Litchfield enquirer., 1881-09-08
Latin Grammar.

l was tue lutetudtlO0al ldugudgt ul sCnoafSs most of whom were ashamed to write in the vulgar tongues, as all modern languages were then termed. The Latin literature, inferior as it then was to the Greek, and as it now is to the literatures of many modern tongues, prevailed the greatest within the reach of men of education. We do not imagine that there was then the very accurate scholarship now taught in our best schools and colleges. But men read Virgil, Cicero. Livy. Horace, Tac itus, and many Latin works unknown to our college trained lads, not as a linguistic drill. but as literature. All their lives long they retained knowledge of these works, because in the paucity of books, and especially of good books, every person who had q taste for letters, had to keep up his acquaintance with Latin sufficiently to read the language, though probably in most cases with much more fa- cility than accuracy.
 The fact that even reading men had few books was favorable to their continuing to read Latin through life, instead of dropping it as most now do as soon as their college course is finished. The Latin order of words is so different from that of any modern tongue, and its construction is so inverted and invol- we'd through the use of case and tense endings, that few eyer learn to reach it with the ease with which they readmodern languages. But. when books were fewer, men re-read the few they did have with persistency of which people in these days can-have little notion. So, by the time the educated person of the Sixteenth Century had read over and over again his few Latin books, he became as fa- miliar with them as with the books written in his own tongue. His talk, his speeches, his writings, were interlarded and overloaded with Latin quotations and classical allusions to such an extent as to greatly mar for the mod ern reader much of the best literary work of the period. Indeed it is only when we re- member how entirely the Latin overshadowed all other lteratures three centuries since that we can forgive what seems to us the atrocious pedantry then prevalent.
 As our own literature grew in size and in value, the classic tongues began to take lower comparative position; but, once fas- tened on the curricnls of all the schools and colleges. they have maintained hold which we cannot but believe greatly disproportioned to their intrinsic value. In our day, the lit- eratures of Greece and Rome have ceased to form any part of the usual reading of educated men, at least of educated Americans. Since Mr. Summers death Latin quotations (pp Con- gressman ever dared quote Greek) are no longer to be found Tn the Congressional record eve speak with some difidence from an i'm perfect acquaintance with that work). Some irreverent newspaper writer has even asserted that Daniel Webster had to be ''coached" in the Latin quotations he occasionally thunder ed at the Jackson Democracy.
 But while the classics are practically out of date as literature here n America, they have been improved into wonderful grammatical grind. In long article published by the au. thorities of the Sheffield Scientific School, some years since, in vindcation of their re- quirement of a preparation in Latin for study of the modern languages, they lay great stress upon the wonderful perfection to which scholars have brought the Latin gram mar. No other linguistic study can take its place, they think. Even within our own re- membrance there has been great increase of severity in the grammatical grind in use in schools and colleges. AS one college sharpens it's drill, another follows suit, till, as mere exercise of intellectual keenness, the ''gerund- ipAi Of hoof ho. become something as wonderful in it's way as the military drill of the great Frederick.
 As process of intellect sharpening, this dead language grind is not without value; no process ofintellect sharpening even meta physics-ls absolutely worthless. But the one language, if any, an American college student should be able to dissect and to recon struct in that elaborate and pains taking man. ner is his own. It is of no avail that he can explain all the sinuosities of the Latin sub- junctive if he cannot tell where to locate the ''shali' and the 'will' of his own tongue. The time spent in college on the niceties of Latin and Greek construction is enough, if devoted to the writing of their own language, to give a facility and an accuracy, if not an elegance, in
 it's use such as very few college graduates can | now claim.
 What we have said on this subject is sug- gested by remark on the excellent article on the late Master of the Gunnery school reprint ed oh our first page, to the effect that he taught the language first; the grammar, af- forwards. This is the way every person learns his own language. It is the way the best teachers teach the modern languages. Why, then. should the dead language be taught by the reverse process Certainly if the dead language is to be made interesting, it is not by any gramatical grind such as makes the modern boy detest the sight of Cesar or Livy, books which read in the free and easy way he learns to read French, would seem interesting to him. It was more in that way, if we are not mistaken, that Latin was read in Queen E,izabeth's time. If one of the old scholars could appear in modern class room, we guess he would make but poor figure in | grammar drill, but in the off hand translation the elegant rendering, the speaksms, of the lan- guage of Cicero and Virgil, we imagine he would easily surpass the strict constructonists of these later days. In short Latin awakened and enriched the intellect of the one period ]; it merely sharpens that of the other. The two styles of scholarship are nowhere better contrasted than in the King James translation and in the recent revision, of the New les ta ment: the earlier school was occasionally faulty in it's Greek, but it's English is perfect i; the later is perfect in it's Greek, but its En. glish is the English of the ''gerund- grinder" |
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