488 ON THE ANALOGY IN THE FORMATION OF SOME 



the difficulty. In the address of Diomede to Sthenelus, he 

 meets with the Imperative, zccrufiqo-so, 



'O^to, TeTov, KctKcivriicx,}??;, zuru,firi<rio ctitpgn. Iliad. V. 109. 



which he attempts to account for in this manner : " Videtur 

 " mihi Imperativus ex futuro deductus, licet id non agnoscant 

 " Grammatici ; errareque eos, qui verbum hie in prsesenti fin- 

 " gunt zurufitjo-opctt. Quanquam, analogic haud dissimili, per- 

 " ssepe usurpare visus est Homerus verbum hwopui, dutrto, 

 " g^y<r£ro," &c. Nothing can show more strongly the difficul- 

 ty which Dr Clarke must have felt in accounting for these 

 forms, than that he is here obliged to have recourse to another 

 gratuitous assumption of an Imperative of the Future, a thing 

 unheard of before ; and almost to admit dvo~opar as a Present, 

 from which to deduce ilvczro as an imperfect. The fact is, 

 that he found the authorities in favour of Iwiro and eWere, 

 to be so numerous, and of such weight, that he did not ven- 

 ture, in these examples, to change — ero into — uro. 



Afterwards, however, he found himself obliged to abandon 

 this hypothesis of an Imperative of the Future, as well as his 

 original position, that these new Presents in — <ro and — ropcu 

 are imaginary ; and he appears at last (he or his son, it is un- 

 certain which) to adopt, in its full extent, the explanation gi- 

 ven by Eustathius. That commentator, whose remarks 

 would have been invaluable, had his taste and judgment been 

 equal to his means of information, if 1 rightly understand him, 

 has this observation on v. 154. of the 20th Book of the Odys- 

 sey : " '0;<t£ts is sanctioned by a poetic rule of formation 

 " (voiqrittug KMovt£tTui) as the imperfect of the verb oiea, the 

 " Future having retrograded into a Present. For of oi<r&> the 

 " Imperfect is ourov, the 3d person ours, the Imperative the 

 " same in sound, also ours, of which the plural is o/<rgT£." 



Dr 



