Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/95

Rh English is best learned through the study of Latin, that I maintain the opposite view; namely, the true natural method is to pass from English, which is easy for us, to the study of Latin, which is difficult—to pass in true logical order from the known to the unknown. I apply this great principle in my method of teaching English, beginning with the simple modern forms that are known to the student, and working back gradually to older and more complex forms which, if presented at once to the student, would seem as uncouth as Greek or Choctaw.

I must now say a few words about the method of teaching English; for, if the study of English is to occupy the foremost place in our institutions of higher instruction, the method of teaching it becomes exceedingly important. I am disposed to think that the unfruitfulness so often seen in English teaching is the result of wrong methods. Most destructive of all good results is the theory of the grammar-mongers who, not recognizing the fact that the English language is a language, with facts and idioms worthy of independent study, attempt to bring its facts into conformity with the rules of the Latin grammar. It would of course be just as wise to take English grammar as the basis of a Latin grammar. English is a Teutonic language, with its own independent grammar, and must be studied as English and not as a corrupt form of Latin. It has borrowed words, but not grammatical principles, from the Latin, Whatever is common to the two languages comes to each alike from their common mother, the Aryan Ursprache.

The two great instruments of study are history and comparison.

The historical method of study is the only road to a critical knowledge of our mother-tongue; but before we can employ this method intelligently, we must get a clear conception of the continuity of English. We must recognize the fact that in English literature there has been an unbroken succession of authors from Cædmon to Tennyson, a period of twelve hundred years. The language of King Alfred and the language of President Hayes are one and the same. "In fact," says Mr. Skeat, "there is no difference between modern English and that oldest form of it to which the name of Anglo-Saxon has been given, except such as has been naturally and gradually brought about by the mere lapse of time (occasioning the loss of some words and some alteration in the form and meaning of others), and by the enlargement of the vocabulary from foreign sources. In a word, old English is the right key to the understanding of modern English, and those who will not use this key will never open the lock with all their fumbling"—with all their attempts to use the counterfeit Latin-grammar key. No critical student, following the historical method, can stop in the fourteenth century in his search for old English. He can find no resting-place—no distinct break in the continuity of the language. Between the writers of one period and those of the preceding generation, the differences are always slight, even in times of most rapid