sting, stride, swim, swing, and thrust, to be always regular; but I find no sufficient authority for allowing to any of them a regular form; and therefore leave them, where they always have been, in the list of simple irregulars.  These fourteen verbs are a part of the long list of seventy which this author says, “are, by some persons, erroneously deemed irregular.”  Of the following nine only, is his assertion true; namely, dip, help, load, overflow, slip, snow, stamp, strip, whip.  These nine ought always to be formed regularly; for all their irregularities may well be reckoned obsolete.  After these deductions from this most erroneous catalogue, there remain forty-five other very common verbs, to be disposed of contrary to this author’s instructions.  All but two of these I shall place in the list of redundant verbs; though for the use of throwed I find no written authority but his and William B. Fowle’s.  The two which I do not consider redundant are spit and strew, of which it may be proper to take more particular notice.

OBS. 3.—­Spit, to stab, or to put upon a spit, is regular; as, “I spitted frogs, I crushed a heap of emmets.”—­Dryden.  Spit, to throw out saliva, is irregular, and most properly formed thus:  spit, spit, spitting, spit.  “Spat is obsolete.”—­Webster’s Dict. It is used in the Bible; as, “He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle.”—­John, ix, 6.  L. Murray gives this verb thus:  “Pres. Spit; Imp. spit, spat; Perf.  Part. spit, spitten.”  NOTE:  “Spitten is nearly obsolete.”—­Octavo Gram., p. 106.  Sanborn has it thus:  “Pres. Spit; Imp. spit; Pres.  Part. spitting; Perf.  Part. spit, spat.”—­Analytical Gram., p. 48.  Cobbett, at first, taking it in the form, “to spit, I spat, spitten,” placed it among the seventy which he so erroneously thought should be made regular; afterwards he left it only in his list of irregulars, thus:  “to spit, I spit, spitten.”—­Cobbett’s E. Gram., of 1832, p. 54.  Churchill, in 1823, preferring the older forms, gave it thus:  “Spit, spat or spit, spitten or spit.”—­New Gram., p. 111.  NOTE:—­“Johnson gives spat as the preterimperfect, and spit or spitted as the participle of this verb, when it means to pierce through with a pointed instrument:  but in this sense, I believe, it is always regular; while, on the other hand, the regular form is now never used, when it signifies to eject from the mouth; though we find in Luke, xviii, 32, ’He shall be spitted on.’”—­Churchill’s New Gram., p. 264.  This text ought to have been, “He shall be spit upon.”