past{138}.

It is thus in respect of a multitude of isolated words, which were
excellent Anglo-Saxon, which were excellent early English, and which
only are not excellent present English, because use, which is the
supreme arbiter in these matters, has decided against their further
employment. Several of these I enumerated just now. It is thus also with
several grammatical forms and flexions. For instance, where we decline
the plural of "I sing", "we sing", "ye sing", "they sing", there are
parts of England in which they would decline, "we sin_gen_", "ye
sin_gen_", "they sin_gen_". This is not indeed the original form of the
plural, but it is that form of it which, coming up about Chaucer's time,
was just going out in Spenser's; he, though we must ever keep in mind
that he does not fairly represent the language of his time, or indeed of
any time, affecting a certain artificial archaism both in words and
forms, continually uses it{139}. After him it becomes ever rarer, the
last of whom I am aware as occasionally using it being Fuller, until it
quite disappears.

{Sidenote: _Earlier and Later English_}

Of such as may now employ forms like these we must say, not that they
violate the laws of the language, but only that they have taken their
_permanent_ stand at a point which was only a point of transition, and
which it has now left behind, and overlived. Thus, to take examples
which you may hear at the present day in almost any part of England--a
countryman will say, "He made me _afeard_"; or "The price of corn _ris_
last market day"; or "I will _axe_ him his name"; or "I tell _ye_". You
would probably set these phrases down for barbarous English. They are
not so at all; in one sense they are quite as good English as "He made
me _afraid_"; or "The price of corn _rose_ last market day"; or "I will
_ask_ him his name". 'Afeard', used by Spenser, is the regular
participle of the old verb to 'affear', still existing as a law term, as
'afraid' is of to 'affray', and just as good English{140}; 'ris' or
'risse' is an old praeterite of 'to rise'; to 'axe' is not a
mispronunciation of 'to ask', but a genuine English form of the word,
the form which in the earlier English it constantly assumed; in Wiclif's
Bible almost without exception; and indeed 'axe' occurs continually, I
know not whether invariably, in Tyndale's translation of the Scriptures;
there was a time when 'ye' was an accusative, and to have used it as a
nominative