THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY

232921

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILOEN FOUNDATIONS.

YD BY A. J. VALPY, RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET.

PREFA CE.

THE method of teaching now commonly known by the name of "The Hamiltonian System," appears to have suffered in the opinion of many instructed persons, by over-zealous and injudicious advocacy. Those who have represented it, either as a perfectly new discovery, or as one by which all other modes of instruction may be superseded, ought not to wonder if the well-informed and reflecting have regarded these lofty claims with incredulity.

We are extremely desirous to disclaim all participation in such exaggerated pretensions. In the first place, this plan of teaching is so far from being new, that one of its greatest recommendations is that it has in spirit, and so far as it is really useful, received the sanction of some of the wisest, the most learned, and the most benevolent men who have written on the subject of education. We say, the most benevolent, because we consider any man, let his acquirements be what they may, as essentially disqualified for the business of education, or even for the consideration of the subject, in whom a benignant regard for that class of human beings, over whose happiness or misery he has so great an influence, is not conspicuous; whose acuteness is not sharpened, and invention fertilized, by an affectionate desire to lessen the pains of learning, and to smooth the road to that goal which it is so eminently the interest of society that every young heart should pant to reach.

The distinguished writer of the article on the Hamiltonian system, in the Edinburgh Review, has already shown how strongly this help to learning is recommended by a man to whom the human species is perhaps more deeply indebted than to any other. We need not, therefore, here appeal to Locke's authority. Others, however, whose names are less illustrious, but whose pretensions on the score of learning are not inferior to his, have advocated modes of teaching founded on the same principle, and directed to the same results. Among these, Roger Ascham, tutor to Queen Elizabeth, has great claims to respect. As it may be objected, that the method he recommended is not the one which is now the subject of controversy, we must again disclaim all bigoted attachment to the letter of that method. We regard it as one mode of teaching languages, without the tedious and disheartening process commonly resorted to, more particularly in respect of the dead languages.

Ascham's favourite method of double translation, would form a most useful supplement to the system; and as many of his remarks are strictly to our purpose, we shall extract some of them from his "Schoolmaster," together with two very remarkable illustrations of their truth.

"After the child hath learned perfectly the eight parts of speech, let him then learn the right joining together of substantives with adjectives, the noun with the verb, the relative with the antecedent. And in learning farther his syntaxis, by mine advice, he shall not use the common order in common scholes, for making

VOL. I.

a

of Latines; whereby the child commonly learneth, first, an evil choice of words, then a wrong placing of words; and lastly, an ill framing of the sentence, with a perverse judgment, both of words and sentences. These faults, taking once root in youth, be never, or hardly, plucked away in age. Moreover, there is no one thing that hath more either dulled the wits, or taken away the will of children from learning, than the care they have to satisfy their masters in making of Latines.

There is a way touched in the first book of Cicero de Oratore, which, wisely brought into scholes, truly taught, and constantly used, would not only take wholly away this butcherly fear in making of Latines, but would also with ease and pleasure, and in short time, as I know by good experience, work a true choice and placing of words, a right ordering of sentences, an easy understanding of the tongue, a readiness to speak, a facility to write, a true judgment both of his own and other men's doings, what tongue soever he doth use.

"The way is this: after the three concordances learned, as I touched before, let the master read unto him the Epistles of Cicero, gathered together, and chosen out by Sturmius, for the capacity of children.

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First, let him teach the child chearfully and plainly the cause and matter of the letter; then, let him construe it into English, so oft as the child may easily carry away the understanding of it; lastly, parse it over perfectly. This done thus, let the child, by and by, both construe and parse it over again; so that it may appear, that the child doubteth in nothing that his master taught him before. After this, the child must take a paper book, and sitting in some place, where no man shall prompt him, by himself, let him translate into English his former lesson. Then shewing it to his master, let the master take from him his Latin book, and pausing an hour at the least, then let the child translate his own English into Latin again in another paper book. When the child bringeth it turned into Latin, the master must compare it with Tully's book, and lay them both together; and where the child doth well, either in chusing, or true placing Tully's words, let the master praise him, and say, Here you do well. For, I assure you, there is no such whetstone to sharpen a good wit, and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.

