“No less than four mistakes, Mr. Wall. I hardly know where to begin to correct you. What part of speech is item?”
“A pronoun.”
“What does it mean?”
“The same.”
“Will you decline it?”
“Item--eatum--item.”
“You need not go on. You have mistaken the word for idem. It means ‘likewise.’ Is literis nominative?”
“No, sir; it is dative.”
“It is ablative, and fiebat cannot be rendered actively. Without specifying all the mistakes, I will translate for you, ‘and likewise was informed by the letters of Labienus,’ Certior fiebat means, literally, ‘was made more certain;’ but we cannot always translate literally.”
It would be tedious to follow John through his blundering recitation. He made fewer mistakes in the passages that succeeded, but it was easy to see that he knew very little Latin. His lesson comprised the whole of the first section, and was on the whole the worst recitation to which Walter had ever listened. He could not help thinking that Mr. Barclay made a mistake in merely correcting the errors, without adding directions by which a repetition of them might be avoided; and he resolved, if John should become his pupil, to drill him thoroughly in the elementary principles of the language.