."
--_Pollok_, B. ii, l. 5.
"'So I believ'd.'--No, Abel! to thy grief,
So thou _relinquish'd_ all that was belief."
--_Crabbe, Borough_, p. 279.
OBS. 27.--L. Murray, and his numerous copyists, Ingersoll, Greenleaf,
Kirkham, Fisk, Flint, Comly, Alger, and the rest; though they insist on it,
that the _st_ of the second person can never be dispensed with, except in
the imperative mood and some parts of the subjunctive; are not altogether
insensible of that monstrous harshness which their doctrine imposes upon
the language. Some of them tell us to avoid this by preferring the
auxiliaries _dost_ and _didst_: as _dost burst_, for _burstest; didst
check_, for _checkedst._ This recommendation proceeds on the supposition
that _dost_ and _didst_ are smoother syllables than _est_ and _edst_; which
is not true: _didst learn_ is harsher than either _learnedst_ or
_learntest_; and all three of them are intolerable in common discourse. Nor
is the "_energy_, or _positiveness_," which grammarians ascribe to these
auxiliaries, always appropriate. Except in a question, _dost_ and _didst_,
like _do, does_, and _did_, are usually signs of _emphasis_; and therefore
unfit to be substituted for the _st, est_, or _edst_, of an unemphatic
verb. Kirkham, who, as we have seen, graces his Elocution with such
unutterable things, as "_prob'dst, hurl'dst, arm'dst, want'dst, burn'dst,
bark'dst, bubbl'dst, troubbl'dst_," attributes the use of the plural for
the singular, to a design of avoiding the raggedness of the latter. "In
order to avoid the disagreeable harshness of sound, occasioned by the
frequent recurrence of the termination _est, edst_, in the adaptation of
our verbs to the nominative _thou_, a _modern innovation_ which substitutes
_you_ for _thou_, in familiar style, has generally been adopted. This
innovation contributes greatly to the harmony of our colloquial style.
_You_ was formerly restricted to the plural number; but now it is employed
to represent either a singular or a plural noun."--_Kirkham's Gram._, p.
99. A modern innovation, forsooth! Does not every body know it was current
four hundred years ago, or more? Certainly, both _ye_ and _you_ were
applied in this manner, to the great, as early as the fourteenth century.
Chaucer sometimes used them so, and he died in 1400. Sir T. More uses them
so, in a piece dated 1503.
"O dere cosyn, Dan Johan, she sayde,
What eyleth _you_ so rathe to aryse?"--_C
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