THE OBJECTIVE COMPLEMENT
=Function.=--Sometimes an action performed upon an object makes a
different thing of that object. Our desire to tell this as briefly as
possible has given rise to sentences in which a transitive verb is
followed by two complements, one a direct object naming the thing
acted upon, and the other an attribute of the direct object telling the
outcome of the activity denoted by the verb; as, “By his Sketch Book
Irving has made the Hudson a classic river.”
The second complement is quite as often an adjective as a noun; for
example,
“Shafts of sunshine from the west
Paint the dusky windows red.”--_Longfellow._
We understand from this sentence that the windows undergo the action
denoted by the words _paint red_, and are therefore changed from dusky
windows to red windows.
Such a word as _river_ in the first sentence or _red_ in the second is
called an objective complement. A noun used in this office somewhat
resembles an appositive, being a second name for an object already
named; but the appositive has no relation to any word except the noun
it explains, while the objective complement has a very important
relation to the predicate verb. So close is this relation that we
may often express the meaning of the two words, the verb and the
objective complement, by one word; as, “Political freedom makes every
man an individual.”--_Higginson._ Here the verb _makes_ and the
objective complement _an individual_ may be combined into the one verb
_individualizes_.
The close complementary relation of the objective complement to
the predicate verb is still further brought out when a sentence of
this type is changed to the passive form. There arises the sentence
discussed in section 5 in the preceding chapter, a sentence wherein the
direct object of the active verb has become the subject of the passive
verb, and the objective complement still remains after the verb but
becomes a subjective complement.
* * * * *
=Verbs that take an Objective Complement=:--
(_a_) Verbs of _making_, such as _render_, _elect_, _appoint_, called
factitive verbs; as, “Old habits of work, old habits of hope, made my
endless leisure irksome to me.”
(_b_) Verbs of _thinking_, such as _consider_, _regard_, _look upon_;
as, “The student is to read history actively and not passively, to
esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary.”--_Emerson._
(_c_) Verbs of _naming_ or _calling_; as, “We do not hesitate
to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a useful
body.”--_Macaulay._
(_d_) The verbs _feel_, _find_, _leave_, _prove_, _see_; as, “He
had never seen her so radiant, so young.”--_J. L. Allen._ “Chaucer,
like Dante, found his native tongue a dialect and left it a
language.”--_Lowell._
(_e_) Some intransitive verbs are completed in this way, especially
when the direct object is a reflexive personal pronoun; as, “They
shouted themselves hoarse.” “She cried herself sick.” These sentences
mean--“They made themselves hoarse by shouting”; “she made herself sick
by crying.”
* * * * *
=Introductory Word.=--After some verbs usage puts in the word _as_
or _for_ before the objective complement, using it merely as an
introductory word; thus, “I respected him as a sound and accurate
scholar.”--_De Quincey._
“No harmless thing that breathed,
Footed or winged, but knew him for a friend.”--_Aldrich._
When these sentences are changed to the passive, the introductory word
is usually retained before the subjective complement.
NOTE.--After _as_ the participle may take the place of an adjective;
as, “I consider him as having lost his right.” The participle has here
the same use that the adjective _destitute_ has in the expression
_destitute of his right_.
* * * * *
=Position of the Objective Complement.=--It usually follows the
direct object, but the adjective so used is sometimes placed next
to the verb, and the noun may, to render it emphatic, be placed at
the beginning of the sentence; as, “Grape shot will sweep clear all
streets.”--_Carlyle._ “A perpetual fountain of good sense Dryden calls
Chaucer.”--_Lowell._
We have certain stereotyped verb-phrases such as _make free_, _think
best_, and _see fit_, in which the adjective is so closely related to
the verb that it is placed next to it, and the two words have acquired
the meaning of one verb. _Make free_ has almost the meaning of _dare_;
for the other two phrases there are no good substitutes. These phrases
are followed by an infinitive phrase used as direct object. For
example,--“A native of that region saw fit to build his house very near
it.”--_Holmes._
Exercise 33
Explain how the verbs and verbals in the following sentences are
completed.
1. Enthusiasm had made them Stoics.--_Macaulay._
2. To make the common marvellous is the test of genius.--_Lowell._
3. For the purpose of public instruction we hold every man subject to
taxation in proportion to his property.--_Webster._
4. None but the dissolute among the poor look upon the rich as their
natural enemies.--_Ruskin._
5. He had so far completed his preparations as to have leisure to be
talking himself hot and hoarse with the neighboring barber.--_Howells._
6. Alfred left England better, wiser, happier in all ways than he
found it.--_Dickens._
7. Grenadier, I salute you; you have proved yourself the bravest of
the brave.
