shof. In a Romance of about 1450 we have shof as a preterite, where we now use the weak preterite shoved :

And he shof theron so sore that he bar hym from his horse to the grounde.-Merlyn, p. 265.

sung, participle of singe. Gentle Shepherd, act ii. sc. 1.

slang. I Samuel xvii. 49.

spoke, participle. In Shakspeare, King John, iv. 1. 51; King Richard II, i. 1. 77.

strake. Acts xxvii. 17, 'strake saile.'

stricken. This old participle, meaning 'gone,' 'advanced,' is now quite extinct. We read it in Luke i. 7, 'well stricken in years'; and we retain it in the compound povertystricken, which means 'far gone in poverty,' extremely poor. In Sidney's Arcadia (ed. 1599), p. 5, we read, 'He being already well striken in years.'

273. took. See what has been said under shook.

Too divine to be mistook.-Milton, Arcades.

waxen. Joshua xvii. 13; Jeremiah v. 27, 28:—

They are become great and waxen rich. They are waxen fat, they shine.

worth. Mediæval participle. See below, 283.

ywroken. Spenser, Colin Clouts come home againe, 921:— Through judgement of the gods to been ywroken.

wrat.

This preterite form occurs in Ralegh's correspondence under date May 29, 1586:—

And the sider which I wrat to you for.-Letter xv, ed. Edwards. wrote, participle.

I have wrote to you three or four times.-Spectator, No. 344 (1712).

Stanzas wrote in a Country Church-Yard:- such is the heading of a manuscript poem, on two sheets of paper about eight inches long and six wide, which was sold by auction last week for £230.-The Guardian, June 2, 1875.

Strong Verbs which have taken the Weak Form.

274. Notwithstanding the tenacity of which we have spoken above, there is a slow continual tendency in these strong verbs to merge themselves gradually into the more numerous class of the weak verbs. Instances of this transition :

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275. This list does not include the strong verbs that have altogether died out since Saxon times. It only contains those ancient strong verbs which still exist in the language under weak forms. The list is of practical utility for reference in reading Chaucer or the Elizabethan writers. Many a strong form, now unfamiliar to us, lingers in their pages. The verb mete, to measure, is one that we do not often use at all, for the whole root is, as Webster says, obsolescent. In our Bible it has the weak conjugation, as

Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand? and meted out heauen with the spanne, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hilles in a balance? -Isaiah xl. 12.

But Chapman has the strong preterite :

Then Hector, Priam's martial son, stepp'd forth, and met the ground. Iliad iii. 327.

Fragmentary relics of an old strong conjugation are sometimes preserved, though the verb itself has gone off into the weak or mixed form. Thus the verb to lose is now declined weak, lose, lost, lost. But in Saxon it was strong, leose, leas, loren: and from this ancient conjugation we have retained the participle lorn, forlorn:—

My only strength and stay: forlorn of thee,
Whither shall I betake me, where subsist?

Paradise Lost, x. 921.

276. Some strong forms long extinct in the old country live on in America. The preterite dove of the verb dive figures not only in the poetry of Longfellow, but also in American prose :—

I know not why, but the whole herd [of walruses] seemed suddenly to take alarm, and all dove down with a tremendous splash almost at the same instant.-Dr. Hayes, Open Polar Sea, ch. xxxvi.

To set against this gradual defection of strong verbs towards the prevalent form, we rarely find even a slight example of movement in the opposite direction. New verbs are hardly ever added to the ranks of the strong; whatever verb is invented or borrowed is naturally conjugated after the prevalent pattern. The few exceptions to this rule are all the more marked on account of their rarity; such as the Scottish formula of verdict Not proven. Here we have a French verb which has taken the form of a strong Gothic participle.

Another of this sort is the preterite pled of the French verb to plead, now called an Americanism, but found in Spenser :

And with him, to make part against her, came
Many grave persons that against her pled.

First was a sage old Syre, that had to name
The Kingdomes Care, with a white silver hed,

That many high regards and reasons gainst her red.

Faery Queene, v. 9, 43.

The Substantive Verb, AM, WAS, BEEN.

277. But the member of this class which above all others demands our attention is the substantive verb to be: or rather, the fragments of three ancient verbs (in Sanskrit As,

BHU, VAS) which join to fill the place of the substantive verb. The substantive verb' is so called, not from any connection with the part of speech called a substantive; but for a distinct reason. all verbs; for it expresses nothing but to have existence. Every other verb implies existence besides that particular thing which it asserts: as if I say I think, I imply that I am in existence, or else I could neither think nor do anything else. The verb substantive, then, is the verb which, unlike all other verbs, confines itself to the assertion of existence, which in all other verbs is contained by implication. The Greek word for existence or being was inóσraois, which was done into Latin by the word substantia, and by this avenue did the verb which predicates nothing but existence come to be named the Substantive verb.

It is the verb which expresses least of

278. It seems so natural and easy to say that a thing is or was or has been, that we might almost incline to fancy the substantive verb to be the oldest and most primitive of verbs. But there is more reason for thinking contrariwise, that it was a mature and comparatively late product of the human mind. The French word été for been is not an old word: we know its history. It is derived from stare, the Latin word for standing, as is witnessed by stato, the Italian participle of the substantive verb. There are other cases in which the substantive verb is of no very obscure origin. We seem to be able to trace our word be, for example, by the help of the Latin fui and the Greek púw, to the concrete sense of growing. Or, the stock of our be may be no other than that familiar word for building and dwelling which in Scotland is to big, in Icelandic is búa, and which appears in the second member of so many of our Danish town-names in the form of by, as Rugby, Whitby. In Icelandic 'búa búi sínu,' is to big ane's ain bigging,' i. e. to have one's own