[249] The Rev. W. Allen, in his English Grammar, p. 132, says:  “Yth and eth (from the Saxon laeth [sic—­KTH]) were formerly, plural terminations; as, ‘Manners makyth man.’  William of Wykeham’s motto.  ’After long advisement, they taketh upon them to try the matter.’  Stapleton’s Translation of Bede.  ’Doctrine and discourse maketh nature less importune.’  Bacon.”  The use of eth as a plural termination of verbs, was evidently earlier than the use of en for the same purpose.  Even the latter is utterly obsolete, and the former can scarcely have been English.  The Anglo-Saxon verb lufian, or lufigean, to love, appears to have been inflected with the several pronouns thus:  Ic lufige, Thu lufast, He lufath, We lufiath, Ge lufiath, Hi lufiath.  The form in Old English was this:  I love, Thou lovest, He loveth, We loven, Ye loven, They loven.  Dr. Priestley remarks, (though in my opinion unadvisedly,) that, “Nouns of a plural form, but of a singular signification, require a singular construction; as, mathematicks is a useful study.  This observation will likewise,” says he, “in some measure, vindicate the grammatical propriety of the famous saying of William of Wykeham, Manners maketh man.”—­Priestley’s Gram., p. 189.  I know not what half-way vindication there can be, for any such construction. Manners and mathematics are not nouns of the singular number, and therefore both is and maketh are wrong.  I judge it better English to say, “Mathematics are a useful study.”—­“Manners make the man.”  But perhaps both ideas may be still better expressed by a change of the nominative, thus:  “The study of mathematics is useful.”—­“Behaviour makes the man.”

[250] What the state of our literature would have been, had no author attempted any thing on English grammar, must of course be a matter of mere conjecture, and not of any positive “conviction.”  It is my opinion, that, with all their faults, most of the books and essays in which this subject has been handled, have been in some degree beneficial, and a few of them highly so; and that, without their influence, our language must have been much more chaotic and indeterminable than it now is.  But a late writer says, and, with respect to some of our verbal terminations, says wisely:  “It is my sincere conviction that fewer irregularities would have crept into the language had no grammars existed, than have been authorized by grammarians; for it should be understood that the first of our grammarians, finding that good writers differed upon many points, instead of endeavouring to reconcile these discrepancies, absolutely perpetuated them by citing opposite usages, and giving high authorities for both.  To this we owe all the irregularity which exists in the personal terminations of verbs, some of the best