8. Haste can make you slipshod, but it can never make you
graceful.--_Higginson._
9. A murderer he has written himself down.--_Birrell._
10. If you will only call a headache a _Cephalalgia_ it acquires
dignity at once, and a patient becomes rather proud of it.--_Holmes._
11. When mobs were roaring themselves hoarse for Wilkes and liberty,
he denounced Wilkes as a worthless profligate.--_J. R. Green._
12. Before he had finished his toilet a stroke of apoplexy stretched
him senseless upon the floor.--_Motley._
13. Sad or sinful is the life of that man who finds not the
heavens bluer and the waves more musical in maturity than in
childhood.--_Higginson._
14. Meanwhile the French and Bretons made good their ascent on either
flank.--_J. R. Green._
15. The excitement on shore became wild; men shouted themselves
hoarse; women laughed and cried.--_Hearn._
16. In the fullness of my heart I laid bare our plans before
him.--_Stevenson._
17. They have criticised the Insurrection as evincing in the rioters
an extreme backwardness to battle.--_Carlyle._
18. But seeing that our host sets us the good example of forgetting
ceremony, I shall likewise throw it aside and make free to intrude on
his privacy.--_Hawthorne._
Exercise 34
Analyze the following sentences.
1. He placed the guns, together with a good supply of ammunition,
under the loop-holes that commanded the road by which the enemy must
advance.
2. The standing difficulty in the long run is not want of places, but
want of men.--_Hale._
3. Act faithfully, and you really have faith, no matter how cold and
even how dubious you may feel.--_Wm. James._
4. Learned sergeant eloquence, were it continued until the learned
tongue wore itself small in the indefatigable learned mouth, cannot
make unjust just.--_Carlyle._
5. We charge every man with positive dishonesty who drives birds
from his garden in fruit time; the fruit is theirs as well as
yours.--_Beecher._
6. The Austrians are simply hated as the means by which an alien and
despotic government is imposed upon a people believing themselves born
for freedom and independence.--_Howells._
7. The desert heavens have felt her sadness;
Her earth will weep her some dewy tears.--_Jean Ingelow._
8. Finally he shook himself free from the dreamy spell of the place,
and turned his face southward again.--_H. H._
9. Bob had always been a great favorite with the Colonel, and ever
since he had been a small boy, he had been used to coming over and
staying with him.--_Page._
10. But they detest Venice as a place of residence.--_Howells._
11. Place a tree or plant in an unusual position, and it will
prove itself equal to the occasion and behave in an unusual
manner.--_Burroughs._
12. The grand essentials of happiness are something to do, something
to love, and something to hope for.--_Chalmers._
13. To touch the Temple was, in the eyes of the Jews, to incur the
vengeance of the Almighty.--_Geikie._
14. Daily work is one of the blessed influences which keep the soul
strong and sane.--_J. F. Clarke._
15. Who toiled a slave may come anew a Prince
For gentle worthiness and merit won;
Who ruled a king may wander earth in rags
For things done and undone.--_E. Arnold._
16. It was somewhat wistfully that she asked her husband how far this
place was from her home, and whether, when he was at work, she could
not come down here by herself.--_Black._
17. They set up their country as their idol, and proposed to
themselves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples.--_Macaulay._
18. He was sent to St. Luke’s and dismissed as cured.--_Miss Mitford._
19. Mrs. Smith was a matron whose countenance addressed itself to the
mind rather than to the eye.--_T. Hardy._
20. At the far end of the vista he could behold her in her childhood
as the daughter of a cavalier land-holder in the valley of the
James.--_J. L. Allen._
21. It amused me vastly at times to think that he was of our shrewd
Yankee race.--_H. James._
22. I know this, that the way Mother Earth treats a boy shapes out a
kind of natural theology for him.--_Holmes._
23. The aim which Bonaparte avowed as his highest ambition for France,
to convert all trades into arts, is being rapidly fulfilled all around
us.--_Higginson._
24. No man becomes a saint in his sleep.--_Carlyle._
25. She taught the youth how to make friends with the crickets and
squirrels, and how to call the thrush and the robin to eat from his
hand.--_Hillis._
26. He will hunt among these hills during the next moon, so he has
told me.--_Kipling._