which preludes the study of a language with the very notions which the knowledge of that language alone can give.*

The unreasonable practice of occupying childhood with so unsuitable studies has met with just censure from many writers and educationists besides those we have named; but as this censure applies also to the use of grammar as an introduction to the study of language, the mention of a few among the most eminent of those who object to it will be more appropriate in the following chapter.

* See De l'Education des Sourds-muets.

CHAPTER II.

INSUFFICIENCY OF GRAMMAR AS AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF A LANGUAGE.

SECT. I.-PROGRESS OF GRAMMAR AMONG THE ANCIENTS.

To prove how little assistance is given by grammars in acquiring a language, let us examine what was accomplished before their existence.

A language must be long in use and have attained a certain degree of consistency, it must be spoken and written by men of talent and information, who give it a character of stability, before it can become the object of grammatical inquiry, before its words can be classified, or their syntactical concord and arrangement be generalised-before, in fact, its genius and form can be subjected to a code of laws. Hence we find that, in all languages, grammars have been subsequent to standard literary works; they are formed from great writers, not these by grammars.

Although Hebrew is the most ancient language, yet it was only in the year 1040, A.D., that it was, for the first time, reduced to principles and rules by Rabbi Judah Chiug of Fez.* The grammatical art afforded, consequently, no assistance to Moses in writing the Pentateuch, to David in the composition of his sublime psalms, or to any other of the sacred writers.

Plato, among the Greeks, indulged in grammatical researches, as may be seen in his book “Cratylus ; " but Aristotle, his disciple, was the first who analysed language, divided the parts of speech, and laid the foundation of a grammar. To these incomplete essays four books of syntax were afterwards added by Apollonius of Alexandria; and many years elapsed before grammar was publicly taught, for the first time, at Athens, by Epicurus. These were the first grammarians of a people who, long before, had produced almost all the literary master-pieces

* See Vossius, De Arte Grammat., and J. Wilkins, An Essay towards a Real Character.

which are still the delight of the learned, and, among others, the works of Homer, Pindar, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Thucydides, and Xenophon.

Rome did not, it is true, remain so long without grammatical works; Ennius had early turned his attention to points of grammar; so have, afterwards, Varro and Cicero. Julius Cæsar himself, in the midst of camps, had written a treatise on the analogy of words; but it was only subsequently to the glorious Augustan age, that regular grammars were in use among the Romans, when the Latin language was in its decline. In the study of the Greek, which held in their education the same degree of importance that French does in that of modern nations, they made no use of grammars, but acquired it altogether by reading and conversation. It was only when the young Romans knew Greek practically, as they did their own language, that they were sent to the schools of the grammarians, whose office it then was to perfect their delivery, and explain to them the beauties of the best writers.

Those instructors who, in the time of the Roman republic, assumed the name of grammarians (grammatici), were not engaged, as the name seems to imply, in lecturing or writing on what now constitutes grammar: their chief occupation consisted in directing the attention of their pupils to composition, oratorical delivery, and the highest branches of literature. This epithet was afterwards in so great repute among the Greeks and the Romans, that the most illustrious writers took pride in it. It was, in fact, given to those who were eminent in eloquence, history, and philosophy.

SECT. II.-INTRODUCTION OF GRAMMAR IN MODERN EUROPE;
SCHOLARS AND WRITERS FORMED WITHOUT ITS AID.

Long after the revival of letters, in the sixteenth century, Dépautère in France, and Lily in England, wrote, in doggrel Latin verse, incomplete essays of Latin grammar. Lily was assisted in the composition of his work by Dean Colet and Erasmus, who, themselves, very sparingly enjoined the use of it in classic learning. This work, now known under the name of the Eton Latin Grammar, has undergone some modification, but is still, in many respects, despite the royal recommendation,* a

* In 1545, Henry VIII. published an edict to enforce the use of Lily's Grammar in Schools.

very defective composition. It was some time after, in the reign of Elizabeth, that the practice was first introduced of writing Latin exercises, against which the learned Ascham vehemently declaims; and, about the same period, regular dictionaries made their first appearance. But the system of teaching by grammar and writing exercises by the help of dictionaries, was not prevalent until about the middle of the seventeenth century; and, from that period, it may, without hesitation, be affirmed, that few celebrated practical Latinists have been known in England or in France.

Before the introduction of these supposed aids, Latin was spoken and used actually as a living language by all literary men. Some of the most distinguished among these have declared, that practice in reading the classics and listening to their instructors, were the only means which they had employed to arrive at the extraordinary practical knowledge which they possessed of that language, in which some of them were much better versed than in their own. Justus Lipsius, a profound scholar of the sixteenth century, condemns in the most energetic terms the use of grammars, and laments that he was tormented with them until the age of thirteen. He declares himself indebted for his erudition only to his study of the ancient classics. Jos. Justus Scaliger, another great scholar, who lived about the same time, knew twelve or thirteen languages, for the acquisition of which he declared he had never made use of grammars or dictionaries.

The celebrated classical scholar, Tanaquil Lefebvre, the father and instructor of the still more celebrated Madame Dacier, states in one of his letters, that he had taught his daughter Latin and Greek simply by reading with her the best writers in these two languages. "It is this method," he adds, "which has produced the Budei, the Scaligers, the Turnebi, &c."* In this manner, also, the illustrious Alcuin learned Latin, and taught it to Charlemagne ; so was it acquired by Alfred, Henry Beauclerc, Heloisa and Abelard, Roger Bacon, Chaucer, Dante, Petrarch,— in short, by all the scholars of the middle ages; and these have never since been surpassed.

The inadequacy of grammar towards the acquisition of modern languages is equally manifest. At the beginning of this century, before the publication of Murray's Grammar, the one in general use was Lowth's Introduction." It is but a small volume,

66

which, nevertheless, was considered as fully sufficient for the wants of the English at that time.

Previously to the existence of this work, Dr. Johnson had prefixed to his Dictionary a short grammar, which, by Dr. Lowth's account, comprises the whole syntax in ten lines, and yet made, he observes, no part of the ordinary method of instruction in those days; so that correct speaking and writing were then independent of grammatical studies. Dr. Lowth himself, Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Pope, Young, Thomson, Johnson, Burns, and others, whose works will live as long as the English language, had not, in their childhood, learned any English grammar.

The same has happened in France: Corneille, Molière, Lafontaine, Pascal, Bossuet, Boileau, Racine, whose language was that which prevailed among the well educated class of their days, had written their master-pieces long before the publication of any regular French grammar. The first work which appeared on this subject deserving the name of grammar, was that of "Port-Royal," published towards the close of these celebrated writers' literary career; it, however, treats of the general principles of language, not of those which are peculiar to the French. The few treatises which preceded it were but imperfect dissertations on the elements of language, more curious than useful, and, for the most part, written in Latin. The grammars of Buffier, Girard, Beauzée, Restaut, Wailly, and many others which have subsequently come to light, have not, that we know, enabled later writers to surpass their predecessors.

Bembo was the first who laid grammatical rules for the Italian language two hundred years after Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio had given to the world their immortal works.

SECT. III.-GRAMMAR CONSIDERED AS A MEANS OF UNDERSTANDING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE, WHETHER WRITTEN OR SPOKEN.

If we now turn our attention to the learning of a foreign language, which is the subject under immediate consideration, the impropriety of commencing with the study of grammar becomes still more obvious. In this pursuit the student's first care, if the order of study established in the preceding Book be correct, must be to ensure the power of understanding the works written in that language and the persons who speak it; but