xxi, 3.  Every school-boy ought to know better than to call this a an article. A fishing is equivalent to the infinitive to fish.  For the Greek of the foregoing text is [Greek:  Hupago halieuein,] which is rendered by Montanus, “Vado piscari;” i.e., “I go to fish.”  One author ignorantly says, “The article a seems to have no particular meaning, and is hardly proper in such expressions as these.  ’He went a-hunting,’ She lies a-bed all day.’”—­Wilcox’s Gram., p. 59.  No marvel that he could not find the meaning of an article in this a! With doltish and double inconsistency, Weld first calls this “The article a employed in the sense of a preposition,” (E.  Gram., p. 177,) and afterwards adopts Murray’s interpretation as above cited!  Some, too, have an absurd practice of joining this preposition to the participle; generally with the hyphen, but sometimes without:  thus, “A-GOING, In motion; as, to set a mill agoing.”—­Webster’s Dict. The doctor does not tell us what part of speech agoing is; but, certainly, “to set the mill to going,” expresses just the same meaning, and is about as often heard.  In the burial-service of the Common Prayer Book, we read, “They are even as asleep;” but, in the ninetieth Psalm, from which this is taken, we find the text thus:  “They are as a sleep;” that is, as a dream that is fled.  Now these are very different readings, and cannot both he right.

[138] Here the lexicographer forgets his false etymology of a before the participle, and writes the words separately, as the generality of authors always have done. A was used as a preposition long before the article a appeared in the language; and I doubt whether there is any truth at all in the common notions of its origin.  Webster says, “In the words abed, ashore, &c., and before the participles acoming, agoing, ashooting, [he should have said, ’and before participles; as, a coming, a going, a shooting,’] a has been supposed a contraction of on or at.  It may be so in some cases; but with the participles, it is sometimes a contraction of the Saxon prefix ge, and sometimes perhaps of the Celtic ag.”—­Improved Gram., p. 175.  See Philos.  Gram., p. 244.  What admirable learning is this! A, forsooth, is a contraction of ge! And this is the doctor’s reason for joining it to the participle!

[139] The following construction may he considered an archaism, or a form of expression that is now obsolete:  “You have bestowed a many of kindnesses upon me.”—­Walker’s English Particles, p. 278.