'O thou my voice inspire,
Who touch'd Isaiah's hallow'd lips with fire!'
The solemnity of the style would not admit of you for thou, in the pronoun; nor the measure of the verse touchedst, or didst touch, in the verb, as it indispensably ought to be, in the one or the other of those two forms; you, who touched, or thou, who touchedst, or didst touch.
'Just of thy word, in every thought sincere;
Who knew no wish, but what the world might hear.'—Pope.
It ought to be your in the first line, or knewest in the second. In order to avoid this grammatical inconvenience, the two distinct forms of thou and you, are often used promiscuously by our modern poets, in the same paragraph, and even in the same sentence, very inelegantly and improperly:—
'Now, now, I seize, I clasp thy charms;
And now you burst, ah cruel! from my arms.'—Pope."
—Lowth's English Gram., p. 34.
OBS. 17.—The points of Dr. Lowth's doctrine which are not sufficiently true, are the following: First, it is not true, that thou, in the familiar style, is totally disused, and the plural you employed universally in its stead; though Churchill, and others, besides the good bishop, seem to represent it so. It is now nearly two hundred years since the rise of the Society of Friends: and, whatever may have been the practice of others before or since, it is certain, that from their rise to the present day, there have been, at every point of time, many thousands who made no use of you for thou; and, but for the clumsy forms which most grammarians hold to be indispensable to verbs of the second person singular, the beautiful, distinctive, and poetical words, thou, thyself, thy, thine, and thee, would certainly be in no danger yet of becoming obsolete. Nor can they, indeed, at any rate, become so, till the fairest branches of the Christian Church shall wither; or, what should seem no gracious omen, her bishops and clergy learn to pray in the plural number, for fashion's sake. Secondly, it is not true, that, "thou, who touch'd," ought indispensably to be, "thou, who touchedst, or didst touch." It is far better to dispense with the inflection, in such a case, than either to impose it, or to resort to the plural pronoun. The "grammatical inconvenience" of dropping the st or est of a preterit, even in the solemn style, cannot be great, and may be altogether imaginary; that of imposing it, except in solemn prose, is not only real, but is often insuperable. It is not very agreeable, however, to see it added to some verbs, and dropped from others, in the same sentence: as,
"Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss,
And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss."
—Byron's Childe Harold, Canto iv, st. 132.
"Thou satt'st from age to age insatiate,
And drank the blood of men, and gorged their flesh."
—Pollok's Course of Time, B. vii, l. 700.
OBS. 18.—We see then, that, according to Dr. Lowth and others, the only good English in which one can address an individual on any ordinary occasion, is you with a plural verb; and that, according to Lindley Murray and others, the only good English for the same purpose, is thou with a verb inflected with st or est. Both parties to this pointed contradiction, are more or less in the wrong. The respect of the Friends for those systems of grammar which deny them the familiar use of the pronoun thou, is certainly not more remarkable, than the respect of the world for those which condemn the substitution of the plural you. Let grammar be a true record of existing facts, and all such contradictions must vanish. And, certainly, these great masters here contradict each other, in what every one who reads English, ought to know. They agree, however, in requiring, as indispensable to grammar, what is not only inconvenient, but absolutely impossible. For what "the measure of verse will not admit," cannot be used in poetry; and what may possibly be crowded into it, will often be far from ornamental. Yet our youth have been taught to spoil the versification of Pope and others, after the following manner: "Who touch'd Isaiah's hallow'd lips with fire." Say, "Who touchedst or didst touch."—Murray's Key, 8vo, p. 180. "For thee that ever felt another's wo." Say, "Didst feel."—Ib. "Who knew no wish but what the world might hear." Say, "Who knewest or didst know."—Ib. "Who all my sense confin'd." Say, "Confinedst or didst confine."—Ib., p. 186. "Yet gave me in this dark estate." Say, "Gavedst or didst give."—Ib. "Left free the human will."—Pope. Murray's criticism extends not to this line, but by the analogy we must say, "Leavedst or leftest." Now it would be easier to fill a volume with such quotations, and such corrections, than to find sufficient authority to prove one such word as gavedst, leavedst, or leftest, to be really good English. If Lord Byron is authority for "work'dst," he is authority also for dropping the st, even where it might be added:—
——"Thou, who with thy frown
Annihilated senates."
—Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto iv, st. 83.