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attributed to the Greek Verb. 215 irregular verbs as such are an inordinate excrescence in our grammatical systemj has led many of our grammarians to recommend our getting rid of them: just as the name rotten boroughs^ to take the most recent instance in point, has ex- ercised an incalculable influence in convincing people that such boroughs ought to be abolisht. Yet our language would be a very great sufferer by such changes as Cobbett and Mr Gilchrist recommend : its harmony above all would be de- plorably injured : we should lose many of our most sonorous words, and have an ever-recurring final dental in their stead. What would become of our poetry, if arose were to be turned into arisedy abode into abided^ fought into Jighted^ sought into seeked, taught into teached^ caught into catched^ thought into thinked^ brought into bringed^ sang and sung into singed^ came into comedy bound into binded^ broke into breaked^ strove into strived^ drank and drunk into drinked^ jlew BXidJlown into Jlied^ forgot into forgetted^ gave into gived ? The genius of language works its winding way like a river ; and beauty springs up spontaneously along its margin, and pleasure may float upon its surface : but a grammarmonger's language would be like a sluggish monotonous canal, with its bare unsightly banks, fit for nothing but barges of cumbrous marketable commodities to be dragged along it. And yet even in a practical point of view, when nature puts forth her power, no creature of art can vie with her : nor is the canal after all anything more than a base copy, fed by draining off* the waters of the river, which it no doubt despises as very crooked, useless, wasteful, troublesome, and irregular. But if it be a sorry mode of improving a grammar to increase the number of irregularities in it, neither is such a course likely to be very successful in affording relief to the memory. For not only have we much less to remember in a rule than in a list of anomalies ; but in the former case the understanding aids the memory, in the latter it rather thwarts it. Nor does there seem to be any strong reason for appre- hending that too much time and ingenuity will be wasted in attempts to discover a distinction between the two aorists, or that an unfortunate boy will be posed, like the long-eared quadruped between his two bundles of hay, to which of them he ought to betake himself. It is to be feared that boys