“Thou following cry’dst aloud, Return, fair Eve;
    Whom fly’st thou? whom thou fly’st, of him thou art.”
        —­P.  L., B. iv, l. 481.

This usage, though it may have been of some advantage as an index to the pronunciation of the words, is a palpable departure from the common rule for spelling such derivatives.  That rule is, “The final y of a primitive word, when preceded by a consonant, is changed into i before an additional termination.”  The works of the British poets, except those of the present century, abound with contractions like the foregoing; but late authors, or their printers, have returned to the rule; and the former practice is wearing out and becoming obsolete.  Of regular verbs that end in ay, ey, or oy, we have more than half a hundred; all of which usually retain the y in their derivatives, agreeably to an other of the rules for spelling.  The preterits of these we form by adding ed without increase of syllables; as, display, displayed; survey, surveyed; enjoy, enjoyed.  These also, in both tenses, may take st without increase of syllables; as, display’st, display’dst; survey’st, survey’dst; enjoy’st, enjoy’dst.  All these forms, and such as these, are still commonly considered contractions, and therefore written with the apostrophe; but if the termination st is sufficient of itself to mark the second person singular, as it certainly is considered to be as regards one half of them, and as it certainly was in the Saxon tongue still more generally, then for the other half there is no need of the apostrophe, because nothing is omitted. Est, like es, is generally a syllabic termination; but st, like s, is not.  As signs of the third person, the s and the es are always considered equivalent; and, as signs of the second person, the st and the est are sometimes, and ought to be always, considered so too.  To all verbs that admit the sound, we add the s without marking it as a contraction for es; and there seems to be no reason at all against adding the st in like manner, whenever we choose to form the second person without adding a syllable to the verb.  The foregoing observations I commend to the particular attention of all those who hope to write such English as shall do them honour—­to every one who, from a spark of literary ambition, may say of himself,

---------“I twine
My hopes of being remembered in my line
With my land’s language.”—­Byron’s Childe Harold, Canto iv, st. 9.

THE CONJUGATION OF VERBS.

The conjugation of a verb is a regular arrangement of its moods, tenses, persons, numbers, and participles.

There are four PRINCIPAL PARTS in the conjugation of every simple and complete verb; namely, the Present, the Preterit, the Imperfect Participle, and the Perfect Participle.[256] A verb which wants any of these parts, is called defective; such are most of the auxiliaries.