[231] “Mr. Murray has changed his opinion, as often as Laban changed Jacob’s wages.  In the edition we print from, we find shall and will used in each person of the first and second future tenses of the subjunctive, but he now states that in the second future tense, shalt, shall, should be used instead of wilt, will.  Perhaps this is the only improvement he has made in his Grammar since 1796.”—­Rev. T. Smith’s Edition of Lindley Murray’s English Grammar, p. 67.

[232] Notwithstanding this expression, Murray did not teach, as do many modern grammarians, that inflected forms of the present tense, such as, “If he thinks so,” “Unless he deceives me,” “If thou lov’st me,” are of the subjunctive mood; though, when he rejected his changeless forms of the other tenses of this mood, he improperly put as many indicatives in their places.  With him, and his numerous followers, the ending determines the mood in one tense, while the conjunction controls it in the other five!  In his syntax, he argues, “that in cases wherein contingency and futurity do not occur, it is not proper to turn the verb from its signification of present time, nor to vary [he means, or to forbear to change] its form or termination. [Fist] The verb would then be in the indicative mood, whatever conjunctions might attend it.”—­L.  Murray’s Gram., 8vo, p. 208:  12mo, p. 167.

[233] Some grammarians—­(among whom are Lowth, Dalton, Cobbett, and Cardell—­) recognize only three tenses, or “times,” of English verbs; namely, the present, the past, and the future.  A few, like Latham and Child, denying all the compound tenses to be tenses, acknowledge only the first two, the present and the past; and these they will have to consist only of the simple or radical verb and the simple preterit.  Some others, who acknowledge six tenses, such as are above described, have endeavoured of late to change the names of a majority of them; though with too little agreement among themselves, as may be seen by the following citations:  (1.) “We have six tenses; three, the Present, Past, and Future, to represent time in a general way; and three, the Present Perfect, Past Perfect, and Future Perfect, to represent the precise time of finishing the action.”—­Perley’s Gram., 1834, p. 25. (2.) “There are six tenses; the present, the past, the present-perfect, the past-perfect, the future, and the future-perfect.”—­Hiley’s Gram., 1840, p. 28. (3.) “There are six tenses; the Present and Present Perfect, the Past and Past Perfect, and the Future and Future Perfect.”—­Farnum’s Gram., 1842, p. 34. (4.) “The names of the tenses will then be, Present, Present Perfect; Past, Past Perfect; Future, Future Perfect.