an error; for “you” ought to be the object of to.

OBS. 46.—­In Hiley’s Treatise, a work far more comprehensive than the generality of grammars, “the established principles and best usages of the English” Participle are so adroitly summed up, as to occupy only two pages, one in Etymology, and an other in Syntax.  The author shows how the participle differs from a verb, and how from an adjective; yet he neither makes it a separate part of speech, nor tells us with what other it ought to be included.  In lieu of a general rule for the parsing of all participles, he presents