"In these few lines, I have wrapped up the most tedious part of grammar, and also the ground of almost all the rules that are so busily taught by the master, and so hardly learned by the scholar in all common scholes; which after this sort the master shall teach without all error, and the scholar shall learn without great pain; the master being led by so sure a guide, and the scholar being brought into so plain and easy a way. This is a lively and perfect way of teaching of rules; where the common way used in common scholes, to read the grammar alone by itself, is tedious for the master, hard for the scholar, cold and uncomfortable for them both."

And in another place, "I do wish that all rules for young scholars were shorter than they be. For without doubt Grammatica is itself sooner and surer learned by examples of good authors, than by the naked rules of grammar."

In the Second Book, after recommending the constant reading of Cicero, Cæsar, Terence, Plautus, and Livy, and the translating and the re-translating of Cicero's Epistles, he continues: "Here his wit shall be new set on work; his judgment, for right choice, truly tried; his memory, for sure retaining, better exercised, than by learning any thing without the book; and here how much he hath profited shall plainly appear. For here shall all the hard points of grammar both easily and surely be learned up; which scholars in common scholes, by making of Latines, be groping at with care and fear, and yet in many years they scarce can reach unto them.

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I remember, when I was young, in the north they went to the grammar schole little children; they came from thence great lubbers, always learning, and little profiting; learning without book every thing, understanding within the book little or nothing. Their whole knowledge, by learning without the book,

was tied only to their tongue and lips, and never ascended up to the brain and head; and therefore was soon spit out of the mouth again.

I had once a proof hereof, tried by experience, by a dear friend of mine, when I came first from Cambridge to serve the Queen's Majesty, then Lady Elizabeth, living at worthy Sir Antony Denny's, in Cheston. John Whitney, a young gentleman, was my bedfellow; who, willing by good nature, and provoked by mine advice, began to learn the Latin tongue, after the order declared in this book. We began after Christmas; I read unto him Tully de Amicitia, which he did every day twice translate out of Latin into English, and out of English into Latin again. About St. Laurence-tide after, to prove how he profited, I did chuse out Torquatus' talk de Amicitia, in the latter end of the first book de Finibus; because that place was the same in matter, like in words and phrases, nigh to the form and fashion of sentences, as he had learned before in de Amicitia. I did translate it myself into plain English, and gave it him to turn into Latin; which he did so choicely, so orderly, so without any great miss in the hardest points of grammar, that some in seven year in grammar scholes, yea, and some in the University too, cannot do half so well.

"Ye perceive how Pliny teacheth, that by this exercise of double translating, is learned easily, sensibly, by little and little, not only all the hard congruities of grammar, the choice of aptest words, the right framing of words and sentences, comeliness of figures, and forms fit for every matter, and proper for every tongue but that which is greater also, in marking daily, and following diligently thus the steps of the best authors, like invention of arguments, like order in disposition, like utterance in elocution is easily gathered up And for speedy attaining, I durst venture a good wager, if a scholar, in whom is aptness, love, diligence, and constancy, would but translate after this sort, one little book in Tully, (as de Senectute, with two epistles, the first ad Q. Fratrem, the other ad Lentulum,) that scholar, I say, should come to a better knowledge in the Latin tongue, than the most part do, that spend four or five years in tossing all the rules of grammar in common scholes. Indeed this one book with these two epistles, is not sufficient to afford all Latin words, (which is not necessary for a young scholar to know,) but it is able to furnish him fully, for all points of grammar, with the right placing, ordering, and use of words, in all kind of matter.

“And a better and nearer example herein may be, our most noble Queen Elizabeth, who never took yet Greek nor Latin grammar in her hand, after the first declining of a noun and a verb; but only by this double translating of Demosthenes and Isocrates daily, without missing, every forenoon, and likewise some part of Tully every afternoon, for the space of a year or two, hath attained to such a perfect understanding in both the tongues, and to such a ready utterance of the Latin, and that with a judgment, as they be few in number in both the Universities, or elsewhere in England, that be in both tongues comparable with her Majesty. And to conclude: surely the mind by daily marking, first, the cause and matter; then, the words and phrases; next, the order and composition; after, the reason and arguments; then the forms and figures of both the tongues; lastly, the measure and compass of every sentence, must needs, by little and little, draw unto it the like shape of eloquence, as the author doth use, which is read."

