Smith Minnie L. Latin Lessons

Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1913. — 324 p.The grammar of English is necessary in learning that of a foreign language, on the principle that in study we must pass from the known to the unknown. Furthermore, there is not time to acquire a knowledge of English grammar after the pupil has plunged into the new vocabulary, the new inflections, and the new constructions, of a foreign tongue. As a matter of fact, very many pupils come to our high schools with almost no practical mastery of English grammar. The manual of English which we have just shown to be necessary in the high school, should be very readily accessible to the pupil, not only for connected study before taking up a foreign language, but also for reference after it is begun. It should therefore be brief enough to be bound with the Latin manual. Most of the existing grammars are too long for this purpose. Very many of the existing grammars, though adequate for English alone, have but little regard for comparative grammar. Asa matter of fact, more than half the rules found in our Latin grammars have their counterparts in English; but so thoroughly is this fact disguised in our English grammars by a narrow treatment, or by a difference in terminology or arrangement, that the beginner feels the Latin to be far more new and strange to him than it really is.