Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/727

Rh, or a conjunction, in a Latin sentence, will probably know what name to give to words performing similar functions in an English sentence. If he knows that "cum" is called a preposition, and that "cum" means "with," he will probably be able to say that "with" is a preposition.

A pupil acquainted with English grammar, before commencing with Latin, has the same advantage toward knowing Latin grammar. If he has been taught to call "with" a preposition, and that "with" stands for "cum," he will probably be able to tell that "cum" is a preposition.

In the above I make a very full concession. It is extremely doubtful whether an ordinary boy would recognize an inflected part of speech in English, from knowing a similar part of speech in Latin. How many boys, if told that "bona" is an adjective, would make out that "good" receives the same grammatical name?

There is no further coincidence between English grammar and Latin grammar. The two languages have very different modes of inflection, whether for noun or for pronoun, or for verb, or for adjective, or for adverb; different concord, different government, different order; and, of course, different derivation and different composition. In all these respects—that is, in all the important or practical part of grammar—the usages of the two languages are wholly different. We cannot know English declensions from Latin declensions, English conjugations from Latin conjugations, English syntax from Latin syntax. "Would a boy know that the past participle of have is had, from knowing that the supine of habeo is habitum; or, knowing the one, would he more easily remember the other? What boy, familiar with Latin declensions and conjugations, would discover by his unaided reason that there were such things as declensions and conjugations in English? Mr. Dasent's evidence clinches this. He bears witness of good Latin scholars that" they did not know even that there was any syntax or construction of the English language."

We are driven to conclude that this too common argument is an example of the error deplored by Mr. Mill—an example of using words without thinking of their meaning. Nobody, after remembering that Grammar is an account of the usages of a language, would be guilty of saying that the best way to get acquainted with the usage of one language is to study the usage of another.

It may be said that the knowledge of another grammar than our own helps our acquaintance with our own grammar, by way of contrast. True, but foreign usages may be illustrated well enough for this purpose with our own vocables. Take, for example, the inflections of Latin and Greek: what hinders the English teacher from showing that, in those ruder and less flexible tongues, relational particles were stuck on at the end of a word, instead of being placed before the word in a separate form? That, instead of saying "He struck with a