OBS. 1.—­Regular verbs form their preterits and perfect participles, by adding d to final e, and ed to all other terminations; the final consonant of the verb being sometimes doubled, (as in dropped,) and final y sometimes changed into i, (as in cried,) agreeably to the rules for spelling in such cases.  The verb hear, heard, hearing, heard, adds d to r, and is therefore irregular. Heard is pronounced h~erd by all our lexicographers, except Webster:  who formerly wrote it heerd, and still pronounces it so; alleging, in despite of universal usage against him, that it is written “more correctly heared.”—­Octavo Dict., 1829.  Such pronunciation would doubtless require this last orthography, “heared;” but both are, in fact, about as fanciful as his former mode of spelling, which ran thus:  “Az I had heerd suggested by frends or indifferent reeders.”—­Dr. Webster’s Essays, Preface, p. 10.

OBS. 2.—­When a verb ends in a sharp consonant, t is sometimes improperly substituted for ed, making the preterit and the perfect participle irregular in spelling, when they are not so in sound; as, distrest for distressed, tost for tossed, mixt for mixed, cract for cracked.  These contractions are now generally treated as errors in writing; and the verbs are accordingly (with a few exceptions) accounted regular.  Lord Kames commends Dean Swift for having done “all in his power to restore the syllable ed;” says, he “possessed, if any man ever did, the true genius of the English tongue;” and thinks that in rejecting these ugly contractions, “he well deserves to be imitated.”—­Elements of Criticism, Vol. ii, p. 12.  The regular orthography is indeed to be preferred in all such cases; but the writing of ed restores no syllable, except in solemn discourse; and, after all, the poems of Swift have so very many of these irregular contractions in t, that one can hardly believe his lordship had ever read them.  Since the days of these critics still more has been done towards the restoration of the ed, in orthography, though not in sound; but, even at this present time, our poets not unfrequently write, est for essed or ess’d, in forming the preterits or participles of verbs that end in the syllable ess.  This is an ill practice, which needlessly multiplies our redundant verbs, and greatly embarrasses what it seems at first to simplify:  as,

   “O friend!  I know not which way I must look
    For comfort, being, as I am, opprest,
    To think that now our life is only drest
    For show.”—­Wordsworth’s Poetical Works, 8vo, p. 119.