CHAPTER IX.
OF THE BEST METHOD OF TEACHING GRAMMAR.
"Quomodo differunt grammaticus et grammatista? Grammaticus est qui diligenter, acutè, scienterque possit aut dicere aut scribere, et poetas enarrare: idem literatus dicitur. Grammatista est qui barbaris literis obstrepit, cui abusus pro usu est; Græcis Latinam dat etymologiam, et totus in nugis est: Latinè dicitur literator."--DESPAUTER. Synt., fol. 1.
1. It is hardly to be supposed that any person can have a very clear
conviction of the best method of doing a thing, who shall not at first have
acquired a pretty correct and adequate notion of the thing to be done. Arts
must be taught by artists; sciences, by learned men; and, if Grammar is the
science of words, the art of writing and speaking well, the best speakers
and writers will be the best teachers of it, if they choose to direct their
attention to so humble an employment. For, without disparagement of the
many worthy men whom choice or necessity has made schoolmasters, it may be
admitted that the low estimation in which school-keeping is commonly held,
does mostly exclude from it the first order of talents, and the highest
acquirements of scholarship. It is one strong proof of this, that we have
heretofore been content to receive our digests of English grammar, either
from men who had had no practical experience in the labours of a
school-room, or from miserable modifiers and abridgers, destitute alike of
learning and of industry, of judgement and of skill.
2. But, to have a correct and adequate notion of English grammar, and of the best method of learning or teaching it, is no light attainment. The critical knowledge of this subject lies in no narrow circle of observation; nor are there any precise limits to possible improvement. The simple definition in which the general idea of the art is embraced, "Grammar is the art of writing and speaking correctly," however useful in order to fix the learner's conception, can scarcely give him a better knowledge of the thing itself, than he would have of the art of painting, when he had learned from Dr. Webster, that it is "the art of representing to the eye, by means of figures and colors, any object of sight, and sometimes emotions of the mind." The first would no more enable him to write a sonnet, than the second, to take his master's likeness. The force of this remark extends to all the technical divisions, definitions, rules, and arrangements of grammar; the learner may commit them all to memory, and know but very little about the art.
3. This fact, too frequently illustrated in practice, has been made the basis of the strongest argument ever raised against the study of grammar; and has been particularly urged against the ordinary technical method of teaching it, as if the whole of that laborious process were useless. It has led some men, even of the highest talents, to doubt the expediency of that method, under any circumstances, and either to discountenance the whole matter, or invent other schemes by which they hoped to be more successful. The utter futility of the old accidence has been inferred from it, and urged, even in some well-written books, with all the plausibility of a fair and legitimate deduction. The hardships of children, compelled to learn what they did not understand, have been bewailed in prefaces and reviews; incredible things boasted by literary jugglers, have been believed by men of sense; and the sympathies of nature, with accumulated prejudices, have been excited against that method of teaching grammar, which after all will be found in experience to be at once the easiest, the shortest, and the best. I mean, essentially, the ancient positive method, which aims directly at the inculcation of principles.
4. It has been already admitted, that definitions and rules committed to memory and not reduced to practice, will never enable any one to speak and write correctly. But it does not follow, that to study grammar by learning its principles, or to teach it technically by formal lessons, is of no real utility. Surely not. For the same
