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thors which he baa selected , there are frequent allusions to ancient manners and customs , ancient instruments aud modes of warfare , &c , it seems absolutely necessary that explanatory references and observations should be introduced at the time of translation , in order to render the author intelligible to the
scholar . With all due deference to Mr . S ., I think this plan would fix instead of interrupting attention , and tend to render the classics " one of the most agreeable branches of study . " * The fifth rule contains nothing which would not be thought of by almost all instructors of youth .
The five rules are followed by an observation which clearly demonstrates that Hamiltonian tuition , if at all worthy of adoption , is so only in the case of adults , or of very precocious boys . In sooth , as Hamilton designs to give " a knowledge of words , " boys need to be taught their own language ou his method , before tney engage in the acquisition of any other . Mr . Stevens entertains extravagant
uo-I must take laudatory notice of Mr . Stevens' use of a Classical Grammar with au English syntax , though I pretend not to an acquaintance with the one which he adopts . According to Mr . S . ' s principle of the pupil seeing what he may hear , ( which should be applied very cautiously , ) it is not only just that the pupil should learti rules in the same language in which the tutor makes his
observations ; but it is much more sensible than " the common plan" of repeating by rote , whether with stammering or with glibness , rules that are rarely explained and more rarely understood . May we not also hail with pleasure and with praise the introduction ( chiefly , I believe , by Valpy ) of English notes to classical authors ? Boys find it hard to dissolve and digest Latin notes in addition to a
Latin text , and are in most instances frighteued from the task . Hence they often lose scraps of information , interesting , instructive , and necessary , and are debarred from the useful assistance which explanations without literal interpretations * would give them . But for translations , especially those without note or comment , the shop of the cheesemonger is undoubtedly a better receptacle than the hands of the learner . And
may not the use of English in classical Annotations , Lexicons , and Grammars , tend much to add dignity to our language , whose study is now an object of ambition among literary men in various parts of the world ?
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tlons of a boy ' s power over h& native tongue ; which circumstance is attributable to his professed habit of prompting his pupils . At the part of his narration which we have reached , Mr * S . thinks that < c the manner in which the Hamiltonian system has been applied , has been fully explained , " an idea respecting his details which bears witness to his selfdeception . In our scrutiny hitherto , how many particles of genuine Hamlltonianitsm have been discernible ? Prejudice blinds Mr . S . to his own discovery of the impracticability of the innovator ' s system . The passively injected brain .
like the passively injected corpse , presents a very humble imitation of that important and admirable energy in the active subject which diffuses vital power through the frame . Such methods of making humanity useful , are impotent to communicate animation and vigour ; they are useful only as faintly exemplifying the much higher purposes for which the parts so treated are designed .
We have now advanced with Mr . S . to that part of his statement where he develops the nature of his parsing lessons Having been " favourably impressed with the intrinsic merits" of the Hamiltouian system , he does , not attach nearly enough importance to the very material difference
in his mode of using the common plan ( which renders it not the common plan ) and that generally adopted . No person who is at all acquainted with education r can wonder that Dr . Morell , or any one else , should find the pupils of Mr . Stevens more versed in classical construction than
" the great majority of boys that had read Nepos , Cseaar aud Sail usfc in the usual way , " when he is told with what minuteness the Stevensians were constantly exercised in parsing . That " the usual way" is a very slovenly and superficial one , is seriously to be apprehended ; and this is well accounted for in the
exordium of your article on the London University . " Tis true , His pity ; aud pity ' tis , 'tis true . " No one who has observed the gradual process by which the intellectual operations , especially of children , are carried on , — by which the mind , like the body , performs its work of mastication , deglutition , digestion ,
secretion , —rpan hesitate to ascribe Mr , Stevens ' & success in teaching the classics to this decomposition , this scrutinizing analysis of sentences into their parts , and of single parts into their component parts , with the discovery of their derivations and affinities . In this portion of his plan he is not singular . He who now writes was so trained by his highly revered in-
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Miseellaneous Correspondence . 61
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1829, page 61, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2568/page/61/
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