2. Wells's account of the same thing is this: "In the simple form of the present and past indicative, the second person singular of the solemn style ends regularly in st or est, as, thou seest, thou hearest, thou sawest, thou heardest; and the third person singular of the present, in s or es, as, he hears, he wishes, and also in th or eth, as, he saith, he loveth. In the simple form of the present indicative, the third person singular of the common or familiar style, ends in s or es; as, he sleeps; he rises. The first person singular of the solemn style, and the first and second persons singular of the common style, have the same form as the three persons plural."—Wells's School Grammar, 1st Ed. p. 83; 3d Ed. p. 86. This, too, is both defective and inconsistent. It does not tell when to add est, and when, st only. It does not show what the regular preterit, as freed or loved, should make with thou: whether freedest and lovedest, by assuming the syllable est; fre-edst and lov-edst, by increasing syllabically from assuming st only; or freedst and lov'dst, or lovedst, still to be uttered as monosyllables. It absurdly makes "s or es" a sign of two opposite styles. (See OBS. 9th, above.) And it does not except "I am, I was, If I am, If I was, If thou art, I am loved," and so forth, from requiring "the same form, [are or were,] as the three persons plural." This author prefers "heardest;" the other, "heardst," which I think better warranted:
"And heardst thou why he drew his blade?
Heardst thou that shameful word and blow
Brought Roderick's vengeance on his foe?"—Scott, L. L., C. v, st. 6.
[247] Better, as Wickliffe has it, "the day in which;" though, after nouns of time, the relative that is often used, like the Latin ablative quo or quâ, as being equivalent to in which or on which.
[248] It is not a little strange, that some men, who never have seen or heard such words as their own rules would produce for the second person singular of many hundreds of our most common verbs, will nevertheless pertinaciously insist, that it is wrong to countenance in this matter any departure from the style of King James's Bible. One of the very rashest and wildest of modern innovators,—a critic who, but for the sake of those who still speak in this person and number, would gladly consign the pronoun thou, and all its attendant verbal forms, to utter oblivion,—thus treats this subject and me: "The Quakers, or Friends, however, use thou, and its attendant form of the asserter, in conversation. FOR THEIR BENEFIT, thou is given, in this work, in all the varieties of inflection; (in some of which it could not properly be used in an address to the Deity;) for THEY ERR MOST EGREGIOUSLY in the use of thou, with the form of the asserter which follows he or they, and are countenanced in their errors by G. Brown, who, instead of 'disburdening the language of 144,000 useless distinctions, increases their number just 144,000."—Oliver B. Peirce's Gram., p. 85 Among people of sense, converts are made by teaching, and reasoning, and proving; but this man's disciples must yield to the balderdash of a false speller, false quoter, and false assertor! This author says, that "dropt" is the past tense of "drop;" (p. 118;) let him prove, for example, that droptest is not a clumsy innovation, and that droppedst is not a formal archaism, and then tell of the egregious error of adopting neither of these forms in common conversation. The following, with its many common contractions, is the language of POPE; and I ask this, or any other opponent of my doctrine, TO SHOW HOW SUCH VERBS ARE RIGHTLY FORMED, either for poetry or for conversation, in the second person singular.
"It fled, I follow'd; now in hope, now pain;
It stopt, I stopt; it mov'd, I mov'd again.
At last it fix't,'twas on what plant it pleas'd,
And where it fix'd, the beauteous bird I seiz'd."
—Dunciad, B. IV, l. 427.
