Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small]

AN ENGLISH GRAMMAR

AND

READING BOOK

FOR LOWER FORMS IN CLASSICAL SCHOOLS

BY THE

REV. O. W. TANCOCK, M. A.

Assistant Master of Sherborne School

OTHE

Oxford

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

M DCCC LXXII

[All rights reserved.]

PREFACE.

THIS little book is intended to help those who are trying to solve the problem of teaching English systematically in classical schools. My object has been to supply an English grammar for lower forms which shall teach a boy to apply grammatical terms and explanations to his own language, and which may be learnt by the side of his Latin grammar with little additional trouble; and to supply a reading book which shall be to the study of English what a Latin Delectus is to the study of Latin. The Glossary explains the meaning and derivation of every word in the Extracts. I believe that a boy who has worked fairly through the book will have laid the foundation of an accurate knowledge of the structure of his mother tongue, and its relation to kindred languages, and will have learned to distinguish between its two great divisions of words—the words of Teutonic, and those of Latin origin. I have not attempted to teach everything, or to supply the place of advanced grammars; but I have great hope that those who use it will have nothing to unlearn when they come to use larger grammars, and to extend their study of English to the earlier stages of the language.

In the Introductory Chapter I have given-for teachers rather than for boys-a sketch of the growth of the language, with some notice of the laws of that growth, and of

« PreviousContinue »