The principle upon which both these systems are founded is the same, i. e. that the structure and peculiarities of a language are best learned by habitual observation and imitation; by considering the structure as a whole, (and not in its disjointed parts,) and by noting its peculiarities as they occur.

* Utile inprimis, ut multi præcipiunt, vel ex Græco in Latinum, vel ex Latino vertere in Græcum: quo genere exercitationis proprietas splendorque verborum, copia figurarum, vis explicandi; præterea imitatione optimorum similia inveniendi facultas paratur: simul quæ legentem fefellissent, transferentem fugere non possunt. Intelligentia ex hoc et judicium acquiritur. Lib. 7.

To fix these peculiarities in the mind, one of two ways must be resorted to; either they must be made the subject of distinct and separate rules, and impressed on the memory by the ordinary process of learning by rote, or they must be translated so literally as to arrest the attention by their very discordance with, and remoteness from, our own idiom. This is the real secret of the Hamiltonian method; and therefore the observation of an intelligent foreigner, that "the more barbarous the translation, the better," however startling at first, will be found, on reflection, to be the result of an accurate consideration of the subject. If your translation be such, as to be at all readable,—if it fall in with the language which is familiar to the pupil's ear, with his accustomed manner of arranging his words and clothing his thoughts,-he will read it, and will understand that a given sentence in French is equivalent to the corresponding one in English; but he will not acquire a habit of putting his thoughts into a French dress. The repetition of the un-English turns of expression, which it is impossible he should read glibly, will, it is presumed, impress on his memory whatever is usually learnt by rules.

It never was imagined by the enlightened advocates of the system, that the use of interlinear translations ought to supersede the study of grammar. It is obvious that a language might be acquired, in its purest and most correct form, by what is called the natural mode, that is, by mere imitation, without so much as the consciousness that speech is the subject of rules. To this end nothing would be requisite but the absence of all vicious models. No such situation of things can, however, be commanded; nor, if it could, would the knowledge so acquired be any thing more than vocabulary knowledge. The mind, having gone through no process of generalization, would, of course, neither be furnished with principles applicable to other languages, nor trained to habits of accurate thinking. It is therefore, on all accounts, necessary to master the rules, both general and particular, by which language is governed. But the advocates of the Hamiltonian system contend, that the study and application of the rules of a language ought to follow, and not to precede, the acquisition of the words and phraseology: that the examples being already in the mind, the rules are learned with great comparative ease, and take rapid and deep hold on the memory; whereas nothing can be conceived less likely to engage the attention of a child, or even to baffle the perseverance of a man, than a series of unapplied grammar rules.

The use therefore of interlinear translation, is to furnish the mind with a stock of words and phrases, to which rules may afterwards be applied, and that with a degree of fulness and accuracy proportioned to the wants or tastes of the learner. By many, all that is desired is the easiest and most rapid mode of enlarging their means of communication with books and men. Habitual observation and imitation furnish these means, and furnish them much more effectually than the learning of rules. Every body knows, that it is possible to have every rule in the best French grammar by heart, and yet to speak and write exceedingly stiff and unidiomatic French; and that all teachers recommend the constant reading of good authors, as the only means of acquiring a style at once correct and fluent. Why not then begin with it?

In two pamphlets recently published, the objections urged by the writers apply, not so much to the system itself, as to Mr. Hamilton's declamations against other teachers and modes of teaching, and to the defects of his translations.

On these points he is, indeed, vulnerable; but with these we have no concern. We ascribe no marvellous or mysterious powers to the system, nor would we delude any one with the expectation of acquiring knowledge without labour. No system on earth can enable a pupil to learn a language without the pain of attention; the only question is, as to the duration and degree of the pain, and whether one set of associations is not likely to fix itself more rapidly in the mind than another.

With regard to the translations, we hold it to be impossible for any one, setting out upon the plan of a single literal translation, to free them from the objections to which Mr. Hamilton's are liable. A single translation, if intelligible, will not