PREFACE
My apology for adding another to the formidable array of elementary Latin manuals is that there is no book in existence which satisfies the requirements which I have in mind as of most importance for the fruitful study of the language by beginners. What I desiderate is : —
1. A continuous narrative from beginning to end, capable of appealing in respect of its vocabulary and subject matter to the minds and interests of young pupils, and free from all those syntactical and stylistic difficulties which make even the easiest of Latin authors something of a problem.
2. A work which shall hold the true balance between too much and too little in the matter of systematic grammar. In my opinion, existing manuals are disfigured by a disproportionate amount of lifeless Accidence. The outcome of the traditional system is that the pupil learns a multitude of Latin forms (Cases, Tenses, Moods), but very little Latin. That is to say, he acquires a bowing acquaintance with all the forms of Nouns and Verbssuch as Ablatives in a, e, i, o, u, 3rd Persons in at, et, it, and so forthbefore he gets a real hold of the meaning or use of any of these forms. But, as Goethe said in a different connexion, “What one cannot use is a heavy burden”; and my experience leads me to think that a multitude of forms acts as an encumbrance to the pupil at an early stage by distracting his attention from the more vital matters of vocabulary, sentence construction, and order of words. The real meaning of the Ablative, for instance, can be just as well learned from the 1st Declension as from all the declensions taken together. And further, to run over all the declensions without proper understanding of their meanings and
