The Grammar of English Grammars, Goold Brown [ebook reader for manga txt] 📗

will find it has either simplified or entirely dropped several of its ancient terminations; and that the st or est of the second person singular, never was adopted in any thing like the extent to which our modern grammarians have attempted to impose it. "Thus becoming unused to inflections, we lost the perception of their meaning and nature."—Philological Museum, i, 669. "You cannot make a whole people all at once talk in a different tongue from that which it has been used to talk in: you cannot force it to unlearn the words it has learnt from its fathers, in order to learn a set of newfangled words out of [a grammar or] a dictionary."—Ib., i, 650. Nor can you, in this instance, restrain our poets from transgressing the doctrine of Lowth and Murray:—

   "Come, thou pure Light,—which first in Eden glowed.
    And threw thy splendor round man's calm abode."—Alonzo Lewis.

OBS. 14.—That which has passed away from familiar practice, may still be right in the solemn style, and may there remain till it becomes obsolete. But no obsolescent termination has ever yet been recalled into the popular service. This is as true in other languages as in our own: "In almost every word of the Greek," says a learned author, "we meet with contractions and abbreviations; but, I believe, the flexions of no language allow of extension or amplification. In our own we may write sleeped or slept, as the metre of a line or the rhythm of a period may require; but by no license may we write sleepeed."—Knight, on the Greek Alphabet, 4to, p. 107. But, if after contracting sleeped into slept, we add an est and make sleptest, is there not here an extension of the word from one syllable to two? Is there not an amplification that is at once novel, disagreeable, unauthorized, and unnecessary? Nay, even in the regular and established change, as of loved to lovedst, is there not a syllabic increase, which is unpleasant to the ear, and unsuited to familiar speech? Now, to what extent do these questions apply to the verbs in our language? Lindley Murray, it is presumed, had no conception of that extent; or of the weight of the objection which is implied in the second. With respect to a vast number of our most common verbs, he himself never knew, nor does the greatest grammarian now living know, in what way he ought to form the simple past tense in the second person singular, otherwise than by the mere uninflected preterit with the pronoun thou. Is thou sleepedst or thou sleptest, thou leavedst or thou leftest, thou feeledst or thou feltest, thou dealedst or thou dealtest, thou tossedst or thou tostest, thou losedst or thou lostest, thou payedst or thou paidest, thou layedst or thou laidest, better English than thou slept, thou left, thou felt, thou dealt, thou tossed, thou lost, thou paid, thou laid? And, if so, of the two forms in each instance, which is the right one? and why? The Bible has "saidst" and "layedst;" Dr. Alexander Murray, "laid'st" and "laidest!" Since the inflection of our preterits has never been orderly, and is now decaying and waxing old, shall we labour to recall what is so nearly ready to vanish away?

   "Tremendous Sea! what time thou lifted up
    Thy waves on high, and with thy winds and storms
    Strange pastime took, and shook thy mighty sides
    Indignantly, the pride of navies fell."—Pollok, B. vii, l. 611.

OBS. 15.—Whatever difficulty there is in ascertaining the true form of the preterit itself, not only remains, but is augmented, when st or est is to be added for the second person of it. For, since we use sometimes one and sometimes the other of these endings; (as, said_st_, saw_est_, bid_st_, knew_est_, loved_st_, went_est_;) there is yet need of some rule to show which we ought to prefer. The variable formation or orthography of verbs in the simple past tense, has always been one of the greatest difficulties that the learners of our language have had to encounter. At present, there is a strong tendency to terminate as many as we can of them in ed, which is the only regular ending. The pronunciation of this ending, however, is at least threefold; as in remembered, repented, relinquished. Here the added sounds are, first d, then ed, then t; and the effect of adding st, whenever the ed is sounded like t, will certainly be a perversion of what is established as the true pronunciation of the language. For the solemn and the familiar pronunciation of ed unquestionably differ. The present tendency to a regular orthography, ought rather to be encouraged than thwarted; but the preferring of mixed to mixt, whipped to whipt, worked to wrought, kneeled to knelt, and so forth, does not make mixedst, whippedst, workedst, kneeledst, and the like, any more fit for modern English, than are mixtest, whiptest, wroughtest, kneltest, burntest, dweltest, heldest, giltest, and many more of the like stamp. And what can be more absurd than for a grammarian to insist upon forming a great parcel of these strange and crabbed words for which he can quote no good authority? Nothing; except it be for a poet or a rhetorician to huddle together great parcels of consonants which no mortal man can utter,[244] (as lov'dst, lurk'dst, shrugg'dst,) and call them "words." Example: "The clump of subtonick and atonick elements at the termination of such words as the following, is frequently, to the no small injury of articulation, particularly slighted: couldst, wouldst, hadst, prob'st, prob'dst, hurl'st, hurl'dst, arm'st, arm'dst, want'st, want'dst, burn'st, burn'dst, bark'st, bark'dst, bubbl'st, bubbl'dst, troubbl'st, troubbl'dst."—Kirkham's Elocution, p. 42. The word trouble may receive the additional sound of st, but this gentleman does not here spell so accurately as a great author should. Nor did they who penned the following lines, write here as poets should:—

   "Of old thou build'st thy throne on righteousness."
        —Pollok's C. of T., B. vi, l. 638.

    "For though thou work'dst my mother's ill."
        —Byron's Parasina.

    "Thou thyself doat'dst on womankind, admiring."
        —Milton's P. R., B. ii, l. 175.

    "But he, the sev'nth from thee, whom thou beheldst."
        —Id., P. L., B. xi, l. 700.

    "Shall build a wondrous ark, as thou beheldst."
        —Id., ib., B. xi, l. 819.

    "Thou, who inform'd'st this clay with active fire!"
        —Savage's Poems, p. 247.

    "Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me."
        —Shak., Coriol., Act iii.

    "This cloth thou dipp'dst in blood of my sweet boy."
        —Id., Henry VI, P. i.

    "Great Queen of arms, whose favour Tydeus won;
    As thou defend'st the sire, defend the son."
        —Pope, Iliad, B. x, l. 337.

OBS. 16.—Dr. Lowth, whose popular little Grammar was written in or about 1758, made no scruple to hem up both the poets and the Friends at once, by a criticism which I must needs consider more dogmatical than true; and which, from the suppression of what is least objectionable in it, has become, her hands, the source of still greater errors: "Thou in the polite, and even in the familiar style, is disused, and the plural you is employed instead of it; we say, you have, not thou hast. Though in this case, we apply you to a single person, yet the verb too must agree with it in the plural number; it must necessarily be, you have, not you hast. You was is an enormous solecism,[245] and yet authors of the first rank have inadvertently fallen into it. * * * On the contrary, the solemn style admits not of you for a single person. This hath led Mr. Pope into a great impropriety in the beginning of his Messiah:—

   '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.

OBS. 19.—According to Dr. Lowth, as well as Coar and some others, those preterits in which