immediately, or at a subsequent sitting, by the examination of the class. This double practice is the indispensable accompaniment of oral instruction: it enables the teacher to ascertain if he has been listened to or understood, as also to correct misunderstandings and supply deficiencies. The examination puts bis abilities to the test as much as extemporaneous lecturing, for he must accommodate his questions to the capacities of the learners, encourage their efforts, aid them in difficulties, and draw out all their resources. To the student this succession of critical investigations, compositions, and examinations, is most beneficial: when they are obliged to give, in their own words, an account of the instruction imparted to them, the attention is sustained, industry stimulated, and intellectual independence ensured; the memory is exercised in storing the facts and reasonings brought forward by the professor, the judgment in investigating their mutual relation, and the faculty of speech in condensing and systematising scattered knowledge. They are, in this manner, led to the chief ends of classical education-the habit of serious reflection and nice discrimination, together with the adoption of sound principles in literary criticism, and the power of arranging their ideas and clothing them in suitable language.

SECT. III.-EXERCISE OF THE MIND IN INTERPRETING THE

FOREIGN TEXT.

When students have attained proficiency in reading, their further progress is secured by consideration of the phraseology rather than of the words. Translating sentences, not words, should henceforth be their aim. As they advance, they gradually deviate from literal translation, and choose the expressions which best suit the genius of their own language, preserving, at the same time, the spirit of the original. A free version shows better than a literal one the difference of construction in the two languages, and permits nearer approach to the identical idea of the foreign author. Translation thus becomes truly an exercise in extemporaneous composition, in which the student competes with his model, and tries to equal him in clearness, force, and elegance.

A beginner finds in a literal translation annexed to the foreign text the fittest auxiliary for gaining acquaintance with words; but an advanced student will best enter into the spirit of a

foreign writer, when at a loss for his meaning, by a reference to a free translation. The aid must be of a higher nature with the higher aim of the learner. Many faithful and well written interpretations of ancient and modern classics could be procured, which would answer this object; for works of merit in every language have, for the most part, been translated.

But, before a learner applies to a standard translation, or to any other external aid, he should appeal to his own reflective and reasoning powers. The meaning of the words which now remain unknown to the learner should, if possible, be inferred from the context, an inductive mode of proceeding highly advantageous, as it exercises the understanding and gives habits of mental activity and independence. In the pursuit of any branch of instruction, that method must be preferred, which leads the mind to depend on its own exertions rather than on the evidence of others. The learner should then endeavour to discover some resemblance between the unknown words and those which he knows, either in his own language or in any other; he should decompose them to find in their roots or their terminations some clue to their import; this may also be apprehended from the context or from a consideration of the author's views. In adverting to this mode of arriving at the meaning of words, Dugald Stewart observes, that there is carried on in the mind of the learner a process of natural induction on the same general principles which are recommended in Bacon's philosophy.

*

Not only would this investigation be favourable to mental discipline, but the information thus gained would be more indelibly impressed on the mind, precisely because it had been discovered by mental efforts. Almost all the words we know of our own language have been acquired in this manner. By a process of instinctive analysis and induction, which commences at a very early age, we decompose the sentences into their elements, as we hear the same words used on various occasions. Every instance in which the general meaning of a sentence is understood, leaves some idea respecting the signification of the words met for the first time in that sentence: as they recur, our repeated attempts to discover some common meaning which corresponds with their different acceptations enable us to apprehend with precision their import.

Dugald Stewart, with his usual accuracy, thus describes this process: The first sentence where the word occurs, affords, it

66

* See Philosophical Essays, Part II.

is probable, sufficient foundation for a vague conjecture concerning the notion annexed to it by the author, some idea or other being necessarily substituted in its place, in order to make the passage at all intelligible. The next sentence where it is involved, renders this conjecture a little more definite; a third sentence contracts the field of doubt within still narrower limits, till, at length, a more extensive induction fixes completely the signification we are in quest of. There cannot be a doubt, I. apprehend, that it is in some such way as this, that children slowly and imperceptibly enter into the abstract and complex notions annexed to numberless words in their mother-tongue, of which we should find it difficult or impossible to convey the sense by formal definitions." *

Should a student feel a doubt on the accuracy of his conjecture, he may still be satisfied with the acceptation which he thinks the word bears in relation to the rest of the sentence: if that word be useful, it will occur again; and if the learner be not confirmed in his first conception of it, he may then apply to the dictionary, in the absence of a person able to assist him. But even granting that he should remain ignorant of a few words which he meets in the course of his reading, we do not see that this could be any greater evil than his being unacquainted with thousands of words which do not come within his practice. In the native tongue a reader often apprehends fully the sense of a sentence, although he could not define the exact meaning of each word.

