ish_ 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 _ed_ is sounded like _t_, "admit the change of _ed_ into
_t_; as, _snacht, checkt, snapt, mixt_, dropping also one of the double
letters, _dwelt, past_."--_Lowth's Gram._, p. 46. I