"Such words as are used in the Bible, and not
used in common books, are called _obsolete!_"--P. 146. Among these, he
reckons all the distinctive forms of the second person singular, and all
the "peculiarities" which "constitute what is commonly called the _Solemn
Style_."--_Ib._, p. 148. Yet, with no great consistency, he adds: "This
style _is always used_ in prayer, and _is frequently used_ in
poetry."--_Ibid._ Joab Brace, Jnr., may be supposed to have the same notion
of what is obsolete: for he too has perverted all Lennie's examples of the
verb, as Smith and Adams did Murray's.

[240] Coar gives _durst_ in the "Indicative mood," thus: "I durst, _thou
durst_, he durst;" &c.--_Coar's E. Gram._, p. 115. But when he comes to
_wist_, he does not know what the second person singular should be, and so
he leaves it out: "I wist, ------, he wist; we wist, ye wist, they
wist."--_Coar's E. Gram._, p. 116.

[241] Dr. Latham, who, oftener perhaps than any other modern writer,
corrupts the grammar of our language by efforts to revive in it things
really and deservedly obsolete, most strangely avers that "The words _thou_
and _thee_ are, except in the mouths of Quakers, obsolete. The plural
forms, _ye_ and _you_, have replaced them."--_Hand-Book_, p. 284. Ignoring
also any current or "vital" process of forming English verbs in the second
person singular, he gravely tells us that the old form, as "_callest_"
(which is still the true form for the solemn style,) "is becoming
obsolete."--_Ib._, p. 210. "In phrases like _you are speaking_, &c.," says
he rightlier, "even when applied to a single individual, _the idea is
really plural_; in other words, the courtesy consists in treating _one_
person as _more than one_, and addressing him as such, rather than in using
a plural form in a singular sense. It is certain that, grammatically
considered, _you=thou_ is a plural, since the verb with which it agrees is
plural."--_Ib._, p. 163. If these things be so, the English Language owes
much to the scrupulous conservatism of the Quakers; for, had their courtesy
consented to the grammar of the fashionables, the singular number would now
have had but two persons!

[242] For the substitution of _you_ for _thou_, our grammarians assign
various causes. That which is most commonly given in modern books, is
certainly not the original one, because it concerns no other language than
ours: "In order _to avoid the unpleasant formality_ which accompanies