Exercise.

Examine the forms of lie, lay, sit and set in these sentences; give the meaning of each, and correct those used wrongly.

1.  If the phenomena which lie before him will not suit his purpose, all history must be ransacked.

2.  He sat with his eyes fixed partly on the ghost and partly on Hamlet, and with his mouth open.

3.  The days when his favorite volume set him upon making wheelbarrows and chairs,... can never again be the realities they were.

4.  To make the jacket sit yet more closely to the body, it was gathered at the middle by a broad leathern belt.

5.  He had set up no unattainable standard of perfection.

6.  For more than two hundred years his bones lay undistinguished.

7.  The author laid the whole fault on the audience.

8.  Dapple had to lay down on all fours before the lads could bestride him.

9.  And send’st him...to his gods where happy lies
     His petty hope in some near port or bay,
     And dashest him again to earth:—­there let him lay.

10.  Achilles is the swift-footed when he is sitting still.

11.  It may be laid down as a general rule, that history begins in novel, and ends in essay.

12.  I never took off my clothes, but laid down in them.

VERBALS.

[Sidenote:  Definition.]

262.  Verbals are words that express action in a general way, without limiting the action to any time, or asserting it of any subject.

[Sidenote:  Kinds.]

Verbals may be participles, infinitives, or gerunds.

PARTICIPLES.

[Sidenote:  Definition.]

263.  Participles are adjectival verbals; that is, they either belong to some substantive by expressing action in connection with it, or they express action, and directly modify a substantive, thus having a descriptive force.  Notice these functions.

[Sidenote:  Pure participle in function.]

     1.  At length, wearied by his cries and agitations, and not
     knowing how to put an end to them, he addressed the animal as
     if he had been a rational being.—­DWIGHT.

Here wearied and knowing belong to the subject he, and express action in connection with it, but do not describe.

[Sidenote:  Express action and also describe.]

     2.  Another name glided into her petition—­it was that of the
     wounded Christian, whom fate had placed in the hands of
     bloodthirsty men, his avowed enemies.—­SCOTT.

Here wounded and avowed are participles, but are used with the same adjectival force that bloodthirsty is (see Sec. 143, 4).