ENGLISH AGAINST THE CLASSICS. 711 



tive, or a conjunction, in a Latin sentence, will probably know what 

 name to give to words performing similar functions in an English sen- 

 tence. If he knows that " cum " is called a preposition, and that 

 " cum " means " with," he will probably be able to say that " with " is 

 a preposition. 



A pupil acquainted with English grammar, before commencing with 

 Latin, has the same advantage toward knowing Latin grammar. If 

 he has been taught to call "with" a preposition, and that " with " 

 stands for " cum," he will probably be able to tell that " cum " is a 

 preposition. 



In the above I make a very full concession. It is extremely doubt- 

 ful whether an ordinary boy would recognize an inflected part of speech 

 in English, from knowing a similar part of speech in Latin. How 

 many boys, if told that " bona " is an adjective, would make out that 

 " a:ood " receives the same orrammatical name ? 



There is no further coincidence between English grammar and Latin 

 grammar. The two languages have very different modes of inflection, 

 whether for noun or for pronoun, or for verb, or for adjective, or for ad- 

 verb ; different concord, different government, different order ; and, of 

 course, different derivation and different composition. In all these re- 

 spects that is, in all the important or practical part of grammar 

 the usages of the two languages are wholly different. We cannot 

 know English declensions from Latin declensions, English conjugations 

 from Latin conjugations, English syntax from Latin syntax. "Would 

 a boy know that the past participle of have is had, from knowing that 

 the supine of habeo is habitum; or, knowing the one, would he more 

 easily remeniber the other ? What boy, familiar with Latin declen- 

 sions and conjugations, would discover by his unaided reason that 

 there were such things as declensions and conjugations in English? 

 Mr. Dasent's evidence clinches this. He bears witness of good Latin 

 scholars that " they did not know even that there was any syntax or 

 construction of the English language." 



We are driven to conclude that this too common argument is an 

 example of the error deplored by Mr. Mill an example of using words 

 without thinking of their meaning. Nobody, after remembering that 

 Grammar is an account of the usages of a language, would be guilty 

 of saying that the best way to get acquainted with the usage of one 

 language is to study the usage of another. 



It may be said that the knowledge of another grammar than our 

 own helps our acquaintance with our own grammar, by way of con- 

 trast. True, but foreign usages may be illustrated well enough for 

 this pm-pose with our own vocables. Take, for example, the inflections 

 of Latin and Greek : what hinders the English teacher from showing 

 that, in those ruder and less flexible tongues, relational particles were 

 stuck on at the end of a word, instead of being placed before the word 

 in a separate form? That, instead of saying "He struck with a 



