irregularity which exists in the personal terminations of
verbs, some of the best early writers using them _promiscuously_, some
using them _uniformly_, and others making _no use_ of them; and really
_they are of no use_ but to puzzle children and foreigners, perplex poets,
and furnish an awkward dialect to that exemplary sect of Christians, who in
every thing else study simplicity."--_Fowle's True E. Gram._, Part II, p.
26. Wells, a still later writer, gives this unsafe rule: "_When the past
tense is a monosyllable not ending in a single vowel_, the second person
singular of the solemn style is generally formed by the addition of _est_;
as _heardest, fleddest, tookest_. _Hadst, wast, saidst, and didst_, are
exceptions."--_Wells's School Gram._, 1st Ed., p. 106; 3d Ed., p. 110;
113th Ed., p. 115. Now the termination _d_ or _ed_ commonly adds no
syllable; so that the regular past tense of any monosyllabic verb is, with
a few exceptions, a monosyllable still; as, _freed, feed, loved, feared,
planned, turned_: and how would these sound with _est_ added, which Lowth,
Hiley, Churchill, and some others erroneously claim as having pertained to
such preterits anciently? Again, if _heard_ is a contraction of _heared_,
and _fled_, of _fleed_, as seems probable; then are _heardst_ and
_fledtst_, which are sometimes used, more regular than _heardest,
fleddest_: so of many other preterits.

[251] Chaucer appears not to have inflected this word in the second person:
"Also ryght as _thou were_ ensample of moche folde errour, righte so thou
must be ensample of manifold correction."--_Testament of Love_. "Rennin and
crie as _thou were_ wode."--_House of Fame_. So others: "I wolde _thou
were_ cold or hoot."--WICKLIFFE'S VERSION OF THE APOCALYPSE. "I wolde _thou
were_ cold or hote."--VERSION OF EDWARD VI: _Tooke_, Vol. ii, p. 270. See
Rev., iii, 15: "I would thou _wert_ cold or hot."--COMMON VERSION.

[252] See evidence of the _antiquity_ of this practice, in the examples
under the twenty-third observation above. According to Churchill, it has
had some local continuance even to the present time. For, in a remark upon
Lowth's contractions, _lov'th, turn'th_, this author says, "These are
_still in use in some country places_, the third person singular of verbs
in general being formed by the addition of the sound _th_ simply, not
making an additional syllable."--_Churchill's Gram._, p. 255 So the _eth_
in the following example adds no syllab