OBS. 24.—The corollary towards which the foregoing observations are directed, is this. As most of the peculiar terminations by which the second person singular is properly distinguished in the solemn style, are not only difficult of utterance, but are quaint and formal in conversation; the preterits and auxiliaries of our verbs are seldom varied in familiar discourse, and the present is generally simplified by contraction, or by the adding of st without increase of syllables. A distinction between the solemn and the familiar style has long been admitted, in the pronunciation of the termination ed, and in the ending of the verb in the third person singular; and it is evidently according to good taste and the best usage, to admit such a distinction in the second person singular. In the familiar use of the second person singular, the verb is usually varied only in the present tense of the indicative mood, and in the auxiliary hast of the perfect. This method of varying the verb renders the second person singular analogous to the third, and accords with the practice of the most intelligent of those who retain the common use of this distinctive and consistent mode of address. It disencumbers their familiar dialect of a multitude of harsh and useless terminations, which serve only, when uttered, to give an uncouth prominency to words not often emphatic; and, without impairing the strength or perspicuity of the language, increases its harmony, and reduces the form of the verb in the second person singular nearly to the same simplicity as in the other persons and numbers. It may serve also, in some instances, to justify the poets, in those abbreviations for which they have been so unreasonably censured by Lowth, Murray, and some other grammarians: as,
"And thou their natures knowst, and gave them names,
Needless to thee repeated."—Milton, P. L., Book vii, line 494.
OBS. 25.—The writings of the Friends, being mostly of a grave cast, afford but few examples of their customary manner of forming the verb in connexion with the pronoun thou, in familiar discourse. The following may serve to illustrate it: "Suitable to the office thou layst claim to."—R. BARCLAY'S Works, Vol. i, p. 27. "Notwithstanding thou may have sentiments opposite to mine."—THOMAS STORY. "To devote all thou had to his service;"—"If thou should come;"—"What thou said;"—"Thou kindly contributed;"—"The epistle which thou sent me;"—"Thou would perhaps allow;"—"If thou submitted;"—"Since thou left;"—"Should thou act;"—"Thou may be ready;"—"That thou had met;"—"That thou had intimated;"—"Before thou puts" [putst];—"What thou meets" [meetst];—"If thou had made;"—"I observed thou was;"—"That thou might put thy trust;"—"Thou had been at my house."—JOHN KENDALL. "Thou may be plundered;"—"That thou may feel;"—"Though thou waited long, and sought him;"—"I hope thou will bear my style;"—"Thou also knows" [knowst];—"Thou grew up;"—"I wish thou would yet take my counsel."—STEPHEN CRISP. "Thou manifested thy tender regard, stretched forth thy delivering hand, and fed and sustained us."—SAMUEL FOTHERGILL. The writer has met with thousands that used the second person singular in conversation, but never with any one that employed, on ordinary occasions, all the regular endings of the solemn style. The simplification of the second person singular, which, to a greater or less extent, is everywhere adopted by the Friends, and which is here defined and explained, removes from each verb eighteen of these peculiar terminations; and, (if the number of English verbs be, as stated by several grammarians, 8000,) disburdens their familiar dialect of 144,000 of these awkward and useless appendages.[248] This simplification is supported by usage as extensive as the familiar use of the pronoun thou; and is also in accordance with the canons of criticism: "The first canon on this subject is, All words and phrases which are remarkably harsh and unharmonious, and not absolutely necessary, should be rejected." See Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, B. ii, Ch. ii, Sec. 2, Canon Sixth, p. 181. See also, in the same work, (B. hi, Ch. iv, Sec. 2d,) an express defence of "those elisions whereby the sound is improved;" especially of the suppression of the "feeble vowel in the last syllable of the preterits of our regular verbs;" and of "such abbreviations" as "the eagerness of conveying one's sentiments, the rapidity and ease of utterance, necessarily produce, in the dialect of conversation."—Pages 426 and 427. Lord Kames says, "That the English tongue, originally harsh, is at present much softened by dropping many redundant consonants, is undoubtedly true; that it is not capable of being further mellowed without suffering in its force and energy, will scarce be thought by any one who possesses an ear."—Elements of Criticism, Vol. ii, p. 12.
