beor.”—­Lucae, i, 15.  “He schal not drinke wyn ne sydyr.”—­Wickliffe.  “And shall drink neither wine nor strong drink.”—­Luke, i, 15.  “And nu thu bist suwigende. and thu sprecan ne miht oth thone daeg the thas thing gewurthath. fortham thu minum wordum ne gelyfdest. tha beoth on hyra timan gefyllede.”—­Lucae, i, 20.  “And lo, thou schalt be doumbe, and thou schalt not mowe speke, til into the day in which these thingis schulen be don, for thou hast not beleved to my wordis, whiche schulen be fulfild in her tyme.”—­Wickliffe.  “And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that[247] these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.”—­Luke, i, 20.

   “In chaungyng of her course, the chaunge shewth this,
    Vp startth a knaue, and downe there falth a knight.”
        —­Sir Thomas More.

OBS. 24.—­The corollary towards which the foregoing observations are directed, is this.  As most of the peculiar terminations by which the second person singular is properly distinguished in the solemn style, are not only difficult of utterance, but are quaint and formal in conversation; the preterits and auxiliaries of our verbs are seldom varied in familiar discourse, and the present is generally simplified by contraction, or by the adding of st without increase of syllables.  A distinction between the solemn and the familiar style has long been admitted, in the pronunciation of the termination ed, and in the ending of the verb in the third person singular; and it is evidently according to good taste and the best usage, to admit such a distinction in the second person singular.  In the familiar use of the second person singular, the verb is usually varied only in the present tense of the indicative mood, and in the auxiliary hast of the perfect.  This method of varying the verb renders the second person singular analogous to the third, and accords with the practice of the most intelligent of those who retain the common use of this distinctive and consistent mode of address.  It disencumbers their familiar dialect of a multitude of harsh and useless terminations, which serve only, when uttered, to give an uncouth prominency to words not often emphatic; and, without impairing the strength or perspicuity of the language, increases its harmony, and reduces the form of the verb in the second person singular nearly to the same simplicity as in the other persons and numbers.  It may serve also, in some instances, to justify the poets, in those abbreviations for which they have been so unreasonably censured by Lowth, Murray, and some other grammarians:  as,

   “And thou their natures knowst, and gave them names,
    Needless to thee repeated.”—­Milton, P. L., Book vii, line 494.