has none, it is intransitive. Verbs which appear transitive in their nature, may frequently be used intransitively.”—­ Chandler’s Old Gram., p. 32; his Common School Gram., p. 48.  An other says, “A transitive verb asserts action which does or can, terminate on some object.”—­Frazee’s Gram., p. 29.  An other avers, “There are two classes of verbs perfectly distinct from each other, viz:  Those which do, and those which do not, govern an objective case.”  And his definition is, “A Transitive Verb is one which requires an objective case after it.”—­Hart’s E. Gram., p. 63.  Both Frazee and Hart reckon the passive verb transitive! And the latter teaches, that, “Transitive verbs in English, are sometimes used without an objective case; as, The apple tastes sweet!”—­Hart’s Gram., p, 73.

[226] In the hands of some gentlemen, “the Principles of Latin Grammar,” and “the Principles of English Grammar,”—­are equally pliable, or changeable; and, what is very remarkable, a comparison of different editions will show, that the fundamental doctrines of a whole “Series of Grammars, English, Latin, and Greek,” may so change in a single lustrum, as to rest upon authorities altogether different.  Dr. Bullions’s grammars, a few years ago, like those of his great oracles, Adam, Murray, and Lennie, divided verbs into “three kinds, Active, Passive, and Neuter.”  Now they divide them into two only, “Transitive and Intransitive;” and absurdly aver, that “Verbs in the passive form are really transitive as in the active form.”—­Prin. of E. Gram., 1843, p. 200.  Now, as if no verb could be plural, and no transitive act could be future, conditional, in progress, or left undone, they define thus:  “A Transitive verb expresses an act done by one person or thing to another.”—­Ib., p. 29; Analyt. and Pract.  Gram., 60; Latin Gram., 77.  Now, the division which so lately as 1842 was pronounced by the Doctor to be “more useful than any other,” and advantageously accordant with “most dictionaries of the English language,” (see his Fourth Edition, p. 30,) is wholly rejected from this notable “Series.”  Now, the “vexed question” about “the classification of verbs,” which, at some revision still later, drew from this author whole pages of weak arguments for his faulty changes, is complacently supposed to have been well settled in his favour!  Of this matter, now, in 1849, he speaks thus:  “The division of verbs into transitive and intransitive has been so generally adopted and approved by the best grammarians, that any discussion of the subject is now unnecessary.”—­Bullions’s Analyt. and Pract.  Gram., p. 59.