OBS. 25.—­The writings of the Friends, being mostly of a grave cast, afford but few examples of their customary manner of forming the verb in connexion with the pronoun thou, in familiar discourse.  The following may serve to illustrate it:  “Suitable to the office thou layst claim to.”—­R.  BARCLAY’S Works, Vol. i, p. 27.  “Notwithstanding thou may have sentiments opposite to mine.”—­THOMAS STORY.  “To devote all thou had to his service;”—­“If thou should come;”—­“What thou said;”—­“Thou kindly contributed;”—­“The epistle which thou sent me;”—­“Thou would perhaps allow;”—­“If thou submitted;”—­“Since thou left;”—­“Should thou act;”—­“Thou may be ready;”—­“That thou had met;”—­“That thou had intimated;”—­“Before thou puts” [putst];—­“What thou meets” [meetst];—­“If thou had made;”—­“I observed thou was;”—­“That thou might put thy trust;”—­“Thou had been at my house.”—­JOHN KENDALL.  “Thou may be plundered;”—­“That thou may feel;”—­“Though thou waited long, and sought him;”—­“I hope thou will bear my style;”—­“Thou also knows” [knowst];—­“Thou grew up;”—­“I wish thou would yet take my counsel.”—­STEPHEN CRISP.  “Thou manifested thy tender regard, stretched forth thy delivering hand, and fed and sustained us.”—­SAMUEL FOTHERGILL.  The writer has met with thousands that used the second person singular in conversation, but never with any one that employed, on ordinary occasions, all the regular endings of the solemn style.  The simplification of the second person singular, which, to a greater or less extent, is everywhere adopted by the Friends, and which is here defined and explained, removes from each verb eighteen of these peculiar terminations; and, (if the number of English verbs be, as stated by several grammarians, 8000,) disburdens their familiar dialect of 144,000 of these awkward and useless appendages.[248] This simplification is supported by usage as extensive as the familiar use of the pronoun thou; and is also in accordance with the canons of criticism:  “The first canon on this subject is, All words and phrases which are remarkably harsh and unharmonious, and not absolutely necessary, should be rejected.”  See Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric, B. ii, Ch. ii, Sec. 2, Canon Sixth, p. 181.  See also, in the same work, (B. hi, Ch. iv, Sec. 2d,) an express defence of “those elisions whereby the sound is improved;” especially of the suppression of the “feeble vowel in the last syllable of the preterits of our regular verbs;” and of “such abbreviations” as “the eagerness of conveying one’s sentiments, the rapidity and ease of utterance, necessarily produce, in the dialect of conversation.”—­Pages 426 and 427.  Lord Kames says, “That the English tongue, originally harsh, is at present much softened by dropping many redundant consonants, is undoubtedly true; that it is not capable of being further mellowed without suffering in its force and energy, will scarce be thought by any one who possesses an ear.”—­Elements of Criticism, Vol. ii, p. 12.