Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/206

196 196 On certain Tenses The opposite evil arising from the exhibition of fictitious tenses^ is that of labour lost in excessive and fanciful refine- ment. Every student is not content to go on regularly con- jugating his Greek verbs with two futures and two aorists, without endeavouring to obtain some idea of that difference which, he naturally supposes, must exist in the force or meaning of these duplicate tenses, and of the propriety which should regulate their use. It is true, neither his tutor nor his grammar are in general likely to give him any satis- factory information on this point ; but notwithstanding the intelligent and active-minded youth will be busy with his enquiries. Perchance he is engaged in composing a piece of Greek prose, and he has a verb to render which he supposes should be expressed by one of the aorists : he will then be endeavouring to determine which of the two will be most suitable. Nor is this to be wondered at, when we remember that the whole course of his Greek instruction has tended to impress him with the opinion that both these tenses are the proper and ordinary complement of the regular Greek verb. If the contrary opinion, now to be advocated, be correct, if the common form of the Greek verb no more presents two aorists or two futures, than it does two presents or imperfects ; how miserably must he be misspending his time and industry ! And thus we are brought to the principal question, that of the existence of the before mentioned tenses in the regular Greek verb. I assert, and shall attempt to prove, that they do not exist ; that they are mere grammatical fictions ; in short, that occasional redundancies, or anomalies of formation, have been preposterously magnified into distinct tenses. I may probably assume, with the assent of most readers, that the laws and structure of a language are to be deduced from its prevailing usage, and that in the present case, if it be the fact that the vast majority of Greek verbs are desti- tute of the tenses in question, this tense ought then to be excluded from the models of regular declension. Because a few verbs, through accidental redundancy of formation, pre- sent duplicate forms of some of their tenses, it surely cannot be right to represent this as the general law of the language, or to exhibit them in those examples according to which the