termination eth, than do people of fashion; nor do they, in using the pronoun thou, or their improper nominative thee, ordinarily inflect with st or est the preterits or the auxiliaries of the accompanying verbs, as is done in the solemn style.  Indeed, to use the solemn style familiarly, would be, to turn it into burlesque; as when Peter Pindar “telleth what he troweth.” [213] And let those who think with Murray, that our present version of the Scriptures is the best standard of English grammar,[214] remember that in it they have no warrant for substituting s or es for the old termination eth, any more than for ceasing to use the solemn style of the second person familiarly.  That version was good in its day, yet it shows but very imperfectly what the English language now is.  Can we consistently take for our present standard, a style which does not allow us to use you in the nominative case, or its for the possessive?  And again, is not a simplification of the verb as necessary and proper in the familiar use of the second person singular, as in that of the third?  This latter question I shall discuss in a future chapter.

OBS. 22.—­The use of the pronoun ye in the nominative case, is now mostly confined to the solemn style;[215] but the use of it in the objective, which is disallowed in the solemn style, and nowhere approved by our grammarians, is nevertheless common when no emphasis falls upon the word:  as,

   “When you’re unmarried, never load ye
    With jewels; they may incommode ye.”—­Dr. King, p. 384.

Upon this point, Dr. Lowth observes, “Some writers have used ye as the objective case plural of the pronoun of the second person, very improperly and ungrammatically; [as,]

    ‘The more shame for ye; holy men I thought ye.’  Shak.  Hen.  VIII.

    ’But tyrants dread ye, lest your just decree
    Transfer the pow’r, and set the people free.’  Prior.

    ‘His wrath, which one day will destroy ye both.’  Milt.  P. L. ii. 734.

Milton uses the same manner of expression in a few other places of his Paradise Lost, and more frequently in his [smaller] poems, It may, perhaps, be allowed in the comic and burlesque style, which often imitates a vulgar and incorrect pronunciation; but in the serious and solemn style, no authority is sufficient to justify so manifest a solecism.”—­Lowth’s Gram., p. 22.  Churchill copies this remark, and adds; “Dryden has you as the nominative, and ye as the objective, in the same passage:[216]

    ’What gain you, by forbidding it to tease ye? 
    It now can neither trouble ye, nor please ye.’