consent, are now of the solemn style; and, consequently, are really good English in no other.  For nobody, I suppose, will yet pretend that the inflection of our preterits and auxiliaries by st or est, is entirely obsolete;[239] and surely no person of any literary taste ever uses the foregoing forms familiarly.  The termination est, however, has in some instances become obsolete; or has faded into st or t, even in the solemn style.  Thus, (if indeed, such forms ever were in good use,) diddest has become didst; havest, hast; haddest, hadst; shallest, shalt; willest, wilt; and cannest, canst.  Mayest, mightest, couldest, wouldest, and shouldest, are occasionally found in books not ancient; but mayst, mightst, couldst, wouldst, and shouldst, are abundantly more common, and all are peculiar to the solemn style. Must, burst, durst, thrust, blest, curst, past, lost, list, crept, kept, girt, built, felt, dwelt, left, bereft, and many other verbs of similar endings, are seldom, if ever, found encumbered with an additional est.  For the rule which requires this ending, has always had many exceptions that have not been noticed by grammarians.[240] Thus Shakspeare wrote even in the present tense, “Do as thou list,” and not “Do as thou listest.”  Possibly, however, list may here be reckoned of the subjunctive mood; but the following example from Byron is certainly in the indicative:—­

   “And thou, who never yet of human wrong
    Lost the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis!”—­Harold, C. iv, st. 132.

OBS. 11.—­Any phraseology that is really obsolete, is no longer fit to be imitated even in the solemn style; and what was never good English, is no more to be respected in that style, than in any other.  Thus:  “Art not thou that Egyptian, which before these days madest an uproar, and leddest out into the wilderness four thousand men that were murderers?”—­Acts, xxi, 38.  Here, (I think,) the version ought to be, “Art not thou that Egyptian, who a while ago made an uproar, and led out into the wilderness four thousand men, that were murderers?” If so, there is in this no occasion to make a difference between the solemn and the familiar style.  But what is the familiar form of expression for the texts cited before?  The fashionable will say, it is this:  “You went in to men uncircumcised, and did eat with them.”—­“I write these things to you, that you may know how you ought to behave yourself in the house of God.”  But this is not literally of the singular number:  it is no more singular, than vos in Latin, or vous in French, or we used for I in English, is singular.  And if there remains to us any other form, that is both singular and grammatical, it is unquestionably the following:  “Thou went in to men