Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/383

373 ON ENGLISH PRiETERITES. The forms of the English praeterites handled in the fourth number of this Museum, are of so much importance in a philological point of view, and have till of late been so unfortunately treated by persons entirely mistaken as to the great part they play in Teutonic Grammar, that we need no apology for returning to the subject; and endea- vouring as far as in us lies to clear up their true character and history. That this can only be done, by tracing their history, and the forms they have successively assumed, I trust will appear to all who will take the pains to compare the system which we introduce to them with that of our pre- decessors in this almost untrodden field : and while we more immediately pursue the forms of the verbs, and observe the scale of affinities by which they are in regular order linked together, I am not without hope, that the thought may occur to some readers, that much which they have looked upon as arbitrary and irregular, appeared so to them, only because they had not learnt to cast their eyes over a sufficiently extensive circle of facts ; and that they may feel, that in exact proportion to the number of elements which we intro- duce into the calculation, is our chance of perceiving the deep-laid and ever-ruling laws, on which as a foundation, Teutonic etymology is raised. In the following pages it will be shewn that a strict system prevails throughout our verbal forms; that it is complete within itself and incapable of alterations; that as such it has subsisted in the written Teutonic languages for upwards of fourteen centuries, and may, before the languages were written down have subsisted for as many more. And this will be enough for my present purpose, which is mainly to show that the verbs usually called irregular are nothing; of the sort ; and I therefore shall not follow these forms into their developement as nouns, ad-