Hence, in the language of children and illiterate people, many words are regularly inflected even in opposition to the most common usage.
17.

It has unfortunately become fashionable to inveigh against the necessary labour of learning by heart the essential principles of grammar, as a useless and intolerable drudgery.

And this notion, with the vain hope of effecting the same purpose in an easier way, is giving countenance to modes of teaching well calculated to make superficial scholars.

When those principles are properly defined, disposed, and exemplified, the labour of learning them is far less than has been represented; and the habits of application induced by such a method of studying grammar, are of the utmost importance to the learner.

Experience shows, that the task may be achieved during the years of childhood; and that, by an early habit of study, the memory is so improved, as to render those exercises easy and familiar, which, at a later period, would be found very difficult and irksome.