ed, is a question well worthy of
consideration. We have already converted this participle to such a
multiplicity of purposes, and into so many different parts of speech, that
one can well-nigh write a chapter in it, without any other words. This
practice may have added something to the copiousness and flexibility of the
language, but it certainly has a tendency to impair its strength and
clearness. Not every use of participles is good, for which there may be
found precedents in good authors. One may run to great excess in the
adoption of such derivatives, without becoming absolutely unintelligible,
and without violating any rule of our common grammars. For example, I may
say of somebody, "This very superficial grammatist, supposing empty
criticism about the adoption of proper phraseology to be a show of
extraordinary erudition, was displaying, in spite of ridicule, a very
boastful turgid argument concerning the correction of false syntax, and
about the detection of false logic in debate." Now, in what other language
than ours, can a string of words anything like the following, come so near
to a fair and literal translation of this long sentence? "This exceeding
trifling witling, considering ranting criticising concerning adopting
fitting wording being exhibiting transcending learning, was displaying,
notwithstanding ridiculing, surpassing boasting swelling reasoning,
respecting correcting erring writing, and touching detecting deceiving
arguing during debating." Here are _not all_ the uses to which our writers
apply the participle in _ing_, but there would seem to be enough, without
adding others that are less proper.

OBS. 4.--The active participles, _admitting, allowing, considering,
granting, speaking, supposing_, and the like, are frequently used in
discourse so independently, that they either relate to nothing, or to the
pronoun _I_ or _we_ understood; as, "_Granting_ this to be true, what is
to be inferred from it?"--_Murray's Gram._, p. 195. This may be supposed to
mean, "_I_, granting this to be true, _ask_ what is to be inferred from
it?" "The very chin was, _modestly speaking_, as long as my whole
face."--_Addison_. Here the meaning may be, "_I_, modestly speaking,
_say_." So of the following examples: "_Properly speaking_, there is no
such thing as chance."--_W. Allen's Gram._, p. 172. "Because, _generally
speaking_, the figurative sense of a word is derived from its proper
sense."--_Kames, El. of Crit._, i, 1