210 On certain Tenses of Epicurus. He shewed however that these irregular verbs were not quite so unruly as they appeared to be ; and he classed them under a variety of heads. Some little in the same way was done for our own language by Wallis and Lowth ; and the latter even throws out hints for ^^ a divi- sion of all the English verbs into three conjugations '^ but in most of our recent grammars the only principle of arrange- ment applied to them is the most mechanical of all, the alphabetical. Nay Mr Gilchrist in the Introduction to his Etymologic Interpreter, a work not without ingenuity, but grievously disfigured by the contemptuous arrogance of its tone, and the extravagance of its groundless assertions, after saying that "irregular verbs, like all anomalies, are exceed- ingly troublesome,"' adds (p. 167) : "most of them, evidently, originated in blundering carelessness, or in that aversion to polysyllables which operated so powerfully on our Saxon an- cestors.*^' When and where his work can have been written it is hard to divine : one might almost fancy it must have fallen from the moon : at least he does not appear much better verst in the English language of the present day, than in that of our Saxon ancestors. For he has found out that such preterites and participles as awoke^ hent^ he-^ refty built ^ caught^ dug^ froze ^ gilt^ shone ^ slew^ slain^ have " most of them an olden uncouthness, except to the lovers of antique obsoleteness and whilom forms of literature;"" and further, that bled^ hlew^ chose^ drunk^ flew^ fi'^'^g^ knew^ struck^ told^ wept^ are " constantly heard among the un- grammatic members of society :"' whereas its grammatic mem- bers, with whom he no doubt is in the habit of conversing, wherever it may be their fate to be found, whether in New Zealand or Laputa, of course always say choosed^ and drawed^ and Jlinged^ and striked^ and telled^ and drinked. Yet our older grammarians had set us a much better ex- ample in this matter. Ben Jonson after speaking of the first conjugation, "which fetcheth the time past from the present by adding erf,*" and which is " the common inn to lodge every strange and foreign guest, classes our other verbs in three additional conjugations, and prefaces his account of the second by saying : " That which followeth, for anything I can find (though I have with some diligence searched after
