STUDY OF LANGUAGES. 843 



rudimentary knowledge of declension, and remembering, from 

 his examples, forms like iilius, filium,Jilio, &c., he will find it 

 easy to learn the whole declension intelligently. As he goes 

 on, under the judicious help of the teacher he will gradually 

 find out more and more for himself — among other things, that 

 in Latin the verb generally goes at the end of its sentence. 

 Great judgment should be used by the teacher in choosing 

 carefully graduated sentences. Having now got fairly started, 

 with constant revision, and having now a fair basis of 

 vocabulary, the pupil may be allowed to learn with every 

 lesson a Httle grammar, based as far as possible on his actual 

 reading. Parsing may now be introduced, and when he has 

 seen a fair number of subjunctives, and his curiosity has been 

 judiciously aroused, the teacher will gradually explain the 

 reason of the most important subjunctives, illustrating from 

 the examples already learned. In this way the whole of the 

 grammar may be naturally and pleasantly acquired pari passu 

 with the process of translation. On no account should a 

 dictionary be used in the early stages. To the young beginner 

 a dictionary means sheer waste of time — the loss of many 

 precious hours in the mere mechanical labour of turning over 

 the pages, and in the wearisome and at early stages merely 

 fortuitous task of selecting one of perhaps a dozen meanings 

 for three or four words in a single sentence. Till the scholar 

 is well advanced the teacher should be his dictionary, and the 

 time thus saved can be utilised in extending his reading and 

 in committing to memory what has been already learned ; 

 while the teacher, who ought to have a sound knowledge of 

 comparative philology, can greatly aid the acquisition of new 

 words by linking unknown words to known, and by pointing- 

 out the cognate Enghsh, French, or German words. As the 

 time goes on, the teacher will encourage his pupils to rely 

 more and more on themselves in translation. As the pieces 

 become longer it will not be necessary to learn by heart the 

 whole piece ; translation and retranslation (even partial) with 

 revision will ensure a thorough knowledge. In addition to 

 the literal translation an idiomatic Enghsh version should now 

 be given, and by retranslating the latter the learner will 

 insensibly acquire an intuitive perception of the differences 

 between Latin and English idiom. The teacher may now 

 introduce Latin prose and conversational Latin, at first closely 

 modelled on the Latin that has been read, but gradually, as 

 the learner's knowledge extends, becoming more and more 

 independent. In the long run this will be found a far more 



