[254] N. Butler avers, “The only regular terminations added to verbs are est, s, ed, edst, and ing.”—­Butler’s Practical Gram., p. 81.  But he adds, in a marginal note, this information:  “The third person singular of the present formerly ended in eth.  This termination is still sometimes used in the solemn style.  Contractions sometimes take place; as, sayst for sayest.”—­Ibid. This statement not only imposes a vast deal of needless irregularity upon the few inflections admitted by the English verb, but is, so far as it disagrees with mine, a causeless innovation.  The terminations rejected, or here regarded as irregular, are d, st, es, th, and eth; while edst, which is plainly a combination of ed and st,—­the past ending of the verb with the personal inflection,—­is assumed to be one single and regular termination which I had overlooked!  It has long been an almost universal doctrine of our grammarians, that regular verbs form their preterits and perfect participles by adding d to final e, and ed to any other radical ending.  Such is the teaching of Blair, Brightland, Bullions, Churchill, Coar, Comly, Cooper, Fowle, Frazee, Ingersoll, Kirkham, Lennie, Murray, Weld, Wells, Sanborn, and others, a great multitude.  But this author alleges, that, “Loved is not formed by adding d to love, but by adding ed, and dropping e from love.”—­Butler’s Answer to Brown.  Any one is at liberty to think this, if he will.  But I see not the use of playing thus with mute Ees, adding one to drop an other, and often pretending to drop two under one apostrophe, as in lov’d, lov’st!  To suppose that the second person of the regular preterit, as lovedst, is not formed by adding st to the first person, is contrary to the analogy of other verbs, and is something worse than an idle whim.  And why should the formation of the third person be called irregular when it requires es, as in flies, denies, goes, vetoes, wishes, preaches, and so forth?  In forming flies from fly, Butler changes “y into ie,” on page 20th, adding s only; and, on page 11th, “into i” only, adding es.  Uniformity would be better.

[255] Cooper says, “The termination eth is commonly contracted into th, to prevent the addition of a syllable to the verb, as:  doeth, doth.”—­Plain and Practical Gram., p. 59.  This, with reference to modern usage, is plainly erroneous.  For, when s or es was substituted for th or eth, and the familiar use of the latter ceased, this mode of inflecting the verb without increasing its syllables, ceased also, or at least became unusual.  It appears that the inflecting of verbs with th without a vowel, as well as with st without a vowel, was more common in very ancient times than subsequently.  Our grammarians of the last century seem to have been more willing to encumber the language with syllabic endings, than to simplify it by avoiding them.  See Observations, 21st, 22d, and 23d, above.