OBS. 4.—­In some phrases, a preposition seems to govern a perfect participle; but these expressions are perhaps rather to be explained as being elliptical:  as, “To give it up for lost;”—­“To take that for granted which is disputed.”—­Murray’s Gram., Vol. i, p. 109.  That is, perhaps, “To give it up for a thing lost;”—­“To take that for a thing granted,” &c.  In the following passage the words ought and should are employed in such a manner that it is difficult to say to what part of speech they belong:  “It is that very character of ought and should which makes justice a law to us; and the same character is applicable to propriety, though perhaps more faintly than to justice.”—­Kames, El. of Crit., Vol. i, p. 286.  The meaning seems to be, “It is that very character of being owed and required, that makes justice a law to us;” and this mode of expression, as it is more easy to be parsed, is perhaps more grammatical than his Lordship’s.  But, as preterits are sometimes put by enallage for participles, a reference of them to this figure may afford a mode of explanation in parsing, whenever they are introduced by a preposition, and not by a nominative:  as, “A kind of conquest Caesar made here; but made not here his brag Of, came, and saw, and overcame”—­Shak., Cymb., iii, 1.  That is,—­“of having come, and seen, and overcome.”  Here, however, by assuming that a sentence is the object of the preposition, we may suppose the pronoun I to be understood, as ego is in the bulletin referred to, “Veni, vidi, vici.”  For, as a short sentence is sometimes made the subject of a verb, so is it sometimes made the object of a preposition; as,

   “Earth’s highest station ends in, ’here he lies;’
    And ‘dust to dust,’ concludes her noblest song.”—­Young.

OBS. 5.—­In some instances, prepositions precede adverbs; as, at once, at unawares, from thence, from above, till now, till very lately, for once, for ever.  Here the adverb, though an indeclinable word, appears to be made the object of the preposition.  It is in fact used substantively, and governed by the preposition.  The term forever is often written as one word, and, as such, is obviously an adverb.  The rest are what some writers would call adverbial phrases; a term not very consistent with itself, or with the true idea of parsing.  If different parts of speech are to be taken together as having the nature of an adverb, they ought rather to coalesce and be united; for the verb to parse, being derived from the Latin pars, a part, implies in general a distinct recognition of the elements or words of every phrase or sentence.