utonic languages. Marsh (_Manual of the English Language_, p.
233, English ed.) protests, though, as it seems to me, on no
sufficient grounds, against these terms 'strong' and 'weak', as
themselves fanciful and inappropriate.

{192} The entire ignorance as to the past historic evolution of the
language, with which some have undertaken to write about it, is
curious. Thus the author of _Observations upon the English
Language_, without date, but published about 1730, treats all
these strong praeterites as of recent introduction, counting
'knew' to have lately expelled 'knowed', 'rose' to have acted the
same part toward 'rised', and of course esteeming them as so many
barbarous violations of the laws of the language; and concluding
with the warning that "great care must be taken to prevent their
increase"!!--p. 24. Cobbett does not fall into this absurdity, yet
proposes in his _English Grammar_, that they should all be
abolished as inconvenient. [Now many others are rapidly becoming
obsolescent. How seldom do we hear 'drank', 'shrank', 'sprang',
'stank'.]

{193} J. Grimm (_Deutsche Gramm._ vol. i. p. 839): "Die starke flexion
stufenweise versinkt und ausstirbt, die schwache aber um sich
greift". Cf. i. 994, 1040; ii. 5; iv. 509.

{194} [See also J. C. Hare, _Two Essays in Eng. Philology_ i. 47-56.]

{195} Thus Wallis (_Gramm. Ling. Anglic._, 1654): Singulari numero
siquis alium compellet, vel dedignantis illud esse solet, vel
familiariter blandientis. [For a good discussion of the old use of
'thou', see the Hares, _Guesses at Truth_, 1847, pp. 169-90. Even
at the present day a Wessex matron has been known to resent the
too familiar address of an inferior with the words, "Who bist thou
_a-theein'_ of"? (_The Spectator_, 1904, Sept. 3, p. 319).]

{196} What the actual position of the compellation 'thou' was at that
time, we may perhaps best learn from this passage in Fuller's
_Church History, Dedication of Book_ vii.: "In opposition
whereunto [i.e. to the Quaker usage] we maintain that _thou_ from
superiors to inferiors is proper, as a sign of command; from
equals to equals is passable, as a note of familiarity; but from
inferiors to superiors, if proceeding from ignorance, hath a smack
of clownishness; if from affectation, a tone of conte