CHAPTER VII. 63 Latin tongue by a grammar with Latin rules, wouldappear even to those masters who teach it so, in its proper colours of absur- dity and ridicule, if those very masters would attempt to learn the Chinese or Arabic tongue, by a grammar written in the Ara- bic or the Chinese language. Mr. Clarke of Hull has said enough in a few pages of the preface to his new grammar 1723, to make that practice appear very irrational and improper; though he has said it in so warm and angry a manner that it has kindled Mr. Ruddiman to write against him, and to say what can he said to vindicate a practice, which, I think, is utterly indefensible. III. At the same time whets you begin the rules, begin also the practice. As for instance, when you decline, musa, musae, read and construe the same day some easy Latin author by the help of a tutor, or with some English translation ; chuse such a book whose style is simple, and the subject of discourse is very plain, obvious, and not hard to be understood ; many littlebooks have been composed with this view, as Corderius' Colloquies, some of Erasmus' little writings, the sayings of the wise men of Greece, Cato'smoral distichs, and the rest which are collected at the end of Mr. Ruddiman's English grammar, or the LatinTes- tament of Castellio's translation, which is accounted the purest Latin, &c. These are very proper upon this occasion, together with Esop's and Phcedrus' Fables, and little stories, and the common and daily affairs of domestic life written in the Latin tongue. But let the higher poets, and orators and histori- ans, and other writers whose language is more laboured, and whose sense is more remote from common life, be rather kept out of sight till there be some proficiency made in the language. It is strange, that masters should teach children so early 'Iully's Epistles or Orations, or the poems of Ovid or Virgil, whose sense is oftentimes difficult to find, because of the great transposition of the words ; and when they have found the grammatical sense, they have very little use of it, because they have scarce any notion of the ideas and design of the writer, it being so remote from the knowledge of a child : whereas little ,common stories and colloquies, and the rules of a child's behavi- our, and such obvious subjects, will much better assist the memory of the words by their acquaintancewith the things. IV. Here it may be, useful also, to appoint the learner to get by heart the more common and useful words, both nouns and ad- jectives, pronouns and verbs, out of some well formed and judici- ous vocabulary. This will furnish him him with names for the most familiar ideas. V. As soon as ever the learner is capable, let the tutor con- verse with him in the tongue which is to be learned, if it be a 0 3
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