[249] The Rev. W. Allen, in his English Grammar, p. 132, says: "Yth and eth (from the Saxon lað [sic—KTH]) were formerly, plural terminations; as, 'Manners makyth man.' William of Wykeham's motto. 'After long advisement, they taketh upon them to try the matter.' Stapleton's Translation of Bede. 'Doctrine and discourse maketh nature less importune.' Bacon." The use of eth as a plural termination of verbs, was evidently earlier than the use of en for the same purpose. Even the latter is utterly obsolete, and the former can scarcely have been English. The Anglo-Saxon verb lufian, or lufigean, to love, appears to have been inflected with the several pronouns thus: Ic lufige, Thu lufast, He lufath, We lufiath, Ge lufiath, Hi lufiath. The form in Old English was this: I love, Thou lovest, He loveth, We loven, Ye loven, They loven. Dr. Priestley remarks, (though in my opinion unadvisedly,) that, "Nouns of a plural form, but of a singular signification, require a singular construction; as, mathematicks is a useful study. This observation will likewise," says he, "in some measure, vindicate the grammatical propriety of the famous saying of William of Wykeham, Manners maketh man."—Priestley's Gram., p. 189. I know not what half-way vindication there can be, for any such construction. Manners and mathematics are not nouns of the singular number, and therefore both is and maketh are wrong. I judge it better English to say, "Mathematics are a useful study."—"Manners make the man." But perhaps both ideas may be still better expressed by a change of the nominative, thus: "The study of mathematics is useful."—"Behaviour makes the man."
[250] What the state of our literature would have been, had no author attempted any thing on English grammar, must of course be a matter of mere conjecture, and not of any positive "conviction." It is my opinion, that, with all their faults, most of the books and essays in which this subject has been handled, have been in some degree beneficial, and a few of them highly so; and that, without their influence, our language must have been much more chaotic and indeterminable than it now is. But a late writer says, and, with respect to some of our verbal terminations, says wisely: "It is my sincere conviction that fewer irregularities would have crept into the language had no grammars existed, than have been authorized by grammarians; for it should be understood that the first of our grammarians, finding that good writers differed upon many points, instead of endeavouring to reconcile these discrepancies, absolutely perpetuated them by citing opposite usages, and giving high authorities for both. To this we owe all the irregularity which exists in the personal terminations of verbs, some of the best early writers using them promiscuously, some using them uniformly, and others making no use of them; and really they are of no use but to puzzle children and foreigners, perplex poets, and furnish an awkward dialect to that exemplary sect of Christians, who in every thing else study simplicity."—Fowle's True E. Gram., Part II, p. 26. Wells, a still later writer, gives this unsafe rule: "When the past tense is a monosyllable not ending in a single vowel, the second person singular of the solemn style is generally formed by the addition of est; as heardest, fleddest, tookest. Hadst, wast, saidst, and didst, are exceptions."—Wells's School Gram., 1st Ed., p. 106; 3d Ed., p. 110; 113th Ed., p. 115. Now the termination d or ed commonly adds no syllable; so that the regular past tense of any monosyllabic verb is, with a few exceptions, a monosyllable still; as, freed, feed, loved, feared, planned, turned: and how would these sound with est added, which Lowth, Hiley, Churchill, and some others erroneously claim as having pertained to such preterits anciently? Again, if heard is a contraction of heared, and fled, of fleed, as seems probable; then are heardst and fledtst, which are sometimes used, more regular than heardest, fleddest: so of many other preterits.
[251] Chaucer appears not to have inflected this word in the second person: "Also ryght as thou were ensample of moche folde errour, righte so thou must be ensample of manifold correction."—Testament of Love. "Rennin and crie as thou were wode."—House of Fame. So others: "I wolde thou were cold or hoot."—WICKLIFFE'S VERSION OF THE APOCALYPSE. "I wolde thou were cold or hote."—VERSION OF EDWARD VI: Tooke, Vol. ii, p. 270. See Rev., iii, 15: "I would thou wert cold or hot."—COMMON VERSION.
[252] See evidence of the antiquity of this practice, in the examples under the twenty-third observation above. According to Churchill, it has had some local continuance even to the present time. For, in a remark upon Lowth's contractions, lov'th, turn'th, this author says, "These are still in use in some country places, the third person singular of verbs in general being formed by the addition of the sound th simply, not making an additional syllable."—Churchill's Gram., p. 255 So the eth in the following example adds no syllable:—
"Death goeth about the field, rejoicing mickle
To see a sword that so surpass'd his sickle."
Harrington's Ariosto, B. xiii:
see Singer's Shak., Vol. ii, p. 296.