The most of these are already familiar to us, as being constantly heard among the ungrammatic members of society, who are the great majority of the whole population; and when our mouths and ears have somewhat practised on these analogies, they will not shy much at such strange regularities as the following:

Bear beared † baret bore † borne † born
Begin beginned †began t begun

Bid bidded bade
Bind binded † bound
Bite bited † bit

bad bidden † bid

+ bitten

Break breaked † broke + broken

The following have no change of termination; yet, as already noticed, they answer every purpose of speech as well as those that have the affix ed: having a great affection for simplicity, we are rather partial to such unchanged verbs; but as ed has been adopted, and has become the general rule, perhaps it ought to be uniformly affixed: thus, Beat, beated; Burst, bursted; Cast, casted; Cost, costed; Cut cutted; eat, eated, eaten; Hit, hitted; Let, letted; Put, putted; Read, readed; Rid, ridded; Set, setted; Shed, sheded; Shred, Shreded; Shut, shutted; Split, splitted; Spread, spreaded; Sweat, sweated; Thrust, thrusted.

Observe,

1. That most of the irregular verbs have descended from Saxon times; when there was a different manner of forming what is called the imperfect besides affixing ed.

2. The termination en, which appears so often in what is called the perfect, passive participle, is a relic of a regular affix, now obsolete; and for the same reason that it has been wholly discontinued in what is called the infinitive mood, (for we never say or write to loven, &c.,) it ought to be entirely disused, except as an immovable affix; as, flaxen, golden, flatten, blacken, &c.

3. Many of the irregularities exhibited above, are merely contractions or corruptions of the verbs with the regular affix: as, Bereft contraction of Bereaved; Clad of Clothed; Dealt of Dealed; Dwelt of Dwel

The Prefixes may be presented in the following classes:

1. Greek.

AN, (both An and Un in Gothic,) IN, and both In and Un with us: as, Involuntary, Unwilling; i. e. not voluntary, not willing: so that the prefix an, in, un, has precisely the meaning of NE, NON, (i. e. NE, NE,) Not: it is a negative Prefix.

N. B. The Greek grammarians have made the same mistake about the above prefix as the English grammarians, concerning what they call the indefinite article. Both say, that A becomes An before a word beginning with a vowel; whereas, An becomes A before a word beginning with a consonant. Observe again, that one of our duplicates of this prefix, i. e. Un, is derived directly from Greek, through our Gothic ancestors; the other from the Latin. Hence we prefix Un to Saxon words (themselves corruptions of Greek and Latin); and IN, the Latin corruption of AN, to Latin words: as, Involuntary, Unwilling. We perceive something of impropriety, or uncouthness, i. e. a departure from established usage, if we interchange them: inwilling, unvoluntary; but the latter being more vernacular, or idiomatic, does better than the former. Of course, as a consistent advocate of simplicity and uniformity, the author would have one of these duplicates of the negative prefix discontinued; and that which was adopted from the Latin, as being less idiomatic, should be turned off; but to this there is certainly a

great obstacle; for many words compounded of In, have been received into our language: as Infirm, Infallible, &c.

In addition to all the other anomalies, there are many useless diversities of the same word, which have been adopted first directly from the Greek, then from Latin, Italian, French, &c. &c.: thus many forms of the same verb, noun, &c., have been imported from other languages; and then these have been yet more diversified by the caprices of spelling and pronunciation.

ANA or AN, which is the same in Ger., and with us changed into On. This is a word of frequent occurrence; but it is not much used as a prefix.

AN is changed into EN, changed into IN; which we have both as a prefix and a preposition. Of this, also, we have a duplicate, which we borrowed from the French; as, Inquire, Enquire; Indite, Endite, &c. It would certainly be advisable to discard the French and adhere uniformly to the Latin form of spelling: as, Inchant, Enchant; Indict, † En

dict; Ingrave, Engrave, &c.

There can hardly be any reasonable doubt that ANA, AN, EN, (with us On, In,) and AN, A, (IN, with us Un and In negative,) are but one and the same word, or fragment of a word; and that the difference of meaning is owing to ellipsis, i. e. difference of composition."

ANTI, in front of, directed to, opposed to: it has only the last meaning when a prefix with us: as,

N