and therefore to “belong [thus far] to the present tense.”—­P. 103.  This contradicts to an indefinite extent, the proposition for its rejection.  It is observable also, that the same examples, ’I am loved’ and ’I am smitten,’—­the same “tolerated, but erroneous forms,” (so called on page 103,) that are given as specimens of what he would reject,—­though at first pronounced “equivalent in grammatical construction,” censured for the same pretended error, and proposed to be changed alike to “the true form” by the insertion of “being,”—­are subsequently declared to “belong to” different classes and different tenses. “I am loved,” is referred to that “numerous” class of verbs, which “detail ACTION of prior, but retained, endured, and continued existence; and therefore, in this sense, belong to the present tense.”  But “I am smitten,” is idly reckoned of an opposite class, (said by Dr. Bullions to be “perhaps the greater number,”) whose “ACTIONS described are neither continuous in their nature, nor progressive in their duration; but, on the contrary, completed and perfected; and [which] are consequently descriptive of passed time and ACTION.”—­Wright’s Gram., p. 103.  Again:  “In what instance soever this latter form and signification can be introduced, their import should be, and, indeed, ought to be, supplied by the perfect tense construction:—­for example, ’I am smitten,’ [should] be, ‘I have been smitten.’”—­Ib. Here is self-contradiction indefinitely extended in an other way.  Many a good phrase, if not every one, that the author’s first suggestion would turn to the unco-passive form, his present “remedy” would about as absurdly convert into “the perfect tense.”

OBS. 14.—­But Wright’s inconsistency, about this matter, ends not here:  it runs through all he says of it; for, in this instance, error and inconsistency constitute his whole story.  In one place, he anticipates and answers a question thus:  “To what tense do the constructions, ’I am pleased;’ ‘He is expected;’ ‘I am smitten;’ ‘He is bound;’ belong?” “We answer:—­So far as these and like constructions are applicable to the delineation of continuous and retained ACTION, they express present time; and must be treated accordingly.”—­P. 103.  This seems to intimate that even, “I am smitten,” and its likes, as they stand, may have some good claim to be of the present tense; which suggestion is contrary to several others made by the author.  To expound this, or any other passive term, passively, never enters his mind:  with him, as with sundry others, “ACTION,” “finished ACTION,” or “progressive ACTION,” is all any passive verb or participle ever means!  No marvel, that awkward perversions of the forms of utterance and the principles of grammar should follow such interpretation.  In Wright’s