Note 192 — III

The entire ignorance as to the past historic evolution of the language, with which some have undertaken to write about it, is curious. Thus the author of Observations upon the English Language, without date, but published about 1730, treats all these strong præterites as of recent introduction, counting ‘knew’ to have lately expelled ‘knowed’, ‘rose’ to have acted the same part toward ‘rised’, and of course esteeming them as so many barbarous violations of the laws of the language; and concluding with the warning that “great care must be taken to prevent their increase”!!—p. 24. Cobbett does not fall into this absurdity, yet proposes in his English Grammar, that they should all be abolished as inconvenient. [Now many others are rapidly becoming obsolescent. How seldom do we hear ‘drank’, ‘shrank’, ‘sprang’, ‘stank’.]