“Or, by the worth of mine eternal soul,
    Thou hadst been better have been born a dog.”—­Beauties, p. 295.

OBS. 18.—­The form of conjugating the active verb, is often called the Active Voice, and that of the passive verb, the Passive Voice.  These terms are borrowed from the Latin and Greek grammars, and, except as serving to diversify expression, are of little or no use in English grammar.  Some grammarians deny that there is any propriety in them, with respect to any language.  De Sacy, after showing that the import of the verb does not always follow its form of voice, adds:  “We must, therefore, carefully distinguish the Voice of a Verb from its signification.  To facilitate the distinction, I denominate that an Active Verb which contains an Attribute in which the action is considered as performed by the Subject; and that a Passive Verb which contains an Attribute in which the action is considered as suffered by the Subject, and performed upon it by some agent.  I call that voice a Subjective Voice which is generally appropriated to the Active Verb, and that an Objective Voice which is generally appropriated to the Passive Verb.  As to the Neuter Verbs, if they possess a peculiar form, I call it a Neuter Voice.”—­Fosdick’s Translation, p. 99.

OBS. 19.—­A recognition of the difference between actives and passives, in our original classification of verbs with respect to their signification,—­ a principle of division very properly adopted in a great majority of our grammars and dictionaries, but opinionately rejected by Webster, Bolles, and sundry late grammarians,—­renders it unnecessary, if not improper, to place Voices, the Active Voice and the Passive, among the modifications of our verbs, or to speak of them as such in the conjugations.  So must it be in respect to “a Neuter Voice,” or any other distinction which the classification involves.  The significant characteristic is not overlooked; the distinction is not neglected as nonessential; but it is transferred to a different category.  Hence I cannot exactly approve of the following remark, which “the Rev. W. Allen” appears to cite with approbation:  “’The distinction of active or passive,’ says the accurate Mr. Jones, ’is not essential to verbs.  In the infancy of language, it was, in all probability, not known.  In Hebrew, the difference but imperfectly exists, and, in the early periods of it, probably did not exist at all.  In Arabic, the only distinction which obtains, arises from the vowel points, a late invention compared with the antiquity of that language.  And in our own tongue, the names of active and passive would have remained unknown, if they had not been learnt in Latin.’”—­Allen’s Elements of English Gram., p. 96.