CHAPTER XXVII
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.