attributed to the Greek Verb. 213 classem reduximics. Lye however, in the Grammar, founded on that of Hickes, which he prefixt to Junius, unaccountably overlookt this important remark, which is the clue to the whole labyrinth, and after giving the first conjugation says, that there are many verbs quae neque ad hanc reduci pos- sunt^ neque aliam commode constituent conjugationem. And as he who comes after is sure to make a point of going beyond those who went before him. Manning in his Grammar prefixt to Lye'^s Dictionary declares them to be a mere mass of confusion : Complura sunt^ tarn Anglosaxonica quam Go- thica verba^ quae ad nullam regulam^ vel certam conjugandi methodum reduci possunt. Such a hazardous thing is it for any one to alter the words of a writer, whose thoughts he purposes to express, without examining the grounds of them : he will often leave out the little limiting words which constitute the very difference between truth and falsehood. What Lye says is merely injudicious : what Manning says^ is untrue. But it is a broad assertion: and we are all too fond, not only of making broad assertions, but also of con- verting what we hear or read into them. I have had to touch on this point before : but the paramount, indispensable im- portance of veracity in little things, of accuracy in details, of fidelity in the colours and shades as well as in the outline, is so little regarded, either in real life or in literature, and so much evil in both has accrued from the neglect of it, that it can hardly be urged too repeatedly : and one evermore finds occasion for enforcing it. The best system for an English grammarian to adopt. — if I may venture to express an opinion on a subject which requires no little thought and a long familiarity with it to make out what the best system really is, — would seem to be that followed by Becker in his excellent German Grammar : to divide the whole body of our verbs into two distinct con- jugations, — the first, or, as he terms it, the old form, com- prising almost all the so-called irregulars, in which the vowel of the theme undergoes a change in the preterite, and which would have to be subdivided into several classes, — the second, or new form, in which the preterite adds ed (or d) or t to the theme, according as the termination is preceded by a flat or a sharp consonant (see Vol. i. p. 662), Were such
