OBS. 12.—­Murray’s second censure upon passive government, is this:  “The following sentences, which give [to] the passive voice the regimen of an active verb, are very irregular, and by no means to be imitated.  ’The bishops and abbots were allowed their seats in the house of lords.’  ‘Thrasea was forbidden the presence of the emperor.’  ’He was shown that very story in one of his own books.’[355] These sentences should have been:  ’The bishops and abbots were allowed to have (or to take) their seats in the house of lords;’ or, ’Seats in the house of lords were allowed to the bishops and abbots:’  ’Thrasea was forbidden to approach the presence of the emperor;’ or, ’The presence of the emperor was forbidden to Thrasea:’  ’That very story was shown to him in one of his own books.’”—­Octavo Gram., p. 223.  See Obs. 8, above.  One late grammarian, whose style is on the whole highly commendable for its purity and accuracy, forbears to condemn the phraseology here spoken of; and, though he does not expressly defend and justify it, he seems disposed to let it pass, with the license of the following canon.  “For convenience, it may be well to state it as a rule, that—­Passive verbs govern an objective, when the nominative to the passive verb is not the proper object of the active voice.”—­Barnard’s Analytic Gram., p. 134.  An other asserts the government of two cases by very many of our active verbs, and the government of one by almost any passive verb, according to the following rules:  “Verbs of teaching, giving, and some others of a similar nature, govern two objectives, the one of a person and the other of a thing; as, He taught me grammar:  His tutor gave him a lesson:  He promised me a reward.  A passive verb may govern an objective, when the words immediately preceding and following it, do not refer to the same thing; as, Henry was offered a dollar by his father to induce him to remain.”—­J.  M. Putnam’s Gram., pp. 110 and 112.

OBS. 13.—­The common dogmas, that an active verb must govern an object, and that a neuter or intransitive verb must not, amount to nothing as directions to the composer; because the classification of verbs depends upon this very matter, whether they have, or have not, an object after them; and no general principle has been, or can be, furnished beforehand, by which their fitness or unfitness for taking such government can be determined.  This must depend upon usage, and usage must conform to the sense intended.  Very many verbs—­probably a vast majority—­govern an object sometimes, but not always:  many that are commonly intransitive or neuter, are not in all their uses so; and many that are commonly transitive, have sometimes no apparent regimen.  The distinction, then, in our dictionaries, of verbs active and neuter, or transitive and intransitive, serves scarcely any