| I call is | voc-o. |
| Thou callest, | voc-as. |
| Calling, | voc-ans. |
| I called, | voc-avi &c. |
But do not let him say that active aorists are formed from futures, and passive ones from the third person singular of the perfect. His forms, his paradigms, will be right; his rules, in nine cases out of ten, wrong. I am satisfied that languages can be taught without rules and by paradigms only.
This recognition of what has been called artificial grammar for the teaching of special languages, as opposed to the general grammar of the comparative philologist, should serve to anticipate an objection. 'Would you,' it may be asked, 'leave the details of languages like the Latin, Greek, French, German, &c.—languages of eminent practical utility—untaught until such time as the student shall have dipped into Chinese, touched upon Hungarian, and taken a general idea of the third stage of development from the Latin, and of the fourth from the French? If so, the period of life when the memory for words is strongest will have passed away before any language but his own mother-tongue has been acquired.'
The recognition of such a thing as artificial grammar answers this in the negative. If a special language be wanted, let it be taught by-times: only, if it cannot be taught in the most scientific manner, let it be taught in a manner as little unscientific as possible.
In this lies an argument against the ordinary teaching (I speak as an Englishman) of English. What do we learn by it?
In the ordinary teaching of what is called the grammar of the English language there are two elements. There is something professed to be taught which is not taught, but which, if taught, would be worth learning; and there is something which, from being already learned better than any man can teach it, requires no lessons. The one (the latter) is the use and practice of the English tongue. This the Englishman has already. The other is the principles of grammar. With existing text-books this is an impossibility. What then is taught? Something (I am quoting from what I have written elsewhere) undoubtedly. The facts, that language is more or less regular; that there is such a thing as grammar; that certain expressions should be avoided, are all matters worth knowing. And they are all taught even by the worst method of teaching. But are these the proper objects of systematic teaching? Is the importance of their acquisition equivalent to the time, the trouble, and the displacement of more valuable subjects, which are involved in their explanation? I think not. Gross vulgarity of language is a fault to be prevented; but the proper prevention is to be got from habit—not rules. The proprieties of the English language are to be learned, like the proprieties of English manners, by conversation and intercourse; and a proper school for both, is the best society in which the learner is placed. If this be good, systematic teaching is superfluous; if bad, insufficient. There are undoubted points where a young person may doubt as to the grammatical propriety of a certain expression. In this case let him ask some one older and more instructed. Grammar, as a art, is, undoubtedly, the art of speaking and writing correctly—but then, as an art, it is only required for foreign languages. For our own we have the necessary practice and familiarity.
The true claim of English grammar to form part and parcel of an English education stands or falls with the value of the philological knowledge to which grammatical studies may serve as an introduction, and with the value of scientific grammar as a disciplinal study. I have no fear of being supposed to undervalue its importance in this respect. Indeed, in assuming that it is very great, I also assume that wherever grammar is studied as grammar, the language which the grammar so studied should represent, must be the mother-tongue of the student; whatever that mother-tongue may be—English for Englishmen, Welsh for Welshmen, French for Frenchmen, German for Germans, &c. The study is the study of a theory; and for this reason it should be complicated as little as possible by points of practice. For this reason a man's mother-tongue is the best medium for the elements of scientific philology, simply because it is the one which he knows best in practice.
Limit, then, the teaching of English, except so far as it is preparatory to the study of language in general; with which view, teach as scientifically as possible.
Go further. Except in special cases, limit the teaching of the classical tongues to one out of the two. One, for all disciplinal purposes, is enough. In this, go far. Dead though the tongue be, and object of ridicule as the occupation is becoming, go to the length of writing verses, though only in a few of the commoner metres. Go far, and go in one direction only. There are reasons for this singleness of path. I fear that there is almost a necessity. As long as men believed that the ordinary Latin and Greek grammars were good things of themselves, and that, even if they did not carry the student far into the classics, they told him something of value respecting language in general, a little learning in the dead languages was a good thing. But what if the grammars are not good things? What if they are absolutely bad? In such a case, the classical tongues cease to be learnt except for themselves. Now, one of the few things that is more useless than a little Latin is a little Greek.
Am I wrong in saying that, with nine out of ten who learn both Latin and Greek, the knowledge of the two tongues conjointly is not greater than the knowledge of one of them singly ought to be?