ive, and _you_ for the
objective, plural. Yet, before that version was made, fashionable usage had
commonly substituted _you_ for _ye_, making the former word nominative as
well as objective, and applying it to one hearer as well as to more. And
subsequently, as it appears, the religious sect that entertained a scruple
about applying _you_ to an individual, fell for the most part into an
ungrammatical practice of putting _thee_ for _thou_; making, in like
manner, the objective pronoun to be both nominative and objective; or, at
least, using it very commonly so in their conversation. Their manner of
speaking, however, was not--or, certainly, with the present generation of
their successors, _is_ not--as some grammarians represent it to be, that
formal and antique phraseology which we call _the solemn style_.[212] They
make no more use of the pronoun _ye_, or of the verbal termination _eth_,
than do people of fashion; nor do they, in using the pronoun _thou_, or
their improper nominative _thee_, ordinarily inflect with _st_ or _est_ the
preterits or the auxiliaries of the accompanying verbs, as is done in the
solemn style. Indeed, to use the solemn style familiarly, would be, to turn
it into burlesque; as when Peter Pindar "_telleth what he troweth._" [213]
And let those who think with Murray, that our present version of the
Scriptures _is the best standard_ of English grammar,[214] remember that in
it they have no warrant for substituting _s_ or _es_ for the old
termination _eth_, any more than for ceasing to use the solemn style of the
second person familiarly. That version was good in its day, yet it shows
but very imperfectly what the English language now is. Can we consistently
take for our present standard, a style which does not allow us to use _you_
in the nominative case, or _its_ for the possessive? And again, is not a
simplification of the verb as necessary and proper in the familiar use of
the second person singular, as in that of the third? This latter question I
shall discuss in a future chapter.

OBS. 22.--The use of the pronoun _ye_ in the nominative case, is now mostly
confined to the solemn style;[215] but the use of it in the objective,
which is disallowed in the solemn style, and nowhere approved by our
grammarians, is nevertheless _common_ when no emphasis falls upon the
word: as,

"When you're unmarried, never load _ye_
With jewels; they may incommode _ye_."--_Dr. King_, p. 384.

Upon this po