This is one of the cases where the d is surreptitious, and has been added in compliment to the verb bind, with which it has nothing to do.  If we consider the root of the word (though of course I grant that every race has a right to do what it will with what is so peculiarly its own as its speech), the d has no more right there than at the end of gone, where it is often put by children, who are our best guides to the sources of linguistic corruption, and the best teachers of its processes.  Cromwell, minister of Henry VIII., writes worle for world.  Chapman has wan for wand, and lawn has rightfully displaced laund, though with no thought, I suspect, of etymology.  Rogers tells us that Lady Bathurst sent him some letters written to William III. by Queen Mary, in which she addresses him as ‘Dear Husban.’  The old form expoun’, which our farmers use, is more correct than the form with a barbarous d tacked on which has taken its place.  Of the kind opposite to this, like our gownd for gown, and the London cockney’s wind for wine, I find drownd for drown in the ‘Misfortunes of Arthur’ (1584) and in Swift.  And, by the way, whence came the long sound of wind which our poets still retain, and which survives in ‘winding’ a horn, a totally different word from ‘winding’ a kite-string?  We say beh[=i]nd and h[=i]nder (comparative) and yet to h[)i]nder.  Shakespeare pronounced kind k[)i]nd, or what becomes of his play on that word and kin in ‘Hamlet’?  Nay, did he not even (shall I dare to hint it?) drop the final d as the Yankee still does?  John Lilly plays in the same way on kindred and kindness.

But to come to some other ancient instances.  Warner rhymes bounds with crowns, grounds with towns, text with sex, worst with crust, interrupts with cups; Drayton, defects with sex; Chapman, amends with cleanse; Webster, defects with checks; Ben Jonson, minds with combines; Marston, trust and obsequious, clothes and shows; Dryden gives the same sound to clothes, and has also minds with designs.  Of course, I do not affirm that their ears may not have told them that these were imperfect rhymes (though I am by no means sure even of that), but they surely would never have tolerated any such had they suspected the least vulgarity in them.  Prior has the rhyme first and trust, but puts it into the mouth of a landlady.  Swift has stunted and burnt it, an intentionally imperfect rhyme, no doubt, but which I cite as giving precisely the Yankee pronunciation of burned.  Donne couples in unhallowed wedlock after and matter, thus seeming to give to both the true