To this class belong the remarkable praeterites of the verbs _seek_, _beseech_, _catch_, _teach_, _bring_, _think_, and _buy_, _viz._, _sought_, _besought_, _caught_, _taught_, _brought_, _thought_, and _bought_. In all these, the final consonant is either _g_ or _k_, or else a sound allied to those mutes. When the tendency of these sounds to become _h_ and _y_, as well as to undergo farther changes, is remembered, the forms in point cease to seem anomalous. In _wrought_, from _work_, there is a transposition. In _laid_ and _said_ the present forms make a show of regularity which they have not. The true original forms should be _legde_ and _saegde_, the infinitives being _lecgan_, _secgan_. In these words the _i_ represents the semivowel _y_, into which the original _g_ was changed. The Anglo-Saxon forms of the other words are as follows:-- Byegan, b['o]hte. S[`e]can, s['o]hte. Wyrcan, w['o]rhte. Bringan, br['o]hte. Thencan, th['o]hte. s. 381. Out of the three classes into which the weak verbs in Anglo-Saxon are divided, only one takes a vowel before the _d_ or _t_. The other two add the syllables _-te_, or _-de_, to the last letter of the original word. The vowel that, in one out of the three Anglo-Saxon classes, precedes _d_ is _o_. Thus we have _lufian_, _lufode_; _clypian_, _clypode_. In the other two classes the forms are respectively _baernan_, _baernde_; and _tellan_, _tealde_, no vowel being found. The participle, however, as stated above, ended, not in _-de_ or _-te_, but in _-d_ or _-t_; and in two out of the three classes it was preceded by a vowel, _gelufod_, _baerned_, _geteald_. Now in those conjugations where no vowel preceded the _d_ of the praeterite, and where the original word ended in _-d_ or _-t_, a difficulty, which has already been indicated, arose. To add the sign of the praeterite to a word like _eard-ian_ (_to dwell_) was an easy matter, inasmuch as {320} _eard__ian_ was a word belonging to the first class, and in the first class the praeterite was formed in _-ode_. Here the vowel _o_ kept the two d's from coming in contact. With words, however, like _m['e]tan_ and _sendan_, this was not the case. Here no vowel intervened; so that the natural praeterite forms were _met-te_, _send-de_, combinations wherein one of the letters ran every chance of being dropped in the pronunciation. Hence, with the exception of the verbs in the first class, words ending in _-d_ or _-t_ in the root admitted no additional _d_ or _t_ in the praeterite. This difficulty, existing in the present English as it existed in the Anglo-Saxon, modifies the praeterites of most words ending in _-t_ or _-d_. In several words there is the actual addition of the syllable _-ed_; in other words _d_ is separated from the last letter of the original word by the addition of a vowel; as _ended_, _instructed_, &c. Of this _e_ two views may be taken.