Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/213

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HEADERTEXT.
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attributed to the Greek Verb. 203 numbered among the giants of learning. After all, it is not a question of authority but of fact. Is it, or is it not, a fact, that the immense majority of Greek verbs are destitute of these duplicate tenses ? Is it, or is it not, a fact, that in the few instances where they do occur, they are used, not as distinct tenses, having each its proper signification, but merely as various modes in which the force of one and the same tense has been expressed by different writers or possibly, even by the same writer at different times, by the same kind of caprice which may lead an English author to use / hanged in pne page, and / hung in the next ? Can any valid exception be taken to the analogy which has been pointed out, in respect of these duplicates, between the Greek language and our own ? And is it, or is it not, a just and important practical inference, that the models exhibited for the declension of the regular Greek verb ought to be retrenched of these perplexing and super- fluous anomalies ? Let these points be but fairly examined, and the light of candid investigation thrown on them^ and, if I am found wrong, I shall be ready to submit to such chastisement as my error may deserve. UoiricTov o aWprjv, 009 o oipOaXjULOiOLi/ IceaOai^ 'Ev c€ (paei Koi oXecxaov. T. F. B. In inserting the foregoing article the editors have been in some measure influenced by one or two secondary motives. It will probably strike many of our readers that they have long been familiar with most of the assertions here brought forward under an apparent notion that they are original. But in the first place even after a discovery has already been establisht in public opinion on the most satisfactory evidence, it may often be a matter, not merely of idle curiosity, but of no little speculative interest, to observe how the same or similar conclusions have been attained to independently by others, who have been following out their own thoughts in the more sequestered paths of literature, and who, as