English schools. Here then the experiment of doing without metrical composition has been tried on a grand scale and with the most decisive results."* "If it be extremely absurd to exact from children composition in prose in a language of which they are ignorant, and the attainment of which they cannot accomplish through rules, it is not less absurd to force a number of learners to ponder for hours over eight or ten lines, the structure and rhythm of which they do not comprehend. They would certainly derive more profit from writing in their own language a short letter in an easy style and correct spelling, than from the barbarous Latin verses which they make after much fatigue and vexation."+ "The composition of Latin verses usually causes a considerable waste of time to the students. While two or three out of eighty may produce something after much painful labour, all the others torment themselves to no purpose."‡ "A page of Tacitus or Virgil, Demosthenes or Homer, well understood and translated, is, as a means of instruction, far preferable to all those would-be poetical compositions which, in the nineteen-twentieths of learners, are only a work of plagiarism, or of Gradus ad Parnassum."§ "You force a child to express in a language little known ideas not his own! You wish him to write in Latin, even before he can relate in his own language the most ordinary event! You wish him to write Latin verses! Were it French verses, we should understand it, but Latin verses! Will he be the more able to comprehend Horace and Virgil? Will this unpoetical exercise-this mechanical arrangement of words, initiate him into the beauties of poetry? Intellect and taste are said to be requisite for making even passable verses in the native idiom; there does not appear to be any need of such qualifications in Latin! Everybody at school, teachers and pupils, pique themselves on writing Latin verses; and some of these, it is true, are prized by critics; but these critics have not lived in Rome in the Augustan age, and their poetical talent is the more suspicious in Latin, as it is often below mediocrity when exercised in their own language.”|| * J. H. Jerrard, Evidence before Committee of House of Commons, 1836. † N. Pluche, Mécanique des Langues. ‡ A. Arnauld,Mémoire sur le règlement des Etudes. VOL. I. P. E. Gasc, Etudes historiques et critiques, sur l'Instruction Secondaire. B B SECT. VI.-OF WRITING IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE AT AN If prose writing in a foreign language be practised when some progress has been made, at least, in the first branch, it will assist in directing more particularly the attention of learners to the form of the words, their concord and arrangement. It will facilitate the prosecution of the learners' private studies, by furnishing them with the means of recording, in the interval of the lessons, the phraseology which they have practised with the professor, of applying to the expression of their own ideas the rules of the language, as they are acquired, or of imitating the style of a standard author, as will subsequently be explained. Although, at the outset, oral exercises must take the lead, when circumstances permit, those in writing may, in their turn, afford reciprocal assistance to the art of speaking. When the students are advanced in the foreign language, when they are beginning to converse in it, and are able to enter upon the writing of original compositions, this last exercise will be the means of extending the power of expression beyond the limits of conversation, which is but too often carried on by a succession of unconnected propositions. Composition in a foreign language, which is mostly effected by translating from the native, cannot fail to improve the learner in his own; for, by compelling him to investigate the precise meaning and nature of the native words, in order to render them into their foreign equivalents, it leads him to discriminate between their different acceptations, to ascertain the class to which they belong, or the office they fulfil in each particular instance. The correction of compositions will also afford to the professor frequent opportunities of entering upon considerations of orthography, grammar, and style, for which the rapidity and transiency of the spoken discourse are not favourable. The practice of writing, if duly deferred, and judiciously conducted until the power of composition is fully attained, will aid in imparting the capability of judging of literary productions; for we can better appreciate the merit of execution in any art when we possess it, and when our own experience has exhibited to us all its difficulties. But, in whatever light this branch is considered, it should follow, not precede, the others; and, although it holds only the last place in the order of study and in point of practical usefulness, it is obvious that it should not be neglected by those who are ambitious of possessing a complete knowledge of a foreign language and of availing themselves of that knowledge under all circumstances. Thus it has been shown that these four branches have each a peculiar sphere of usefulness, and that, although distinct in practice, they are connected by the assistance which they lend to each other. Nature and reason combine in justifying the order above prescribed, namely, Reading leads to hearing, hearing to speaking, and speaking to writing. 373 BOOK VI. OF GRAMMAR. "Whoever undertakes to teach boys or girls the grammar of a language, undertakes to teach them what they cannot comprehend, and what he perhaps does not understand himself."-A. CLIFFORD.* "Les règles qu'on a écrites sur les arts produisent à peu près l'effet des télescopes; elles n'aident que ceux qui voient."-D'ALEMBERT. "De grammaticis sic sentio: pleraque usu discendæ regulæ deinde addenda ad perfectionem."-LEIBNITZ. CHAPTER I. UNFITNESS OF GRAMMAR FOR CHILDREN. SECT. 1.-THE GENERAL ADOPTION OF GRAMMAR AS AN INTRODUCTORY STUDY ACCOUNTED FOR. HAVING assigned to each of the four branches its place and degree of importance, we will now, before entering on the details of the method which we propose, conclude our general observations on the study of language, by first adverting to the impropriety of making grammar an introduction to it, and, next, examining in what a complete course of grammatical studies consists. That grammar has been made the preliminary step to the study of Latin, and, by assimilation, to that of other foreign languages, arises chiefly from two injudicious practices which have been noticed before: the one is, the learning of a second *Letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury. † Encyclopédie. Discours préliminaire. "Of grammatical studies this is my opinion: most of the rules should be acquired by practice; they should, afterwards, be added to secure perfection." |