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379 On English Prceterites. 379 hleop, hleopon. slep, slepon. bleow, bleowon. hleapen. slaepen. blawen. 3 hleape. salto 4. slaepe. dormio. 5. blawe. spiro. 6. Seems to have gone entirely over into the fourth graete; gret, greton ; graeten, ploro^. With regard to the third and fourth of these conjugations I cannot agree with Mr Rask. That great and lamented scholar considers the vowel in the praeterite, short. He thinks that the vulgar pronunciation lep and slep represented the old Anglo-Saxon sounds, and that to counterbalance the unpleasant shortness, in Old English a t. was added at the end; to this it is answered that had this been so, the t would not have replaced -en in the participle, and that this one fact proves these verbs as many others were, to have been in process of time transferred to the weak form of con- jugation. But returning to the true and firm conjugations, those last six, which no time has availed to alter, whose vowel relations lie at the deep foundation of the oldest nouns and adjectives we have, and without a knowledge of whose forms, we cannot hope to understand a single step of Teutonic etymology, returning to them let us see what alteration the Anglo-Saxon has made, and whether he alone has left a system which rules the tongues of the Old, the Middle and New High Dutch, the Old Saxon, the Middle and New Low-Dutch, the Middle and New Netherlandish, and the Old Frisian, lastly the languages of Scandinavia, the Old Norse, and its daughters Dansk and Swedish. 7. far-e. proficiscor tor, lor-on. far-en. 8. bid-e. eocpecto. bad, bid-on. bid-en. 9. creope. repo. creap, crup-on. crop-en. 10. swef-e. sopior. swaf, swaefon. swef-en. 11. nim-e. sumo. nam, nam-on. nom-en. 12. help-e. juvo. healp, hulpon. holp-en. As I mean to carry this enquiry further than Grimm from want of materials was enabled to do, it will be ne- cessary before we proceed to the Old English, that is to ^ Yet greutan. lamentaru Beowulf 102. which must have gone over into the ninth conjugation. This form is however not so true as Graetan. G' Gretan, and sometimes though less correctly Greitan.