The Auxiliary Verbs, too, are very useful when a peculiar emphasis is required: as, “I shall give you a drubbing!” “Will you?” “I know a trick worth two of that.” “Do you, though?” “It might,” as the Quaker said to the Yankee, who wanted to know what his name might be; “it might be Beelzebub, but it is not.”
Now we may as well say what we have to say about the conjugation of regular verbs active.
SECTION VI.
THE CONJUGATION OF REGULAR VERBS ACTIVE.
Regular Verbs Active are known by their forming their imperfect tense of the indicative mood, and their perfect participle, by adding to the verb ed, or d only when the verb ends in e: as,
| PRESENT. | IMPERFECT. | PERF. PARTICIP. | ||
| I reckon. | I reckoned. | Reckoned. | ||
| I realise. | I realised. | Realised. |
Here should follow the conjugation of the regular active verb, or, as a Cockney Romeo would say, the regular torturing verb, To Love; but we have already assigned a good reason for omitting it; besides which we have to say, that we think it a verb highly unfit for conjugation by youth, as it tends to put ideas into their heads which they would otherwise never have thought of; and it is moreover our opinion, that several of our most gifted poets may, with reason, have attributed those unfortunate attachments which, though formed in early youth, served to embitter their whole lives, to the poison which they thus sucked in with the milk, so to speak, of their Mother Tongue, the Grammar.
Verbs Passive are said to be regular, when their perfect participle is formed by the addition of d, or ed to the verb: as, from the verb “To bless,” is formed the passive, “I am blessed, I was blessed, I shall be blessed,” &c.