[239] In that monstrous jumble and perversion of Murray’s doctrines, entitled, “English Grammar on the Productive System, by Roswell C. Smith,” you is everywhere preferred to thou, and the verbs are conjugated without the latter pronoun.  At the close of his paradigms, however, the author inserts a few lines respecting “these obsolete conjugations,” with the pronoun thou; for a further account of which, he refers the learner, with a sneer, to the common grammars in the schools.  See the work, p. 79.  He must needs be a remarkable grammarian, with whom Scripture, poetry, and prayer, are all “obsolete!” Again:  “Thou in the singular is obsolete, except among the Society of Friends; and ye is an obsolete plural!”—­Guy’s School Gram., p. 25.  In an other late grammar, professedly “constructed upon the basis of Murray’s, by the Rev. Charles Adams, A. M., Principal of Newbury Seminary,” the second person singular is everywhere superseded by the plural; the former being silently dropped from all his twenty pages of conjugations, without so much as a hint, or a saving clause, respecting it; and the latter, which is put in its stead, is falsely called singular.  By his pupils, all forms of the verb that agree only with thou, will of course be conceived to be either obsolete or barbarous, and consequently ungrammatical.  Whether or not the reverend gentleman makes any account of the Bible or of prayer, does not appear; he cites some poetry, in which there are examples that cannot be reconciled with his “System of English Grammar.”  Parkhurst, in his late “Grammar for Beginners,” tells us that, “Such words as are used in the Bible, and not used in common books, are called obsolete!”—­P. 146.  Among these, he reckons all the distinctive forms of the second person singular, and all the “peculiarities” which “constitute what is commonly called the Solemn Style.”—­Ib., p. 148.  Yet, with no great consistency, he adds:  “This style is always used in prayer, and is frequently used in poetry.”—­Ibid. Joab Brace, Jnr., may be supposed to have the same notion of what is obsolete:  for he too has perverted all Lennie’s examples of the verb, as Smith and Adams did Murray’s.

[240] Coar gives durst in the “Indicative mood,” thus:  “I durst, thou durst, he durst;” &c.—­Coar’s E. Gram., p. 115.  But when he comes to wist, he does not know what the second person singular should be, and so he leaves it out:  “I wist, ------, he wist; we wist, ye wist, they wist.”—­Coar’s E. Gram., p. 116.