EXERCISE

5. Blithe were it then to wander here.

- Scott.

6. We'll choose among them as they lie asleep.

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7. You come hot and tired from the day's battle and this sweet minstrel sings to you. Thackeray.

8. The doctor had been and gone, and the hand had been pronounced as injured but slightly, though it would of course have been considered a far more serious case if Mr. Smith had been a richer man. - T. Hardy.

9. Half the secret of human intercourse is to make allowance for each other. — Leigh Hunt.

10. The eating-houses are almost without number. -Howells. II. We read of cliffs that spring naked and sheer to an equal height. - King.

12.

He stood concealed amid the brake

To view this Lady of the Lake.

Scott.

13. Christians were cast to the lions, but the Christian church grew up a stately and spreading tree. — Mill.

14. The wind was blowing a hurricane. - Page.

15. Two years later, Mexico became independent of Spain, and California was made a Mexican province.

16. Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence of a schoolmaster? - Lamb.

17. A chieftain's daughter seemed the maid. - Scott. 18. His meat was locusts and wild honey.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE OBJECTIVE COMPLEMENT

Function. Sometimes an action performed upon an object makes a different thing of that object. Our desire to tell this as briefly as possible has given rise to sentences in which a transitive verb is followed by two comple

ments, one a direct object naming the thing acted upon, and the other an attribute of the direct object telling the outcome of the activity denoted by the verb; as, “By his Sketch Book Irving has made the Hudson a classic river." The second complement is quite as often an adjective as a noun; for example,

"Shafts of sunshine from the west

Paint the dusky windows red."

Longfellow.

We understand from this sentence that the windows undergo the action denoted by the words paint red, and are therefore changed from dusky windows to red windows.

Such a word as river in the first sentence or red in the second is called an objective complement. A noun used in this office somewhat resembles an appositive, being a second name for an object already named; but the appositive has no relation to any word except the noun it explains, while the objective complement has a very important relation to the predicate verb. So close is this relation that we may often express the meaning of the two words, the verb and the objective complement, by one word; as, "Political freedom makes every man an individual." Higginson. Here the verb makes and the objective complement an individual may be combined into the one verb individualizes.

The close complementary relation of the objective complement to the predicate verb is still further brought out when a sentence of this type is changed to the passive form. There arises the sentence discussed in section 5 in the preceding chapter, a sentence wherein the direct object of the active verb has become the subject of the

INTRODUCTORY WORD

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passive verb, and the objective complement still remains after the verb but becomes a subjective complement.

Verbs that take an Objective Complement:

(a) Verbs of making, such as render, elect, appoint, called factitive verbs; as, "Old habits of work, old habits of hope, made my endless leisure irksome to me."

(b) Verbs of thinking, such as consider, regard, look upon; as, “The student is to read history actively and not passively, to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary."- Emerson.

(c) Verbs of naming or calling; as, We do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a useful body." Macaulay.

(d) The verbs feel, find, leave, prove, see; as, "He had never seen her so radiant, so young.”—J. L. Allen. Chaucer, like Dante, found his native tongue a dialect and left it a language." - Lowell.

(e) Some intransitive verbs are completed in this way, especially when the direct object is a reflexive personal pronoun; as, “They shouted themselves hoarse." She cried herself sick." These sentences mean "They made themselves hoarse by shouting "; " she made herself sick by crying."

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Introductory Word. After some verbs usage puts in the word as or for before the objective complement, using it merely as an introductory word; thus, "I respected him as a sound and accurate scholar." — De Quincey.

"No harmless thing that breathed,

Footed or winged, but knew him for a friend."

-Aldrich.

When these sentences are changed to the passive, the introductory word is usually retained before the subjective complement.

-

NOTE. - After as the participle may take the place of an adjective; as, "I consider him as having lost his right." The participle has here the same use that the adjective destitute has in the expression destitute of his right.

Position of the Objective Complement. It usually follows the direct object, but the adjective so used is sometimes placed next to the verb, and the noun may, to render it emphatic, be placed at the beginning of the sentence; as, "Grape shot will sweep clear all streets." Carlyle. "A perpetual fountain of good sense Dryden calls Chaucer."- Lowell.

We have certain stereotyped verb-phrases such as make free, think best, and see fit, in which the adjective is so closely related to the verb that it is placed next to it, and the two words have acquired the meaning of one verb. Make free has almost the meaning of dare; for the other two phrases there are no good substitutes. These phrases are followed by an infinitive phrase used as direct object. For example, - “A native of that region saw fit to build his house very near it. - Holmes.

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Exercise 33

Explain how the verbs and verbals in the following sentences are completed.

I. Enthusiasm had made them Stoics. Macaulay.

2. To make the common marvellous is the test of genius. Lowell.

3. For the purpose of public instruction we hold every man subject to taxation in proportion to his property. — Webster.

4. None but the dissolute among the poor look upon the rich as their natural enemies. · - Ruskin.

5. He had so far completed his preparations as to have leisure to be talking himself hot and hoarse with the neighboring barber. - Howells.

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6. Alfred left England better, wiser, happier in all ways than he found it. — Dickens.

7. Grenadier, I salute you; you have proved yourself the bravest of the brave.

8. Haste can make you slipshod, but it can never make you graceful. - Higginson.

9. A murderer he has written himself down. - Birrell.

10. If you will only call a headache a Cephalalgia it acquires dignity at once, and a patient becomes rather proud of it. - Holmes.

II. When mobs were roaring themselves hoarse for Wilkes and liberty, he denounced Wilkes as a worthless profligate. J. R. Green.

12. Before he had finished his toilet a stroke of apoplexy stretched him senseless upon the floor. Motley.

13. Sad or sinful is the life of that man who finds not the heavens bluer and the waves more musical in maturity than in childhood. Higginson.

14. Meanwhile the French and Bretons made good their ascent on either flank. -J. R. Green.

15. The excitement on shore became wild; men shouted themselves hoarse; women laughed and cried. — Hearn.

16. In the fullness of my heart I laid bare our plans before him. Stevenson.

17. They have criticised the Insurrection as evincing in the rioters an extreme backwardness to battle. - Carlyle.

18. But seeing that our host sets us the good example of forgetting ceremony, I shall likewise throw it aside and make free to intrude on his privacy. Hawthorne.