the verb; as, "Am I a Jew?"—John, xviii, 35. "Art thou a king then?"—Ib., ver. 37. "What is truth?"—Ib., ver. 38. "Who art thou?"—Ib., i, 19. "Art thou Elias?"—Ib., i, 21. "Tell me, Alciphron, is not distance a line turned endwise to the eye?"—Berkley's Dialogues, p. 161.
"Whence, and what art thou, execrable shape?"—Milton.
"Art thou that traitor angel? art thou he?"—Idem.
OBS. 4.—In a declarative sentence also, there may be a rhetorical or poetical transposition of one or both of the terms: as, "And I thy victim now remain."—Francis's Horace, ii, 45. "To thy own dogs a prey thou shalt be made."—Pope's Homer, "I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame."—Job, xxix, 15. "Far other scene is Thrasymenè now."—Byron. In the following sentence, the latter term is palpably misplaced: "It does not clearly appear at first what the antecedent is to they."—Blair's Rhet., p. 218. Say rather: "It does not clearly appear at first, what is the antecedent to [the pronoun] they." In examples transposed like the following, there is an elegant ellipsis of the verb to which the pronoun is nominative; as, am, art, &c.
"When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou."—Scott's Marmion.
"The forum's champion, and the people's chief,
Her new-born Numa thou—with reign, alas! too brief."—Byron.
"For this commission'd, I forsook the sky—
Nay, cease to kneel—thy fellow-servant I."—Parnell.
OBS. 5.—In some peculiar constructions, both words naturally come before the verb; as, "I know not who she is."—"Who did you say it was?"—"I know not how to tell thee who I am."—Romeo. "Inquire thou whose son the stripling is."—1 Sam., xvii, 56. "Man would not be the creature which he now is."—Blair. "I could not guess who it should be."—Addison. And they are sometimes placed in this manner by hyberbaton [sic—KTH], or transposition; as, "Yet he it is."—Young. "No contemptible orator he was."—Dr. Blair. "He it is to whom I shall give a sop."—John, xiii, 26. "And a very noble personage Cato is."—Blair's Rhet., p. 457. "Clouds they are without water."—Jude, 12.
"Of worm or serpent kind it something looked,
But monstrous, with a thousand snaky heads."—Pollok, B. i, l. 183.
OBS. 6.—As infinitives and participles have no nominatives of their own, such of them as are not transitive in their nature, may take different cases after them; and, in order to determine what case it is that follows them, the learner must carefully observe what preceding word denotes the same person or thing, and apply the principle of the rule accordingly. This word being often remote, and sometimes understood, the sense is the only clew to the construction. Examples: "Who then can bear the thought of being an outcast from his presence?"—Addison. Here outcast agrees with who, and not with thought. "I cannot help being so passionate an admirer as I am."—Steele. Here admirer agrees with I. "To recommend what the soberer part of mankind look upon to be a trifle."—Steele. Here trifle agrees with what as relative, the objective governed by upon. "It would be a romantic madness, for a man to be a lord in his closet."—Id. Here madness is in the nominative case, agreeing with it; and lord, in the objective, agreeing with man. "To affect to be a lord in one's closet, would be a romantic madness." In this sentence also, lord is in the objective, after to be; and madness, in the nominative, after would be.
"'My dear Tibullus!' If that will not do,
Let me be Horace, and be Ovid you."—Pope, B. ii, Ep. ii, 143.
OBS. 7.—An active-intransitive or a neuter participle in ing, when governed by a preposition, is often followed by a noun or a pronoun the case of which depends not on the preposition, but on the case which goes before. Example: "The Jews were in a particular manner ridiculed for being a credulous people."—Addison's Evidences, p. 28. Here people is in the nominative case, agreeing with Jews. Again: "The learned pagans ridiculed the Jews for being a credulous people." Here people is in the objective case, because the preceding noun Jews is so. In both instances the preposition for governs the participle being, and nothing else. "The atrocious crime of being a young man, I shall neither attempt to palliate or deny."—PITT: Bullions's E. Gram., p. 82; S. S. Greene's, 174. Sanborn has this text, with "nor" for "or."—Analytical Gram., p. 190. This example has been erroneously cited, as one in which the case of the noun after the participle is not determined by its relation to any other word. Sanborn absurdly supposes it to be "in the nominative independent." Bullions as strangely tells us, "it may correctly be called the objective indefinite"—like me in the following example: "He was not sure of its being me."—Bullions's E. Gram., p. 82. This latter text I take to be bad English. It should be, "He was not sure of it as being me;" or, "He was not sure that it was I." But, in the text above, there is an evident transposition. The syntactical order is this: "I shall neither deny nor attempt to palliate the atrocious crime of being a young man." The words man and I refer to the same person, and are therefore in the same case, according to the rule which I have given above.
OBS. 8.—S. S. Greene, in his late Grammar, improperly denominates this case after the participle being, "the predicate-nominative," and imagines that it necessarily remains a nominative even
