"To err is human, to forgive divine,"
are very remarkable. They exhibit the phenomena of a nominative case having grown not only out of a dative but out of a dative plus its governing preposition.
CHAPTER XVIII.
ON DERIVED VERBS.
[§ 282]. Of the divisions of verbs into active and passive, transitive and intransitive, unless there be an accompanying change of form, etymology takes no cognisance. The forces of the auxiliary verbs, and the tenses to which they are equivalent, are also points of syntax rather than of etymology.
Four classes, however, of derived verbs, as opposed to simple, especially deserve notice.
I. Those ending in -en; as soften, whiten, strengthen, &c. Here the -en is a derivational affix; and not a representative of the Anglo-Saxon infinitive form -an (as lufian, bærnan = to love, to burn), and the Old English -en (as tellen, loven).
II. Transitive verbs derived from intransitives by a change of the vowel of the root.