Xlll 



the school editions of Terence, with remarks on the metres of Terence. 

 In the review of Zumpt's Grammar he made the first proposal, as far- as 

 he knew and as far as the writer knows, to apply the crude-form system 

 of the Sanskrit Grammarians to the classical languages ; and he says 

 (Appendix I. Key's Latin Grammar, edition of 1858), "The system had 

 been previously expounded in the classical lecture-rooms of the Univer- 

 sity of London" (now University College)*. In 1829 Mr. Key had 

 attended the Sanskrit class of the learned Dr. Rosen in the then Univer- 

 sity of London ; but he had never time to prosecute the study of Sanskrit 

 beyond the elementary part. 



Mr. Key contributed to the Penny Cyclopaedia of the Useful Knowledge 

 Society some valuable articles, chiefly on Language. Among them were 

 articles on the letters of the Alphabet, the article on the Alphabet, and 

 one on the metres of Terence. These papers were for the most part 

 collected in a little volume (1844), and there was prefixed to it a Prefatory 

 Letter to his colleague, the Professer of Latin in University College. 

 This Prefatory Letter gave rise to a controversy. Those who are curious 

 about the matter will find further information on it in the Preface to 

 Mr. Key's Philological Essays. 



In 1846 Mr. Key published a Latin Grammar on the system of Crude 

 Forms, and in 1862 what he says he may call a third edition of the 

 same, " corrected and somewhat enlarged." In 1846 few Latin scholars 

 knew what crude forms were. The book was used in University College 

 School, but the teaching of Latin and Greek on this sj^stem had been a 

 long time practised there. The book sold slowly, for no persons are slower 

 in making improvements in education than the common teachers of Latin. 

 In Appendix I. to the Grammar Mr. Key has explained the Crude Form, 

 upon which system, as he says, every Sanskrit Grammar is constructed ; 

 and he has attempted to show " the practical advantages which it offers 

 even for elementary instruction." It will perhaps be a long time before 

 this system comes into general use in teaching the Greek and Latin lan- 

 guages ; but there are now many teachers and scholars who know what it is. 

 The study of Latin is a necessity in England, and can never be neglected 

 in a good education. We may hope that it will be taught better than it 

 has been ; for the aid which Latin, when it is taught well, gives towards 

 the etymology of our own highly Latinized tongue, is, as Mr. Key says, 

 " a secondary but still an important consideration ; and here again the 

 crude forms have a marked advantage over the nominatives." Mr. Key's 

 Latin Grammar is an excellent work, superior in its design to any other, 

 and, as some persons think, in the execution also. Those who are not yet 



* Mr. Key says in a note : — " In the year 1836 was published the Bronisgrove Latin 

 Grammar, by the Eev. G. A. Jacob (late Scholar and Tutor of Worcester College, Ox- 

 ford), which is drawn up in a great measure, but far from uniformly, upon the crude- 

 form system. Mr. Jacob subsequently published a Greek Grammar on the same plan." 



