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LXII. A neiv Method of teaching Latin to Youth ; by Robert 

 John Thornton, M.D. 



To Mr. Tilloch, 



Sir, — An explanation of the new method I have adopted for 

 communicating a knowledge of the Latin language, appears to 

 me not to be unsuited to your Philosophical ISIagazine. I was 

 myself educated at a public school, in the usual mode, afterwards 

 of Trinity College, Cambridge; and having a son at Westminster, 

 I became fully convinced that there required some other method of 

 teaching Latin than that at present pursued in our several places 

 of education. I therefore have investigated in my preface to the 

 " Pastorals of Virgil," which I published, all the different modes 

 invented for making youth acquainted with the Latin tongue ; 

 and I think I have demonstrated, that all the several modes used 

 generally fail of the intended purpose. I shall now first consi- 

 der the interpretatio and ordo. This forms that part of facility 

 given to boys in the Delphin Virgil, and the Delphin classics 

 in general. Now I believe, that nothing tends so much to mis- 

 lead, and does a greater injury to boys than this interpretatio and 

 ordo, which is in constant use in almost every school. I com- 

 municated this opinion to a very high dignitary of the church, 

 one of the best classical scholars of the age, and he agreed in this 

 most cordially with me, and calls my publicly reprobating such a 

 scheme " most meritorious." This opinion other great classical 

 scholars, and men deeply versed in the education of youth, also 

 confirm. Thus the learned Rev.Dr.Trollope, Master of Christ 

 Hospital, concurs with me, and writes that I have deserved well 

 of the community by omitting the interpretatio and ordo. In the 

 English, our words follow each other in the sense to be conveyed, 

 and this holds in all northern languages. The words are short and 

 abrupt, and not fitted so much for eloquence as force. Whereas 

 in warm climates, people delighting to be out of doors, hence the 

 ore rotunda, the long flowing syllables, and fine turned periods. 

 Even in common prose in Xenophon, we have a simple word of 

 one-and-twenty syllables, in the Anabasis. By the peculiar con- 

 struction of the Greek and Latin language the attention is kept 

 up, and every single word is placed in that very position best 

 adapted for it. It is like a building, where the displacement of 

 any part would mar the whole. How barbarous, then, the making 

 the Latin words correspond to our mode of English expression ! 

 It is as absurd as the Gothic custom of cutting trees into tlie 

 forms of peacocks and other animals, instead of having their na- 

 tive shapes. I hold that no one word in Virgil is faulty, or could 

 Vol. 57. No. 277. May 1821. Z ? be 



