A LATIN GRAMMAR BY CHARLES E. BENNETT PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN CORNELL UNIVERSITY Boston ALLYN AND BACON 1895 PREFACE. THE object of this book is to present the essential facts of Latin grammar in a direct and simple manner, and within the smallest compass consistent with scholarly standards. While intended primarily for the secondary school, it has not neglected the needs of the college student, and aims to furnish such grammatical information as is ordinarily required in undergraduate courses. The experience of German educators in recent years has tended to restrict the size of school-grammars of Latin, and has demanded an incorporation of the main principles of the language in compact manuals of 250 pages. Within the past decade, several grammars of this scope have appeared which have amply met the exacting demands of the full Gymnasial Latin course, a period of study representing quite as much reading as that covered by the average American undergraduate. The publication in this country of a grammar of similar plan and scope seems fully justified at the present time, as all recent editions of classic texts summarize in introductions the special idioms of grammar and style peculiar to individual authors. This makes it feasible to dispense with the enumeration of many minutiae of usage which would otherwise demand consideration in a student's grammar. In the chapter on Prosody, I have designedly omitted all special treatment of the lyric metres of Horace and Catullus, as 1 One of the most eminent of living Latinists, Professor Eduard Wölfflin, of Munich, has expressed the opinion that the essentials may be given within even smaller compass than this. See his Preface to the Schmalz-Wagener Lateinische Grammatik, 1891. 451920 well as of the measures of the comic poets. Our standard editions of these authors all give such thorough consideration to versification that repetition in a separate place seems superfluous. In the matter of "hidden quantities,' I have conformed to Lewis's Latin Dictionary for Schools, and the same editor's later Elementary Latin Dictionary. In several cases this procedure has involved a sacrifice of convictions as to the actual quantity of vowels; but the advantages of uniformity in our educational practice seemed, for the present at least, to warrant this concession of personal views. The discussion of inflectional forms and of the development of case and mood constructions has been reserved for the Appendix for Teachers, where these and some other matters receive full and systematic consideration. To several of my colleagues, who have generously assisted me with their advice and criticism during the preparation and printing of this book, I desire to offer my sincerest thanks, especially to Professors H. C. Elmer and B. I. Wheeler, of Cornell University, Professor Alfred Gudeman, of the University of Pennsylvania, Professor George L. Hendrickson, of the University of Wisconsin, and Professors Francis W. Kelsey and John C. Rolfe, of the University of Michigan. ITHACA, N. Y., Dec. 15, 1894. |