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194 194 071 certai7i Tenses Latin 5 as far as the Latin does that of most modern tongues. Elaborate, however, as the Greek verb really is, it has been made to appear complicated beyond the reality, by the de- fective manner in which it has commonly been analysed. It has not quite so formidable a troop of tenses as it is ordi- narily made to display ; nor does it shoot out into quite so ample and luxuriant a tree, as sometimes flourishes in that solitary picture which is allowed to embellish our Greek grammars. To deny that the regular Greek verb possesses two forms of the aorist and future, or any distinct form at all for a tense called the perfect middle, will to some readers pro- bably appear a startling paradox, which they will readily impute to ignorance or presumption. But others, perhaps, will feel no great indisposition to believe that the assertion may not be far from the truth. They may have become conscious, from their own observations, of those facts which in effect establish it. But before going farther, lest the reader should be indis- posed to bestow on the question that share of attention which it really deserves, it may be well to advert briefly to its prac- tical importance, and this will be found to be by no means inconsiderable. The least evil of the present system is, that the student has to commit to memory a much longer verb than he ought to have. Undoubtedly the length and com- plexity of the verb, as at present exhibited, is felt to be the most serious difficulty in attaining a knowledge of Greek grammar : and many are so much discouraged by the formi- dable appearance of the tables presented to them, that they never undertake the task with sufficient spirit fairly to master it, and so never do or can attain a sound acquaintance with the language. But a far greater evil than this, which after all resolves itself into the necessity of a little additional pains- taking, is the confusion and obscurity in which the entire use of the verb is involved. Fictitious tenses are ascribed to the verb : then certain uses or significations are assigned to these tenses : for instance, it is attempted to define the proper use of the second aorist as distinct from the first. Now it is obvious, that such significations must either be wholly ima- ginary, in which case the labours both of tutor and pupil will