I am prepared to prove, were it consistent with the nature of this work, that nineteen-twentieths of _all the corruptions_ of our language, for five hundred years past, have been introduced by _authors_--men who have made alterations in particular idioms _which they did not understand_.
The same remark is applicable to the _orthography_ and _pronunciation_.

The tendency of unlettered men is to _uniformity_--to _analogy_; and so strong is this disposition, that the common people have actually converted some of our irregular verbs into regular ones.

It is to unlettered people that we owe the disuse of _holpen, bounden, sitten_, and the use of the regular participles, _swelled, helped, worked_, in place of the ancient ones.

This popular tendency is not to be contemned and disregarded, as some of the learned affect to do;[3] for it is governed by _the natural, primary principles of all languages_, to which we owe all their regularity and all their melody; viz., a love of uniformity in words of a like character, and a preference of an easy natural pronunciation, and a desire to express the most ideas with the smallest number of words and syllables.

It is a fortunate thing for language, that these natural principles generally prevail over arbitrary and artificial rules."-- _Webster's Philosophical Gram._, p.