_;
the _future_, the _future perfect_."--_S. S. Greene's Gram._, 1853, p. 65.
(10.) "There are six tenses; _one present_, and _but one, three past_, and
_two future_." They are named thus: "_The Present, the First Past, the
Second Past, the Third Past, the First Future, the Second Future_."--"For
the sake of symmetry, to call _two_ of them _present_, and _two_ only past,
while _one_ only is _present_, and _three_ are _past_ tenses, is to
sacrifice truth to beauty."--_Pinneo's Gram._, 1853, pp. 69 and 70. "The
old names, _imperfect, perfect_, and _pluperfect_," which, in 1845, Butler
justly admitted to be the _usual_ names of the three past tenses. Dr.
Pinneo, who dates his copy-right from 1850, most unwarrantably declares to
be "_now generally discarded_!"--_Analytical Gram._, p. 76; _Same Revised_,
p. 81. These terms, still predominant in use, he strangely supposes to have
been suddenly superseded by others which are no better, if so good:
imagining that the scheme which Perley or Hiley introduced, of "_two
present, two past_, and _two future_ tenses,"--a scheme which, he says,
"has no foundation in truth, and is therefore to be rejected,"--had
prepared the way for the above-cited innovation of his own, which merely
presents the old ideas under new terms, or terms partly new, and wholly
unlikely to prevail. William Ward, one of the ablest of our old
grammarians, rejecting in 1765 the two terms _imperfect_ and _perfect_,
adopted others which resemble Pinneo's; but few, if any, have since named
the tenses as he did, thus: "_The Present, the First Preterite, the Second
Preterite, the Pluperfect, the First Future, the Second Future_."--_Ward's
Gram._, p. 47.

[234] "The infinitive mood, as '_to shine_,' may be called the name of the
verb; it carries _neither time nor affirmation_; but simply expresses that
attribute, action, or state of things, which is to be the subject of the
other moods and tenses."--_Blair's Lectures_, p. 81. By the word
"_subject_" the Doctor does not here mean the _nominative to_ the other
moods and tenses, but the _material of_ them, or that which is formed into
them.

[235] Some grammarians absurdly deny that persons and numbers are
properties of verbs at all: not indeed because our verbs have so few
inflections, or because these authors wish to discard the little
distinction that remains; but because they have some fanciful conception,
that these properties cannot pertain to a verb. Yet, when the