uncircumcised, and did eat with them.”—­“I write these things to thee, that thou may know how thou ought to behave thyself in the house of God.”  The acknowledged doctrine of all the teachers of English grammar, that the inflection of our auxiliaries and preterits by st or est is peculiar to “the solemn style,” leaves us no other alternative, than either to grant the propriety of here dropping the suffix for the familiar style, or to rob our language of any familiar use of the pronoun thou forever.  Who, then, are here the neologists, the innovators, the impairers of the language?  And which is the greater innovation, merely to drop, on familiar occasions, or when it suits our style, one obsolescent verbal termination,—­a termination often dropped of old as well as now,—­or to strike from the conjugations of all our verbs one sixth part of their entire scheme?[241]

   “O mother myn, that cleaped were Argyue,
    Wo worth that day that thou me bare on lyue.”—­Chaucer.

OBS. 12.—­The grammatical propriety of distinguishing from the solemn style both of the forms presented above, must be evident to every one who considers with candour the reasons, analogies, and authorities, for this distinction.  The support of the latter is very far from resting solely on the practice of a particular sect; though this, if they would forbear to corrupt the pronoun while they simplify the verb, would deserve much more consideration than has ever been allowed it.  Which of these modes of address is the more grammatical, it is useless to dispute; since fashion rules the one, and a scruple of conscience is sometimes alleged for the other.  A candid critic will consequently allow all to take their choice.  It is enough for him, if he can demonstrate to the candid inquirer, what phraseology is in any view allowable, and what is for any good reason reprehensible.  That the use of the plural for the singular is ungrammatical, it is neither discreet nor available to affirm; yet, surely, it did not originate in any regard to grammar rules.  Murray the schoolmaster, whose English Grammar appeared some years before that of Lindley Murray, speaks of it as follows:  “Thou, the second person singular, though strictly grammatical, is seldom used, except in addresses to God, in poetry, and by the people called Quakers.  In all other cases, a fondness for foreign manners,[242] and the power of custom, have given a sanction to the use of you, for the second person singular, though contrary to grammar,[243] and attended with this particular inconveniency, that a plural verb must be used to agree with the pronoun in number, and both applied to a single person; as, you are, or you were,—­not you wast, or you was.”—­Third Edition, Lond., 1793, p. 34.  This author everywhere exhibits the auxiliaries, mayst, mightst,