“REM. 1.—­A sentence or phrase often supplies the place of a noun or pronoun in the objective case; as, ’You see how few of these men have returned.’”—­Wells’ s School Gram., “Third Thousand,” p. 154; late Ed. Sec.215.  According to this, must we not suppose verbs to be often transitive, when not made so by the author’s definition?  And if "see" is here transitive, would not other forms, such as are told, have been told, or are aware, be just as much so, if put in its place?

“REM. 2.—­An intransitive verb may be used to govern an objective, when the verb and the noun depending upon it are of kindred signification; as, ‘To live a blameless life;’—­’To run a race.’”—­Ib. Here verbs are absurdly called “intransitive,” when, both in fact and by the foregoing definition, they are clearly transitive; or, at least, are, by many teachers, supposed to be so.

“REM. 3.—­Idiomatic expressions sometimes occur in which intransitive verbs are followed by objectives depending upon them; as, ’To look the subject fully in the face.’—­Channing.  ’They laughed him to scorn.’—­Matt. 9:24.  ’And talked the night away.’—­Goldsmith.”—­ Ib. Here again, verbs evidently made transitive by the construction, are, with strange inconsistency, called “intransitive.”  By these three remarks together, the distinction between transitives and intransitives must needs be extensively obscured in the mind of the learner.

“REM. 4.—­Transitive verbs of asking, giving, teaching, and some others, are often employed to govern two objectives; as, ’Ask him his opinion;’—­’This experience taught me a valuable lesson.’—­’Spare me yet this bitter cup.’—­Hemans.  ’I thrice presented him a kingly crown.’—­Shakspeare.”—­Ib. This rule not only jumbles together several different constructions, such as would require different cases in Latin or Greek, but is evidently repugnant to the sense of many of the passages to which it is meant to be applied.  Wells thinks, the practice of supplying a preposition, “is, in many cases, arbitrary, and does violence to an important and well established idiom of the language.”—­Ib. But how can any idiom be violated by a mode of parsing, which merely expounds its true meaning?  If the dative case has the meaning of to, and the ablative has the meaning of from, how can they be expounded, in English, but by suggesting the particle, where it is omitted?  For example:  “Spare me yet [from] this bitter cup.”—­“Spare [to] me yet this joyous cup.”  This author says, “The rule for the government of two objectives by a verb, without the aid of a preposition, is adopted by Webster, Murray, Alexander, Frazee, Nutting, Perley, Goldsbury, J. M. Putnam, Hamlin,