130 ANALOGY of GREEK LETTERS; 



" never does *." But, in anfwer to this, it may be faid, that 

 the argument againft £ being a double eonfonant, becaufe 

 it never terminates a word, cannot be admitted, as it is no where 

 afTerted, that to be a final letter is nbfolutely neceflary to the ex- 

 iflence of a double eonfonant. But, granting this to be the 

 cafe, £ may in fact be faid, as well as f and -vj/, to be a final let- 

 ter, if the following circumftances be properly attended to. It 

 is obferved by Hulewicz himfelf, as well as other grammari- 

 ans, that the dental mutes r, d, 8, are thrown away before <r. 

 This happens evidently in the formation of the firft futures of 

 verbs: thus, rvirru, verbero, not rvTra-a in the future, but Tvntrw, 

 which is written rv-^u' adw, cano, not clha-a, or oLZo>, but cLcru" 

 fl9^S-«, impleo, not irhrfcrvu nor irKr^a^ but wA^o-a/. One reafon for 

 this feems to be, that if rg, or dg, or S-?, had been permitted to 

 remain in the firft futures of verbs, they muft have produced 

 £, and this would have confounded the termination of thofe 

 futures with that of the prefent tenfes of a great many verbs in 

 £<y, and thus have given rife to a great ambiguity in the cafe of 

 prefent and future tenfes ; an inconvenience which the Greeks 

 carefully avoided, and in the prefent inflance the more willingly 

 got rid of, becaufe the throwing away of r, £, §, before <r, grati- 

 fied an antipathy, which the Grecian ear, during the progrefs 

 and refinement of their language, feems to have conceived againft 

 the combination of thofe confonants j" ; for it is evident, from the 

 analogy of certain genitives which end in rog, dog and §og, that, 

 in the early times of the Greek language, a great many nouns 

 terminated in rg y }>g and 6g, which is the fame with terminating 

 in £• thus, Xtfiqrg, or X£/3j?£, by rejecting the * before g, be- 

 comes 



* Injlitut. Gram. p. 15. 



f Another reafon is, that, in many verbs, it would produce too great a concourfe of 

 confonants. See this illuftrated above, p. 127. note J. 



