Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/221

211 attributed to the Greek Verb. 211 it), entertaineth none but natural and homeborn words, which^ though in number they be not many, a hundred and twenty, or thereabouts, yet in variation are so divers and uncertain that they need much the stamp of some good logic to beat them into proportion. We have set down that, that in our judgement agreeth best with reason and good order. Which notwithstanding, if it seem to any to be too rough hewed, let him plane it out more smoothly ; and I shall not only not envy it, but, in the behalf of my country, most heartily thank him for so great a benefit ; hoping that I shall be thought sufficiently to have done my part, if, in tolling this bell, I may draw others to a deeper consideration of the matter: for, touching myself, I must needs confess, that after much painful churning, this only would come.'*'' Unfortunately old Ben tolled his bell in vain : nobody has heeded his summons : Wallis declared it was a delusion : and our grammarians of late^ instead of going on churning, to see whether anything better would come of it, seem rather to have taken a pleasure in tossing in everything pellmell, as it were into a witches hodgepodge. With the help how- ever of what has been done for the grammar of all the Teu- tonic languages by Grimm, and for that of the Anglosaxon by Rask, it would not be very difficult to draw up our irregulars in something like rank and file. It is a pity that Mr Bosworth in his Anglosaxon Grammar did not shake off the trammels of the vulgar system, but lays down (p. 132) that " in Anglosaxon all the inflexions of verbs may be arranged under one form : there is therefore only one con- jugation -y though he is thereby compelled soon after (p. 156) to declare that " in Anglosaxon most verbs are irregular f "^ and says (p. 144) that ^' the primitive preterite in Anglo- saxon is formed by the change of the characteristic vowel or diphthong of the verb,*'*' and that '' the modern English past tense is no other than the past participle with that usurped signification/' And yet Wallis, who appears to have been the founder of the Procrustean school of our gramma- rians, and to have first set up the system of throwing all our verbs into the same mouldy and condemning all such as did not fit it, had protested against the injurious errour commit- ted by his predecessors in arranging the English language