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.

OBS. 26.--The following examples are from a letter of an African Prince,
translated by Dr. Desaguillier of Cambridge, England, in 1743, and
published in a London newspaper: "I lie there too upon the bed _thou
presented_ me;"--"After _thou_ left me, in thy swimming house;"--"Those
good things _thou presented_ me;"--"When _thou spake_ to the Great Spirit
and his Son." If it is desirable that our language should retain this power
of a simple literal version of what in others may be familiarly expressed
by the second person singular, it is clear that our grammarians must not
continue to dogmatize according to the letter of some authors hitherto
popular. But not every popular grammar condemns such phraseology as the
foregoing. "I improved, Thou _improvedst_, &c. This termination of the
second person preterit, on account of its harshness, _is seldom used_, and
especially in the irregular verbs."--_Harrison's Gram._, p. 26. "The
termination _est_, annexed to the preter tenses of verbs, is, at best, a
very harsh one, when it is contracted, according to our general custom of
throwing out the _e_; as _learnedst_, for _learnedest_; and especially, if
it be again contracted into one syllable, _as it is commonly pronounced_,
and made _learndst._ * * * I believe a writer or speaker would have
recourse to any periphrasis rather than say _keptest_, or _keptst_. * * *
Indeed this harsh termination _est_ is _generally quite dropped in common
conversation_, and sometimes by the poets, in writing."--_Priestley's
Gram._, p. 115. The fact is, it never was added with much uniformity.
Examples: "But like the hell hounde _thou waxed_ fall furious, expressing
thy malice when _thou_ to honour _stied_."--FABIAN'S CHRONICLE, V. ii, p.
522: in _Tooke's Divers._, T. ii, p. 232.

"Thou from the arctic regions came. Perhaps
Thou noticed on thy way a little orb,
Attended by one moon--her lamp by night