OBS. 10.—­The verb to shake is now seldom used in any other than the irregular form, shake, shook, shaking, shaken; and, in this form only, is it recognized by our principal grammarians and lexicographers, except that Johnson improperly acknowledges shook as well as shaken for the perfect participle:  as, “I’ve shook it off.”—­DRYDEN:  Joh.  Dict. But the regular form, shake, shaked, shaking, shaked, appears to have been used by some writers of high reputation; and, if the verb is not now properly redundant, it formerly was so.  Examples regular:  “The frame and huge foundation of the earth shak’d like a coward.”—­SHAKSPEARE:  Hen.  IV.  “I am he that is so love-shaked.”—­ID.:  As You Like it.  “A sly and constant knave, not to be shak’d.”—­ID.:  Cymbeline:  Joh.  Dict. “I thought he would have shaked it off.”—­TATTLER:  ib. “To the very point I shaked my head at.”—­Spectator, No. 4.  “From the ruin’d roof of shak’d Olympus.”—­Milton’s Poems.  “None hath shak’d it off.”—­Walker’s English Particles, p. 89.  “They shaked their heads.”—­Psalms, cix, 25.  Dr. Crombie says, “Story, in his Grammar, has, most unwarrantably, asserted, that the Participle of this Verb should be shaked.”—­ON ETYMOLOGY AND SYNTAX, p. 198.  Fowle, on the contrary, pronounces shaked to be right.  See True English Gram., p. 46.

OBS. 11.—­All former lists of our irregular and redundant verbs are, in many respects, defective and erroneous; nor is it claimed for those which are here presented, that they are absolutely perfect.  I trust, however, they are much nearer to perfection, than are any earlier ones.  Among the many individuals who have published schemes of these verbs, none have been more respected and followed than Lowth, Murray, and Crombie; yet are these authors’ lists severally faulty in respect to as many as sixty or seventy of the words in question, though the whole number but little exceeds two hundred, and is commonly reckoned less than one hundred and eighty.  By Lowth, eight verbs are made redundant, which I think are now regular only:  namely, bake, climb, fold, help, load, owe, wash.  By Crombie, as many:  to wit, bake, climb, freight, help, lift, load, shape, writhe.  By Murray, two:  load and shape.  With Crombie, and in general with the others too, twenty-seven verbs are always irregular, which I think are sometimes regular, and therefore redundant:  abide, beseech, blow, burst, creep, freeze, grind, lade, lay, pay, rive, seethe, shake, show, sleep, slide, speed, string, strive, strow, sweat, thrive, throw, weave, weep, wind, wring.  Again, there are, I think, more than twenty redundant verbs which are treated by Crombie,—­and, with one or two exceptions, by Lowth and Murray also,—­as if they were always regular:  namely, betide,