CHAPTER XXV.

ON PREPOSITIONS.

s. 599. All prepositions govern an oblique case. If a word cease to do this, it ceases to be a preposition. In the first of the two following sentences the word _up_ is a preposition, in the second an adverb.

1. _I climbed up the tree._ 2. _I climbed up._

All prepositions in English precede the noun which they govern. _I climbed up the tree_, never _I climbed the tree up_. This is a matter not of government, but of collocation. It is the case in most languages; and, from the frequency of its occurrence, the term _pre-position_ (or _prefix_) has originated. Nevertheless, it is by no means a philological necessity. In many languages the prepositions are _post-positive_, following their noun.

s. 600. No preposition, in the present English, governs a genitive case. This remark is made, because expressions like the _part of the body_=_pars corporis_,--_a piece of the bread_=_portio panis_, make it appear as if the preposition _of_ did so. The true expression is, that the preposition _of_ followed by an objective case, is equivalent, in many instances, to the genitive case of the classical languages.

s. 601. The writer, however, of a paper on English preterites and genitives, in the Philological Museum (II. 261) objects to the current doctrine concerning such constructions as, _this is a picture of the king's_. Instead of considering the sentence elliptic, and equivalent to _this is a picture of_ or (_from_) _the king's pictures_, he entertains the following view,--"I confess, however, that I feel some doubt whether this phrase is {480} indeed to be regarded as elliptical, that is, whether the phrase in room of which it is said to stand, was ever actually in use. It has sometimes struck me that this may be a relict of the old practice of using the genitive after nouns as well as before them, only with the insertion of the preposition _of_. One of the passages quoted above from 'Arnold's Chronicle,' supplies an instance of a genitive so situated; and one cannot help thinking that it was the notion that _of_ governed the genitive, that led the old translators of Virgil to call his poem _The Booke of Eneidos_, as it is termed by Phaer, and Gawin Douglas, and in the translation printed by Caxton. Hence it may be that we put the genitive after the noun in such cases, in order to express those relations which are most appropriately expressed by the genitive preceding it. _A picture of the king's_ is something very different from _the king's picture_: and so many other relations are designated by _of_ with the objective noun, that if we wish to denote possession thereby, it leaves an ambiguity: so, for this purpose, when we want to subjoin the name of the possessor to the thing possest, we have recourse to the genitive, by prefixing which we are wont to express the same idea. At all events as, if we were askt whose castle Alnwick is, we should answer, _The Duke of Northumberland's_; so we should also say, _What a grand castle that is of the Duke of Northumberland's!_ without at all taking into account whether he had other castles besides: and our expression would be equally appropriate, whether he had or not."

Again, Mr. Guest quotes, amongst other passages, the following:--

Suffice this hill _of ours_-- They fought two houres _of the nightes_--

Yet neither class of examples is conclusive.

_Ours_ does not necessarily mean _of us_. It may also mean of _our hills_, _i. e._, of _the hills of our choice_. _Nightes_ may mean _of the night's hours_. In the expression, _what a grand castle_, &c., it is submitted to the reader that we _do_ take into our account other castles, which the Duke of Northumberland {481} may or may not have. _The Booke of Eneidos_ is a mistaken Latinism. As it does not seem to have been sufficiently considered that the real case governed by _of_ (as by _de_ in Latin) is the ablative, it is the opinion of the present writer that no instance has yet been produced of _of_ either governing, or having governed a genitive case.

s. 602. It is not so safe to say in the present English that no preposition governs a dative. The expression _give it him_ is good English; and it is also equivalent to the Latin _da ei_. But we may also say _give it to him_. Now the German _zu_=_to_ governs a dative case, and in Anglo-Saxon, the preposition _to_, when prefixed to the infinitive mood, required the case that followed it to be a dative.

s. 603. When the infinitive mood is used as the subject of a proposition, _i.e._, as a nominative case, it is impossible to allow to the preposition _to_, by which it is preceded, any separate existence whatever,--_to rise_=_rising_; _to err_=_error_. Here the preposition must, for the purposes of syntax, be considered as incorporated with the noun, just like an inseparable inflection. As such it may be preceded by another preposition. The following example, although a Grecism, illustrates this:--

Yet not to have been dipt in Lethe's lake, Could save the son of Thetis _from to die_.

s. 604. Akin to this, but not the same, is the so-called vulgarism, consisting of the use of the preposition _for_. _I am ready to go=I am ready for going_=the so-called vulgarism, _I am ready_ for _to go_. Now, this expression differs from the last in exhibiting, not only a _verbal_ accumulation of prepositions, but a _logical_ accumulation as well: inasmuch as _for_ and _to_ express like ideas.

s. 605. Composition converts prepositions into adverbs. Whether we say _upstanding_ or _standing-up_, we express the _manner_ in which an action takes place, and not the relation between two substantives. The so-called prepositional compounds in Greek ([Greek: anabaino, apothnesko], &c.) are all adverbial.

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