lete, is no longer fit to be
imitated even in the solemn style; and what was never good English, is no
more to be respected in that style, than in any other. Thus: "Art not thou
that Egyptian, _which_ before these days _madest_ an uproar, and _leddest_
out into the wilderness four thousand men that were murderers?"--_Acts_,
xxi, 38. Here, (I think,) the version ought to be, "Art not thou that
Egyptian, _who_ a while ago _made_ an uproar, and _led_ out into the
wilderness four thousand men, that were murderers?" If so, there is in this
no occasion to make a difference between the solemn and the familiar style.
But what is the familiar form of expression for the texts cited before? The
fashionable will say, it is this: "_You went_ in to men uncircumcised, and
_did eat_ with them."--"I write these things to _you_, that _you may know_
how _you ought_ to behave _yourself_ in the house of God." But this is not
_literally_ of the singular number: it is no more singular, than _vos_ in
Latin, or _vous_ in French, or _we_ used for _I_ in English, is singular.
And if there remains to us any other form, that is both singular and
grammatical, it is unquestionably the following: "_Thou went_ in to men
uncircumcised, and _did eat_ with them."--"I write these things to _thee_,
that thou _may know_ how _thou ought_ to behave _thyself_ in the house of
God." The acknowledged doctrine of all the teachers of English grammar,
that the inflection of our auxiliaries and preterits by _st_ or _est_ is
peculiar to "the solemn style," leaves us no other alternative, than either
to grant the propriety of here dropping the suffix for the familiar style,
or to rob our language of any familiar use of the pronoun _thou_ forever.
Who, then, are here the neologists, the innovators, the impairers of the
language? And which is the greater _innovation_, merely to drop, on
familiar occasions, or _when it suits our style_, one obsolescent verbal
termination,--a termination often dropped _of old_ as well as now,--or to
strike from the conjugations of all our verbs one sixth part of their
entire scheme?[241]

"O mother myn, that cleaped _were_ Argyue,
Wo worth that day that thou me _bare_ on lyue."--_Chaucer_.

OBS. 12.--The grammatical propriety of distinguishing from the solemn style
both of the forms presented above, must be evident to every one who
considers with candour the reasons, analogies, and authorities, for this
distinction. The support of th