Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/329

 of the Scriptures is the best standard of English grammar,[214] remember that in it they have no warrant for substituting s or es for the old termination eth, any more than for ceasing to use the solemn style of the second person familiarly. That version was good in its day, yet it shows but very imperfectly what the English language now is. Can we consistently take for our present standard, a style which does not allow us to use you in the nominative case, or its for the possessive? And again, is not a simplification of the verb as necessary and proper in the familiar use of the second person singular, as in that of the third? This latter question I shall discuss in a future chapter.

OBS. 22.--The use of the pronoun ye in the nominative case, is now mostly confined to the solemn style;[215] but the use of it in the objective, which is disallowed in the solemn style, and nowhere approved by our grammarians, is nevertheless common when no emphasis falls upon the word: as,

"When you're unmarried, never load ye   With jewels; they may incommode ye."--Dr. King, p. 384.

Upon this point, Dr. Lowth observes, "Some writers have used ye as the objective case plural of the pronoun of the second person, very improperly and ungrammatically; [as,]

'The more shame for ye; holy men I thought ye.' Shak. Hen. VIII.

'But tyrants dread ye, lest your just decree Transfer the pow'r, and set the people free.' Prior.

'His wrath, which one day will destroy ye both.' Milt. P. L. ii. 734.

Milton uses the same manner of expression in a few other places of his Paradise Lost, and more frequently in his [smaller] poems, ''It may, perhaps, be allowed in the comic and burlesque style'', which often imitates a vulgar and incorrect pronunciation; but in the serious and solemn style, no authority is sufficient to justify so manifest a solecism."--Lowth's Gram., p. 22. Churchill copies this remark, and adds; "Dryden has you as the nominative, and ye as the objective, in the same passage:[216]

'What gain you, by forbidding it to tease ye? It now can neither trouble ye, nor please ye.'

Was this from a notion, that you and ye, thus employed, were more analogous to thou and thee in the singular number?"--Churchill's Gram., p. 25. I answer, No; but, more probably, from a notion, that the two words, being now confessedly equivalent in the one case, might as well be made so in the other: just as the Friends, in using thee for you, are carelessly converting the former word into a nominative, to the exclusion of thou; because the latter has generally been made so, to the exclusion of ye. When the confounding of such distinctions is begun, who knows where it will end? With like ignorance, some writers suppose, that the fashion of using the plural for the singular is a sufficient warrant for putting the singular for the plural: as,

"The joys of love, are they not doubly thine,   Ye poor! whose health, whose spirits ne'er decline?" --''Southwick's Pleas. of Poverty.''

"But, Neatherds, go look to the kine,     Their cribs with fresh fodder supply;    The task of compassion be thine,      For herbage the pastures deny."--Perfect's Poems, p. 5.

OBS. 23.--When used in a burlesque or ludicrous manner, the pronoun ye is sometimes a mere expletive; or, perhaps, intended rather as an objective governed by a preposition understood. But, in such a construction, I see no reason to prefer it to the regular objective you; as,

"He'll laugh ye, dance ye, sing ye, vault, look gay,   And ruffle all the ladies in his play."--King, p. 574.

Some grammarians, who will have you to be singular as well as plural, ignorantly tell us, that "ye always means more than one." But the fact is, that when ye was in common use, it was as frequently applied to one person as you: thus,

"Farewell my doughter lady Margarete,   God wotte full oft it grieued hath my mynde,    That ye should go where we should seldome mete:    Now am I gone, and haue left you behynde."--Sir T. More, 1503.