attributed to the Greek Verb. 223 middle used in lieu of the perfect active : if he has not very frequent occasion for committing this errour, this may be accounted for from what was observed above concerning the objective use of the perfect. When on the other hand he finds a perfect of the passive form with a middle signification, he calls this a use of the perfect passive instead of the per- fect middle. That even learned men may have their views of the Greek verb distorted by the effect of their early misinstruction, appears, to take an instance, from Dr Blom- field's Glossary on the Agamemnon, v. 252, where he says, 7r€7rvaiui€vri : participium passivum^ sensu activo^ — and then proceeds to cite similar instances : as if rrrvvdavoiiai had any other perfect, or as if this were not the ordinary and legi- timate force of weTTvcrjuaL' Few things have been more inju- rious to the study of Greek than this belief that the ancient writers had a kind of plenary indulgence to substitute one word for another whenever it suited their fancy. Having begun by drawing up an incorrect definition, or laying down a rule, which, if not totally groundless, is at least tottering every moment, like a house of cards, from the inadequateness of its foundation to bear it, as soon as we meet with any- thing which will not answer to our definition, which will not bend to our rule, or enter our crazy house without upsetting it, we call this an example of lawless caprice, and, instead of correcting our. definition, or examining the grounds of our rule, we pronounce that the Greek language delighted in such or such an anomaly. We might just as well lay down that every plant in a certain border is a rose, and then, when one of them comes to blossom, and the flower turns out to be a lily, declare that it is a lily instead of a rose, or, in the peculiar phraseology of our grammars, plurimae rosae liliis gaudent^ et liliaceum habent jlorem. Whatever be the object of our study, be it language, or history, or whatsoever province of the material or the spi- ritual world, we ought in the first instance to be strongly im- prest with the conviction that everything in it is subject to the operation of certain principles, to the dominion of certain laws, that there is nothing lawless in it, nothing unprincipled, nothing insulated or capricious, though from the fragmentary nature of our knowledge many things may possibly appear
