uses with and without Prepositions is a real danger, as begetting all sorts of misconception and errorso much so that the muddled pupil too often never learns the syntax of the Cases at all. No doubt all the Declensions and Conjugations must be learned before a Latin author is attacked. But when a few of them have been brought within the pupil’s ken, he finds little difficulty in mastering the others in a rapid and more mechanical fashion. In the present book I have dealt directly with only three declensions of Nouns and Adjectives and the Indicative Active of sum and of the 1st Conjugation (incidentally introducing some of the forms of Pronouns, and those forms of the Passive which are made up with the Verb-adjectives, as in English); but in connexion with this amount of Accidence I have treated very carefully the most prominent uses of the Cases with and without Prepositions, and the question of the order of words, which I have reduced to a few simple rules. It is my hope that teachers who trust themselves to my guidance in this book will agree with me in thinking that the time spent on such fundamental matters as these is not thrown away. The pupil who has mastered this book ought to be able to read and write the easiest kind of Latin with some degree of fluency and without serious mistakes: in a word, Latin ought to have become in some degree a living language to him.
Above all it is my hope that my little story may be read with pleasure by those for whom it is meant. The picture which it gives of the early Britons is intended to be historically correct, so far as it goes; and the talk about “anchors” and “boats” and “holidays” will perhaps be acceptable as a substitute for “iustitia,” “modestia,” “temperantia,” and the other abstract ideas which hover like ghosts around the gate of Latin.[1] I have kept my Vocabulary strictly classical, in spite of the temptation to introduce
- ↑ “The pupil ordinarily approaches Latin and Greek through a cloud of abstractions.”A. Sidgwick.
