[277] “Brake [for the preterit of Break] seems now obsolescent.”—­Dr. Crombie, Etymol. and Syntax, p. 193.  Some recent grammarians, however, retain it; among whom are Bullions and M’Culloch.  Wells retains it, but marks it as, “Obsolete;” as he does also the preterits bare, clave, drove, gat, slang, spake, span, spat, sware, tare, writ; and the participles hoven, loaden, rid from ride, spitten, stricken, and writ.  In this he is not altogether consistent.  Forms really obsolete belong not to any modern list of irregular verbs; and even such as are archaic and obsolescent, it is sometimes better to omit.  If “loaden,” for example, is now out of use, why should “load, unload, and overload,” be placed, as they are by this author, among “irregular verbs;” while freight and distract, in spite of fraught and distraught, are reckoned regular? “Rid,” for rode or ridden, though admitted by Worcester, appears to me a low vulgarism.

[278] Cleave, to split, is most commonly, if not always, irregular, as above; cleave, to stick, or adhere, is usually considered regular, but clave was formerly used in the preterit, and clove still may be:  as, “The men of Judah clave unto their king.”—­Samuel.  “The tongue of the public prosecutor clove to the roof of his mouth.”—­Boston Atlas, 1855.

[279] Respecting the preterit and the perfect participle of this verb, drink, our grammarians are greatly at variance.  Dr. Johnson says, “preter. drank or drunk; part. pass, drunk or drunken.”  Dr. Webster:  “pret. and pp. drank.  Old pret. and pp. drunk; pp. drunken.”  Lowth:  “pret. drank; part, drunk or drunken.”  So Stamford.  Webber, and others.  Murray has it:  “Imperf. drank, Perf.  Part, drunk.”  So Comly, Lennie, Bullions, Blair, Butler.  Frost, Felton, Goldsbury, and many others.  Churchill cites the text, “Serve me till I have eaten and drunken;” and observes, “Drunken is now used only as an adjective.  The impropriety of using the preterimperfect [drank] for the participle of this verb is very common.”—­New Gram., p. 261.  Sanborn gives both forms for the participle, preferring drank to drunk.  Kirkham prefers drunk to drank; but contradicts himself in a note, by unconsciously making drunk an adjective:  “The men were drunk; i. e. inebriated.  The toasts were drank.”—­Gram., p. 140.  Cardell, in his Grammar, gives, “drink, drank, drunk;” but in his story of Jack Halyard, on page 59, he wrote, “had drinked:”  and this, according to Fowle’s True English Grammar, is not incorrect.  The preponderance of authority is yet in favour of saying, “had drunk;” but drank seems to be a word of greater delicacy, and perhaps it is sufficiently authorized.  A hundred late writers may be quoted for it, and some that were popular in the days of Johnson.  “In the choice of what is fit to be eaten and drank.”—­Beattie’s Moral Science, Vol. 1, p. 51.  “Which I had no sooner drank.”—­Addison, Tattler, No. 131.