SECT. IV.-ON THE USE OF DICTIONARIES.

The act of finding the meaning of a word in a dictionary does not constitute a discovery, any more than being told it or taking it from a translation: it is a mere reliance on the testimony of others with the additional uncertainty and confusion arising from various interpretations. Nor does the manual operation of turning over the leaves of a lexicon impress the words better on the memory; it only diverts attention from the intellectual pursuit of the moment. To say that this tedious labour affords mental aid is equal to saying that the more circuitous the process of learning, the quicker is the progress-a downright absurdity. In fact, no physical exercise can aid in retaining a mental acquisition any more than all the workings of the mind

* Philosophical Essays, Part I.

can develop a muscle, or give pliancy to a limb. Mental action alone can ensure the recollection of ideas and their signs.

To recollect words, we must fix the attention on them in connection with the ideas they represent; but the schoolboy who uses a dictionary seldom carries his thoughts beyond the first letters which serve him as a clue to the word he wants; his mind is so little engaged in the occupation, that he not unfrequently chooses this time for talking with those who sit near him. The labour of the search is purely manual, and he gains a knowledge of the word from the dictionary neither as pleasantly nor with the same economy of time or the same precision of meaning as he would from a living assistant or a translation. He does not usually recollect it better, because he uses no mental exertion in the search, and bestows no attention on it after the mechanical labour is over. The tediousness alone of the occupation is remembered, and remembered with a painful feeling, which produces aversion to the study.

The inefficiency of the dictionary as a mnemonic auxiliary is proved by experience. We have already mentioned the fact, well known even to the most attentive learners, that the same word has often to be looked for several times at short intervals. Another proof is afforded by the rapidity with which the ancient languages are usually forgotten: the greater number of classical students, a few years after having left school, preserve but a faint recollection of the Latin or Greek words learned with so much trouble from the dictionary, whereas they retain, to the latest period, the native ones which they have gained from conversation or from books, and for the meaning of which they never applied to a dictionary. It may be remarked also that, before the introduction of this auxiliary, many men attained to great eminence in ancient literature through purely oral explanations of the classic writers.

The little time which, in large schools, a teacher can now devote to each of his pupils does not permit him to give them himself the explanations which they individually require; he gets rid of their importunities by referring them to their dictionaries, softening, at the same time, his denial of assistance by the consoling remark that their recollection of the words will be in proportion to their trouble; and so, on the ipse dixit of the master, this sage maxim passes current. But it is obvious that the lexicon is resorted to as a matter of convenience, not as the best means of ascertaining the signification of words.

VOL. II.

I

Although it must be admitted that dictionaries are very tedious and imperfect instruments for converting one language into another, yet we are aware that they become indispensable and must be consulted when readier and more natural means fail. But it must never be forgotten, that words, being only the signs of things, no dictionary can convey a distinct conception of a word until the mind has a clear perception of the thing signified. To a learner desirous of improvement, who is already advanced in a foreign language and able to determine the suitableness of the words to the text, the use of this auxiliary would prove beneficial both as a means of ascertaining their import and as an exercise in discrimination. Whereas, in the hands of young children, or at an early stage of the study, this mode of proceeding is purely mechanical, and there is no adequate compensation for the great expenditure of time which it causes. Dictionaries in two languages are the more perplexing to a beginner, as they often present but approximate interpretations: many words are peculiar to one language and cannot be rendered in another. All idioms abound with expressions of this kind. Other words, which, in their primitive and proper sense, have the same import in two different languages, become untranslatable in some of the figurative acceptations which they occasionally assume.

As an auxiliary in reading, a small dictionary would suffice; for the proper sense of a word being once ascertained, its different applications in particular cases may easily be conceived. But, for the purpose of translating into a foreign language—an exercise suited only to the last stages of the study-a large dictionary is preferable, because the learner wants to select, among the different words given, that which suits best the idea which he has to convey. He requires to see it used in different sentences illustrative of its various import, and the larger the lexicon is, the greater number of these explanations and illustrations will it contain.

The lateness of the publication is another motive of preference in choosing a dictionary; for, as all such works are now mere compilations, the newest is likely to supply the deficiencies of its predecessors and to give the orthography confirmed by the most modern usage.*

*

When in translating a living language, a learner, not yet

* Dr. A Spier's Dictionary of the French and English Languages, which has very recently appeared, is remarkable for its methodical arrangement, and is calculated, by its accuracy and comprehensiveness, to satisfy inquisitive minds in every walk of literature, science, and art.