OBS. 26.—The following examples are from a letter of an African Prince, translated by Dr. Desaguillier of Cambridge, England, in 1743, and published in a London newspaper: "I lie there too upon the bed thou presented me;"—"After thou left me, in thy swimming house;"—"Those good things thou presented me;"—"When thou spake to the Great Spirit and his Son." If it is desirable that our language should retain this power of a simple literal version of what in others may be familiarly expressed by the second person singular, it is clear that our grammarians must not continue to dogmatize according to the letter of some authors hitherto popular. But not every popular grammar condemns such phraseology as the foregoing. "I improved, Thou improvedst, &c. This termination of the second person preterit, on account of its harshness, is seldom used, and especially in the irregular verbs."—Harrison's Gram., p. 26. "The termination est, annexed to the preter tenses of verbs, is, at best, a very harsh one, when it is contracted, according to our general custom of throwing out the e; as learnedst, for learnedest; and especially, if it be again contracted into one syllable, as it is commonly pronounced, and made learndst. * * * I believe a writer or speaker would have recourse to any periphrasis rather than say keptest, or keptst. * * * Indeed this harsh termination est is generally quite dropped in common conversation, and sometimes by the poets, in writing."—Priestley's Gram., p. 115. The fact is, it never was added with much uniformity. Examples: "But like the hell hounde thou waxed fall furious, expressing thy malice when thou to honour stied."—FABIAN'S CHRONICLE, V. ii, p. 522: in Tooke's Divers., T. ii, p. 232.
"Thou from the arctic regions came. Perhaps
Thou noticed on thy way a little orb,
Attended by one moon—her lamp by night."
—Pollok, B. ii, l. 5.
"'So I believ'd.'—No, Abel! to thy grief,
So thou relinquish'd all that was belief."
—Crabbe, Borough, p. 279.
OBS. 27.—L. Murray, and his numerous copyists, Ingersoll, Greenleaf, Kirkham, Fisk, Flint, Comly, Alger, and the rest; though they insist on it, that the st of the second person can never be dispensed with, except in the imperative mood and some parts of the subjunctive; are not altogether insensible of that monstrous harshness which their doctrine imposes upon the language. Some of them tell us to avoid this by preferring the auxiliaries dost and didst: as dost burst, for burstest; didst check, for checkedst. This recommendation proceeds on the supposition that dost and didst are smoother syllables than est and edst; which is not true: didst learn is harsher than either learnedst or learntest; and all three of them are intolerable in common discourse. Nor is the "energy, or positiveness," which grammarians ascribe to these auxiliaries, always appropriate. Except in a question, dost and didst, like do, does, and did, are usually signs of emphasis; and therefore unfit to be substituted for the st, est, or edst, of an unemphatic verb. Kirkham, who, as we have seen, graces his Elocution with such unutterable things, as "prob'dst, hurl'dst, arm'dst, want'dst, burn'dst, bark'dst, bubbl'dst, troubbl'dst," attributes the use of the plural for the singular, to a design of avoiding the raggedness of the latter. "In order to avoid the disagreeable harshness of sound, occasioned by the frequent recurrence of the termination est, edst, in the adaptation of our verbs to the nominative thou, a modern innovation which substitutes you for thou, in familiar style, has generally been adopted. This innovation contributes greatly to the harmony of our colloquial style. You was formerly restricted to the plural number; but now it is employed to represent either a singular or a plural noun."—Kirkham's Gram., p. 99. A modern innovation, forsooth! Does not every body know it was current four hundred years ago, or more? Certainly, both ye and you were applied in this manner, to the great, as early as the fourteenth century. Chaucer sometimes used them so, and he died in 1400. Sir T. More uses them so, in a piece dated 1503.
"O dere cosyn, Dan Johan, she sayde,
What eyleth you so rathe to aryse?"—Chaucer.
Shakspeare most commonly uses thou, but he sometimes has you in stead of it. Thus, he makes Portia say to Brutus:
"You suddenly arose, and walk'd about, Musing, and sighing, with your arms across; And when I ask'd you what the matter was, You star'd upon me with ungentle looks."—J. Cæsar, Act ii, Sc. 2.