Fare Fared. | Fare Fôr. § 322. Respecting the _strong_ verb, the following general statements may be made: 1. Many strong verbs become weak; whilst no weak verb ever becomes strong. 2. All the strong verbs are of Saxon origin. None are classical. 3. The greater number of them are strong throughout the Gothic tongues. 4. No new word is ever, upon its importation, inflected according to the strong conjugation. It is always weak. As early as A.D. 1085, the French word _adouber_ = _to dub_, was introduced into English. Its præterite was _dubbade_. 5. All derived words are inflected weak. The intransitive forms _drink_ and _lie_, are strong; the transitive forms _drench_ and _lay_, are weak. This shows that the division of verbs into _weak_ and _strong_ is a truly natural one. * * * * * CHAPTER XXVI. DEFECTIVENESS AND IRREGULARITY. § 323. The distinction between irregularity and defectiveness has been foreshadowed. It is now more urgently insisted on. The words that have hitherto served as illustrations are the personal pronouns _I_ or _me_, the adjectives _good_, _better_, and _best_. The view of these words was as follows; viz., that none of them were _irregular_, but that they were all _defective_. _Me_ wanted the nominative, _I_ the oblique cases. _Good_ was without a comparative, _better_ and _best_ had no positive degree. Now _me_ and _better_ may be said to make good the defectiveness of _I_ and _good_; and _I_ and _good_ may be said to replace the forms wanting in _me_ and _better_. This gives us the principle of _compensation_. To introduce a new term, _I_ and _me_, _good_ and _better_, may be said to be _complementary_ to each other. What applies to nouns applies to verbs also. _Go_ and _went_ are not irregularities. _Go_ is defective in the past tense. _Went_ is without a present. The two words, however, compensate their mutual deficiencies, and are complementary to each other. The distinction between defectiveness and irregularity, is the first instrument of criticism for coming to true views concerning the proportion of the regular and irregular verbs. § 324. The second instrument of criticism in determining the irregular verbs, is the meaning that we attach to the term. It is very evident that it is in the power of the grammarian to raise the number of etymological irregularities to any amount, by narrowing the definition of the word _irregular_; in other words, by framing an exclusive rule. The current rule of the common grammarians is that the præterite is formed _by the addition of_ -t, or -d, or -ed; a position sufficiently exclusive; since it proscribes not only the whole class of strong verbs, but also words like _bent_ and _sent_, where -t exists, but where it does not exist as _an addition_. The regular forms, it may be said, should be _bended_ and _sended_.