haucer_.

Shakspeare most commonly uses _thou_, but he sometimes has _you_ in stead
of it. Thus, he makes Portia say to Brutus:

"_You_ suddenly arose, and walk'd about,
Musing, and sighing, with _your_ arms across;
And when I ask'd _you_ what the matter was,
_You_ star'd upon me with ungentle looks."--_J. Caesar_, Act ii, Sc. 2.

OBS. 28.--"There is a natural tendency in all languages to throw out the
rugged parts which improper consonants produce, and to preserve those which
are melodious and agreeable to the ear."--_Gardiner's Music of Nature_, p.
29. "The English tongue, so remarkable for its grammatical simplicity, is
loaded with a great variety of dull unmeaning terminations. Mr. Sheridan
attributes this defect, to an utter inattention to what is easy to the
organs of speech and agreeable to the ear; and further adds, that, 'the
French having been adopted as the language of the court, no notice was
taken, of the spelling or pronunciation of our words, until the reign of
queen Anne.' So little was spelling attended to in the time of Elizabeth,
that Dr. Johnson informs us, that on referring to Shakspeare's will, to
determine how his name was spelt, he was found to have written it himself
[in] no _less_ [fewer] than three different ways."--_Ib._, p. 477. In old
books, our participial or verbal termination _ed_, is found written in
about a dozen different ways; as, _ed, de, d, t, id, it, yd, yt, ede, od,
ud_. For _est_ and _eth_, we find sometimes the consonants only; sometimes,
_ist_ or _yst, ith_ or _yth_; sometimes, for the latter, _oth_ or _ath_;
and sometimes the ending was omitted altogether. In early times also the
_th_ was an ending for verbs of the third person plural, as well as for
those of the third person singular;[249] and, in the imperative mood, it
was applied to the second person, both singular and plural: as,

"_Demith_ thyself, that demist other's dede;
And trouthe the shall deliver, it's no drede."--_Chaucer_.

OBS. 29.--It must be obvious to every one who has much acquaintance with
the history of our language, that this part of its grammar has always been
quite as unsettled as it is now; and, however we may wish to establish its
principles, it is idle to teach for absolute certainty that which every
man's knowledge may confute. Let those who desire to see our forms of
conjugation as sure as those of other tongues, study to exemplify in their
own practice what tends to uni