as now. There were some
differences of usage, as where two nominatives coupled by a conjunction
severally governed the verb, and where certain nouns in the plural were
joined with a verb in the singular,--as _dealings, doings, tidings,
odds_, and as is still the case with _news_. It is not impossible that
the French termination in _esse_ helped to make the confusion. We have
in the opposite way made a plural of _riches_, which was once singular.
Some persons used the strong preterites, and some the weak,--some said
_snew, thew, sew_, and some _snowed, thawed, sowed_. Bishop Latimer
used the preterite _shew_, which Mr. Bartlett, in his "Dictionary of
Americanisms," pronounces to be the _shibboleth_ of Bostonians. But such
differences were orthoepic, and not syntactic.

We regret Mr. White's glossological excursions the more because they are
utterly supererogatory, and because they seem to imply a rashness of
conclusion which can very seldom be laid to his charge as respects the
text. He volunteers, without the least occasion for it, an opinion that
_abye_ and _abide_ are the same word, (which they are not,) suggests
that _vile_ and _vild_ (whose etymology, he says, is obscure) may
be related to the Anglo-Saxon _hyldan_, and tells us that _dom_ is
Anglo-Saxon for house. He pronounces _ex cathedra_ that _besides_ is
only a vulgar form of _beside_, though the question is still _sub
judice_, and though the language has contrived adverbial and
prepositional forms out of the distinction, as it has, in the case of
the compounds with _ward_ and _wards_, adverbial and adjectival ones.[J]
He declares that the distinction between _shall_ and _will_ was
imperfectly known in Shakspeare's time, though we believe it would not
be difficult to prove that the distinction was more perfect in some
respects than now. We the less value his opinion on these points as he
himself shows an incomplete perception of the difference between _would_
and _should_. (See Vol. V. pp. 114, 115, "We _would_ now say, 'all
liveliness,'" and "We _would_ now write, 'the traits of,'" etc.) He says
that the pronunciation _commandement_ was already going out of use two
centuries and a half ago. Mr. Pegge speaks of it as a common Cockneyism
at the beginning of this century. Sometimes this hastiness, however,
affects the value of an elucidatory note, as where he tells us that a
principality is "an angel of the highest rank next to divinity" [deity],
and quotes St. P