, 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 Engl