or learntest; and all three of them are intolerable in common discourse.  Nor is the “energy, or positiveness,” which grammarians ascribe to these auxiliaries, always appropriate.  Except in a question, dost and didst, like do, does, and did, are usually signs of emphasis; and therefore unfit to be substituted for the st, est, or edst, of an unemphatic verb.  Kirkham, who, as we have seen, graces his Elocution with such unutterable things, as “prob’dst, hurl’dst, arm’dst, want’dst, burn’dst, bark’dst, bubbl’dst, troubbl’dst,” attributes the use of the plural for the singular, to a design of avoiding the raggedness of the latter.  “In order to avoid the disagreeable harshness of sound, occasioned by the frequent recurrence of the termination est, edst, in the adaptation of our verbs to the nominative thou, a modern innovation which substitutes you for thou, in familiar style, has generally been adopted.  This innovation contributes greatly to the harmony of our colloquial style. You was formerly restricted to the plural number; but now it is employed to represent either a singular or a plural noun.”—­Kirkham’s Gram., p. 99.  A modern innovation, forsooth!  Does not every body know it was current four hundred years ago, or more?  Certainly, both ye and you were applied in this manner, to the great, as early as the fourteenth century.  Chaucer sometimes used them so, and he died in 1400.  Sir T. More uses them so, in a piece dated 1503.

   “O dere cosyn, Dan Johan, she sayde,
    What eyleth you so rathe to aryse?”—­Chaucer.

Shakspeare most commonly uses thou, but he sometimes has you in stead of it.  Thus, he makes Portia say to Brutus: 

“You suddenly arose, and walk’d about, Musing, and sighing, with your arms across; And when I ask’d you what the matter was, You star’d upon me with ungentle looks.”—­J.  Caesar, Act ii, Sc. 2.

OBS. 28.—­“There is a natural tendency in all languages to throw out the rugged parts which improper consonants produce, and to preserve those which are melodious and agreeable to the ear.”—­Gardiner’s Music of Nature, p. 29.  “The English tongue, so remarkable for its grammatical simplicity, is loaded with a great variety of dull unmeaning terminations.  Mr. Sheridan attributes this defect, to an utter inattention to what is easy to the organs of speech and agreeable to the ear; and further adds, that, ’the French having been adopted as the language of the court, no notice was taken, of the spelling or pronunciation of our words, until the reign of queen Anne.’  So little was spelling attended to in the time of Elizabeth, that Dr. Johnson informs us, that on referring to Shakspeare’s will, to determine how his name was spelt, he was found to have written it himself [in] no less