PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

THE motives, which have induced me to enlarge this work very

considerably, and thus to adapt it to the requirements of a higher class of students than the learners for whose use it was originally composed, are in the main identical with the considerations which led me to bestow a similar labour on the second edition of my Greek Grammar. But the present republication involved some special peculiarities both in the starting-point which it presumed, and in the object which I proposed to myself.

In its original form this Grammar was a mere sketch intended immediately, if not exclusively, to be used under my own eye in a school of which I had the entire management; and it was primarily destined, as I mentioned in the preface, to assist my pupils in the practice of Latin prose composition, which the late Bishop Blomfield, an eminent pupil of the school, had wished to encourage by the establishment of a Gold Medal. Circumstances obliged me to bring out the book with as little delay as possible, and it was printed under signal disadvantages. But in spite of its slight texture and its many defects and inequalities, the sale of a large impression has proved that it had some special recommendations in the eyes of teachers and learners; and I embrace with great satisfaction the present opportunity of giving it an extension in size, and, I hope, an exactness in detail, which will not only, as I venture to believe, satisfy the expectations of competent tutors, but also supply classical students, and especially those who wish to acquire the habit of writing Latin, with a sufficient hand-book of

Latin Grammar, adapted no less for continued perusal than for reference in any case when the occasion may arise.

That such a book, as I have wished this to be, is still a desideratum in this country, is a fact which has been impressed upon me by my experience as a teacher and examiner at Cambridge and elsewhere. It is true that Latin Grammar and Latin Composition have been successfully handled in many works of first-rate merit, and at the end of this preface I have given a list of books on those subjects, which are worthy of all praise, and to which I have been directly indebted in the course of the present volume. But though a book such as I have undertaken must by the nature of the case be little more than a compilation from existing works in regard to all the ordinary details, though paradigms, lists of words, and illustrative examples belong to the Edicta tralaticia of Latin grammarians, which are transferred, sometimes in the mass, from one grammar to another in an unbroken succession of literary inheritance*, and though in many particulars it would not be easy to improve on the established method of presenting these facts to the reader, still there is no one of these excellent books, which contains all the information necessarily sought in such a manual as the advanced student requires; they are all defective in the statement of some details of primary importance; and the arrangement of the materials, as well as the succession of topics, introduced for the first time in the original edition of this Grammar, still seem to me to possess some material advantages in comparison with other treatises on Latin grammar. grammar. Accordingly, whether this new edition is regarded as a compilation from other sources, made by a person who has enjoyed considerable experience in regard to the practical exigencies of students; or as a result of original research in many points of detail; or as an attempt to improve the method of gram

* For example, Augustus Grotefend, from whom I have taken most of the examples of subordinate sentences, says distinctly in the preface to his second volume (p. x): "damit auch Niemand versucht werde, fremdes Verdienst mir beizumessen, muss ich noch bemerken, dass die meisten Beispiele unter den Regeln aus Ramshorn's grösserer Grammatik entlehnt sind." I must however remark that these examples as they appear in Grotefend, have required at my hands a good deal of sifting and revision; for in many cases the extracts were erroneously interpreted, or classified wrongly.

matical exposition; it will, I think, be found that, as a whole, it attempts at least to occupy a vacant place in this department of educational literature.

I will briefly explain some of the features of the book which I now present to the reader, referring to the table of contents for a more minute statement of the method which I have adopted.

From first to last my object has been strictly practical. Whether the information collected in these pages is the result of my own labours in the field of Latin philology, or is directly derived from the works of other grammarians, I have wished to give it in the most convenient order, with the most perspicuous exposition of the facts, and without any direct reference to speculations or reasonings, which I have exhibited in another treatise; and while I have omitted what I thought would not be immediately instructive to the student, I have enforced by repetition from different points of view those principles and facts which are most likely to be misapprehended or overlooked by an imperfect scholar.

The grammar is divided into three parts-Accidence, Syntax, and Prosody.

The Accidence, which has necessarily much in common with all the best Latin grammars, is distinguished by an arrangement of the declensions in accordance with the form of the genitive plural, which is the only criterion of the characteristic; a classification of the pronouns according to their real differences in meaning and usage; and an avoidance of the usual error in the order of the conjugations. The Accidence has also a peculiar feature in the attention which is paid throughout to the discrimination of synonyms, to which the student cannot pay too much attention; for without this it is impossible to attain to accuracy and perspicuity in writing Latin. In my arrangement of the declensions the greatest novelty is that of placing the nouns in -es, or the fifth declension of the older grammars, and the nouns in -s preceded by a long vowel or two consonants, among the -i- nouns. With regard to the nouns in I refer the reader to the arguments which I have adduced elsewhere (Varronianus, ed. 3, p. 360). And this arrangement of nouns like urbs, Samnis, &c., does not depend on mere speculation, or even on the form of the genitive plural, for we have positive

evidence that in their original use these words were nouns in -is (see the examples in Corssen, Ausspr. Vokal. u. Beton. 11. pp. 57, 58), and the accent of the nouns in -as indicates a contraction no less certainly than that of tantôn for tantône. In the arrangement of the conjugations, I have, as in the declensions, classified together those forms which end in a vowel, as distinguished from those of which the characteristic is a consonant or a semi-consonant. The ordinary system, which places the -i- verb in the fourth conjugation, is not only contrary to the true theory, but is practically very inconvenient. The fact, that the great majority of vowel verbs in Latin are derivative or secondary formations, corresponding to those of the Greek circumflexed verbs, which are properly placed after the barytones, does not affect the propriety of the arrangement which gives the precedence to the vowel verbs in Latin; for these verbs comprise not only the derivative formations, but also the oldest verbs, which in Greek retain the primitive conjugation in -u (such as sto, do, and pleo); and it will be recollected that the Greek verbs in -u are arranged according to the vowels regarded as their characteristics. I need hardly say that in this, as in the former edition, I adhere to Priscian's doctrine, that the Latin verb has no futurum exactum; and I am really surprised that good modern scholars can still maintain the paradox that fuerit is both indicative and subjunctive, and both future and perfect.

My Syntax is contained in four chapters. In the first of these I have applied to Latin grammar the general principles on which all syntax depends, and I have exhibited in a succinct form the main rules of Latin construction. This preliminary discussion is suggested by the same considerations as those which induce the teacher of Geography to place before his pupils a map of Europe before he introduces them to the examination of a particular country. Besides this, it is desirable that even the advanced student should be able to recur to a summary view of the subject which he has to pursue in such a variety of details.. The three remaining chapters of the syntax are devoted to the separate and methodical investigation of the rules for construing the noun, the verb, and the sentence. In the first of these three chapters I have borrowed