[354] To these examples, Webster adds two others, of a different sort, with a comment, thus:  “‘Ask him his opinion?’ ’You have asked me the news.’  Will it be said that the latter phrases are elliptical, for ’ask of him his opinion?’ I apprehend this to be a mistake.  According to the true idea of the government of a transitive verb, him must be the object in the phrase under consideration, as much as in this, ’Ask him for a guinea;’ or in this, ‘ask him to go.’”—­Ibid, ut supra; Frazee’s Gram., p. 152; Fowler’s, p. 480.  If, for the reason here stated, it is a “mistake” to supply of in the foregoing instances, it does not follow that they are not elliptical.  On the contrary, if they are analogous to, “Ask him for a guinea;” or, “Ask him to go;” it is manifest that the construction must be this:  “Ask him [for] his opinion;” or, “Ask him [to tell] his opinion.”  So that the question resolves itself into this:  What is the best way of supplying the ellipsis, when two objectives thus occur after ask?—­G.  BROWN.

[355] These examples Murray borrowed from Webster, who published them, with references, under his 34th Rule.  With too little faith in the corrective power of grammar, the Doctor remarks upon the constructions as follows:  “This idiom is outrageously anomalous, but perhaps incorrigible.”—­ Webster’s Philos.  Gram., p. 180; Imp.  G., 128.

[356] This seems to be a reasonable principle of syntax, and yet I find it contradicted, or a principle opposite to it set up, by some modern teachers of note, who venture to justify all those abnormal phrases which I here condemn as errors.  Thus Fowler:  “Note 5.  When a Verb with its Accusative case, is equivalent to a single verb, it may take this accusative after it in the passive voice; as, ‘This has been put an end to.’”—­Fowler’s English Language, 8vo, Sec.552.  Now what is this, but an effort to teach bad English by rule?—­and by such a rule, too, as is vastly more general than even the great class of terms which it was designed to include?  And yet this rule, broad as it is, does not apply at all to the example given!  For “put an end,” without the important word “to,” is not equivalent to stop or terminate.  Nor is the example right.  One ought rather to say, “This has been ended;” or, “This has been stopped.”  See the marginal Note to Obs. 5th, above.

[357] Some, however, have conceived the putting of the same case after the verb as before it, to be government; as, “Neuter verbs occasionally govern either the nominative or [the] objective case, after them.”—­Alexander’s Gram., p. 54.  “The verb to be, always governs a Nominative, unless it be of the Infinitive Mood.”—­Buchanan’s Gram., p. 94.  This latter assertion is, in fact, monstrously untrue, and also solecistical.