“Come, thou pure Light,—­which first in Eden glowed.
    And threw thy splendor round man’s calm abode.”—­Alonzo Lewis.

OBS. 14.—­That which has passed away from familiar practice, may still be right in the solemn style, and may there remain till it becomes obsolete.  But no obsolescent termination has ever yet been recalled into the popular service.  This is as true in other languages as in our own:  “In almost every word of the Greek,” says a learned author, “we meet with contractions and abbreviations; but, I believe, the flexions of no language allow of extension or amplification.  In our own we may write sleeped or slept, as the metre of a line or the rhythm of a period may require; but by no license may we write sleepeed.”—­Knight, on the Greek Alphabet, 4to, p. 107.  But, if after contracting sleeped into slept, we add an est and make sleptest, is there not here an extension of the word from one syllable to two?  Is there not an amplification that is at once novel, disagreeable, unauthorized, and unnecessary?  Nay, even in the regular and established change, as of loved to lovedst, is there not a syllabic increase, which is unpleasant to the ear, and unsuited to familiar speech?  Now, to what extent do these questions apply to the verbs in our language?  Lindley Murray, it is presumed, had no conception of that extent; or of the weight of the objection which is implied in the second.  With respect to a vast number of our most common verbs, he himself never knew, nor does the greatest grammarian now living know, in what way he ought to form the simple past tense in the second person singular, otherwise than by the mere uninflected preterit with the pronoun thou.  Is thou sleepedst or thou sleptest, thou leavedst or thou leftest, thou feeledst or thou feltest, thou dealedst or thou dealtest, thou tossedst or thou tostest, thou losedst or thou lostest, thou payedst or thou paidest, thou layedst or thou laidest, better English than thou slept, thou left, thou felt, thou dealt, thou tossed, thou lost, thou paid, thou laid? And, if so, of the two forms in each instance, which is the right one? and why?  The Bible has “saidst” and “layedst;” Dr. Alexander Murray, “laid’st” and “laidest!” Since the inflection of our preterits has never been orderly, and is now decaying and waxing old, shall we labour to recall what is so nearly ready to vanish away?

   “Tremendous Sea! what time thou lifted up
    Thy waves on high, and with thy winds and storms
    Strange pastime took, and shook thy mighty sides
    Indignantly, the pride of navies fell.”—­Pollok, B. vii, l. 611.