from beorht,
(bright,) is made, in Anglo-Saxon, beorht-E, (brightly,) remaining with
Chaucer, as bright-E.--Inflexion produces the final E. In substantives,
the prevalent singular dative of the mother speech was in E. Chaucer,
now and then, seems to present us with a dative; as in the second verse
of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, from rot, (root,) rot-E. And Mr
Guest thinks that he has found ONE instance of a genitive plural E from
A; namely, from the earlier ath, (an oath,) genitive plural, ath-A; with
Chaucer--oth, oth-E.

The German family of languages exhibits a fine and bold peculiarity--a
double declension of its Adjectives, depending on a condition of syntax.
The Anglo-Saxon adjective, in its ordinary (or, as grammarians have
called it, Indefinite) declension, makes the nominative plural for all
the genders in E; and this remains as the regular plural termination of
the adjective to Chaucer. Thus we have, in the more ancient
language--eald; plural, eald-E; with Chaucer--old; plural, old-E, &c.

The rule of the extraordinary (or Definite) declension, is thus
generally given by Mr Guest for Chaucer. "When the adjective follows the
definite article, or the definite pronoun, _this_, _that_, or any one of
the possessive pronouns--_his_, _her_, &c.--it takes what is called its
definite form."--(Vol. i. p. 32.) From the Anglo-Saxon definite
declension (running through three genders, five cases, and two numbers,)
remains, to the language that arose after the Conquest, ONE final E.
_E.g._ Indefinite--strong; definite, strong-E;--indefinite--high;
definite--high-E.

The Verb ends the first person singular, and the three persons plural,
of the present tense, and makes imperative and infinitive, in E. The
past tense generally ends in DE or EDE; (Mr Guest has forgotten TE;)
sometimes in ED.

As for those two principal endings, the genitive singular in ES, which
is the Anglo-Saxon termination retained, and the plural in ES, which is
the Anglo-Saxon ending obscured--they happen hardly to fall under Mr
Guest's particular regard; but it is easily understood that the
Anglo-Saxon hlaford, (lord,) gen. sing. hlaford-ES, had, in Chaucer's
day, become lord, lord-ES;--and that scur, (shower,) plural scur-AS, of
our distant progenitors had bequeathed to his verse--shour, shour-ES.

Legitimate scepticism surely ceases when it thus appears that ignorance
alone has hastily understood that this vowel, extant in this or that
w