f this principle were
generally adopted, the number of our regular verbs would be greatly
diminished, and irregularities would be indefinitely increased. What
confusion the practice must make in the language, especially when we come
to inflect this part of the verb with _st_ or _est_, has already been
suggested. Yet an ingenious and learned writer, an able contributor to the
Philological Museum, published at Cambridge, England, in 1832; tracing the
history of this class of derivatives, and finding that after the _ed_ was
contracted in pronunciation, several eminent writers, as Spenser, Milton,
and others, adopted in most instances a contracted form of orthography; has
seriously endeavoured to bring us back to their practice. From these
authors, he cites an abundance of such contractions as the following: 1.
"Stowd, hewd, subdewd, joyd, cald, expeld, compeld, spoild, kild, seemd,
benumbd, armd, redeemd, staind, shund, paynd, stird, appeard, perceivd,
resolvd, obeyd, equald, foyld, hurld, ruind, joynd, scatterd, witherd," and
others ending in _d_. 2. "Clapt, whipt, worshipt, lopt, stopt, stampt,
pickt, knockt, linkt, puft, stuft, hist, kist, abasht, brusht, astonisht,
vanquisht, confest, talkt, twicht," and many others ending in _t_. This
scheme divides our regular verbs into three classes; leaving but very few
of them to be written as they now are. It proceeds upon the principle of
accommodating our orthography to the familiar, rather than to the solemn
pronunciation of the language. "This," as Dr. Johnson observes, "is to
measure by a shadow." It is, whatever show of learning or authority may
support it, a pernicious innovation. The critic says, "I have not ventured
to follow the example of Spenser and Milton throughout, but have merely
attempted to revive the old form of the preterit in _t_."--_Phil. Museum_,
Vol. i, p. 663. "We ought not however to stop here," he thinks; and
suggests that it would be no small improvement, "to write _leveld_ for
_levelled, enameld_ for _enamelled, reformd_ for _reformed_," &c.

OBS. 20.--If the multiplication of irregular preterits, as above described,
is a grammatical error of great magnitude; the forcing of our old and
well-known irregular verbs into regular forms that are seldom if ever used,
is an opposite error nearly as great. And, in either case, there is the
same embarrassment respecting the formation of the second person. Thus
_Cobbett_, in his English Grammar in a Series of Let