cannot apply to expressions of recent introduction. Here the direct origin in -ung is out of the question.

The view, then, that remains to be taken of the forms in question is this:

1. That the older forms in -ing are substantival in origin, and the Anglo-Saxon -ung.

2. That the latter ones are participial, and have been formed on a false analogy.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE PAST PARTICIPLE.

§ 398. THE participle in -en. In the Anglo-Saxon this participle was declined like the adjectives. Like the adjectives, it is, in the present English, undeclined.

In Anglo-Saxon it always ended in -en, as sungen, funden, bunden. In English this en is often wanting, as found, bound; the word bounden being antiquated. Words where the -en is wanting may be viewed in two lights; 1, they may be looked upon as participles that have lost their termination; 2, they may be considered as præterites with a participial

sense.

Drank, drunk, drunken.-With all words wherein the vowel of the plural differs from that of the singular, the participle takes the plural form. To say I have drunk, is to use an ambiguous expression; since drunk may be either a participle minus its termination, or a præterite with a participial sense. To say I have drank, is to use a præterite for a participle. To say I have drunken, is to use an unexceptionable form.

In all words with a double form, as spake and spoke, brake and broke, clave and clove, the participle follows the form in o, as spoken, broken, cloven. Spaken, braken, claven, are impossible forms. There are degrees in laxity of language, and to say the spear is broke is better than to say the spear is brake.

These two statements bear upon the future history of the præterite. That of the two forms sang and sung, one will, in the course of language, become obsolete, is nearly certain; and, as the plural form is also that of the participle, it is the plural form which is most likely to be the surviving one.

As a general rule, we find the participle in -en wherever the præterite is strong; indeed, the participle in -en may be called the strong participle, or the participle of the strong conjugation. Still the two forms do not always coincide. In mow, mowed, mown; sow, sowed, sown; and several other words, we find the participle strong, and the præterite weak. I remember no instances of the converse. This is only another way of saying

that the præterite has a greater tendency to pass from strong to weak than the participle.

§ 399. In the Latin language the change from s to r, and vice versa, is very common. We have the double forms arbor and arbos, honor and honos, &c. Of this change we have a few specimens in English. The words rear and raise, as compared with each other, are examples. In Anglo-Saxon a few words undergo a similar change in the plural number of the strong præterites.

Ceóse, I choose; ceâs, I chose; curon, we chose; gecoren, chosen. Forleóse, I lose; forleás, I lost; forluron, we lost; forloren, lost. Hreose, I rush; hreás, I rushed; hruron, we rushed; gehroren, rushed.

This accounts for the participial form forlorn or lost, in New High-German verloren. In Milton's lines,

the piercing air

Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire.

Paradise Lost, b. ii.

we have a form from the Anglo-Saxon participle gefroren = frozen.

§ 400. The participle in -d, -t, or -ed.-In the Anglo-Saxon this participle was declined like the adjective. Like the adjective, it is, in the present English, undeclined.

In Anglo-Saxon it differed in form from the præterite, inasmuch as it ended in -ed, or t, whereas the præterite ended in -ode, de, or -te: as lufode, barnde, dypte, præterites; gelufod, bærned, dypt, participles.

As the ejection of the e reduces words like barned and bærnde to the same form, it is easy to account for the present identity of form between the weak præterites and the participles in -d: e.g. I moved, I have moved, &c.

§ 401. In the older writers, and in works written, like Thomson's "Castle of Indolence," in imitation of them, we find prefixed to the præterite participle the letter y-, as yclept = called; yclad clothed; ydrad dreaded.

The following are the chief facts and the current opinion concerning this prefix :

1. It has grown out of the fuller forms ge- : Anglo-Saxon, ge-: Old Saxon, gi-: Moso-Gothic, ga-: Old High-German, ka-, cha-, ga-, ki-, gi-.

2. It occurs in each and all of the Germanic languages of the Gothic stock.

3. It occurs, with a few fragmentary exceptions, in none of the Scandinavian languages of the Gothic stock.

4. In Anglo-Saxon it occasionally indicates a difference of sense; as háten called, ge-hâten promised; boren ge-boren born.

5. It occurs in nouns as well as verbs.

borne,

6. Its power, in the case of nouns, is generally some idea of association or collection.-Mœso-Gothic, sinps a journey, gasinpa = a companion; Old High-German, perc = hill; ki-perki (ge birge) a range of hills.

7. But it has also a frequentative power; a frequentative power which is, in all probability, secondary to its collective power since things which recur frequently recur with a tendency to collection or association; Middle High-German, gerassel rustling; ge-rumpel c-rumple.

8. And it has also the power of expressing the possession of a quality.

This power is also a collective, since every quality is associated with the object that possesses it: a sea with waves a wavy

sea.

9. Hence it is probable that the ga-, ki-, or gi-, Gothic, is the cum of Latin languages. Such is Grimm's view, as given in Deutsche Grammatik, i. 1016.

Concerning this, it may be said that it is deficient in an essential point. It does not show how the participle past is collective. Undoubtedly it may be said that every such participle is in the condition of words like ge-feax and geheort; i.e. that they imply an association between the object and the action or state. But this does not seem to be Grimm's view; he rather suggests that the ge- may have been a prefix to verbs in general, originally attached to all their forms, but finally abandoned everywhere except in the case of the participle. The theory of this prefix has yet to assume a satisfactory form.

§ 402. The most important verbs, wherein the præterite participle differs in form from the præterite tense are the following: