Three Lectures on Subjects Connected with the Practice of Education

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ON THE TEACHING OF LATIN VERSE COMPOSITION. By E. A. ABBOTT, D.D. HEAD MASTER OF THE CITY OF LONDON SCHOOL. ON THE TEACHING OF LATIN VERSE COMPOSITION. It is very doubtful whether Latin Verse Composition will be, and still more doubtful whether it ought to be, taught in our Public Schools at all a...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ON THE TEACHING OF LATIN VERSE COMPOSITION. By E. A. ABBOTT, D.D. HEAD MASTER OF THE CITY OF LONDON SCHOOL. ON THE TEACHING OF LATIN VERSE COMPOSITION. It is very doubtful whether Latin Verse Composition will be, and still more doubtful whether it ought to be, taught in our Public Schools at all a generation hence. But as the wave of the reforming spirit, which passed over the Head-masters of schools some ten years ago, seems for the present to have exhausted its strength, it is possible that Latin Verse-making will not pass away from among us till the end of the present century. I have accordingly selected the subject for this lecture because, as at present taught, it is one of the most tedious, mechanical, and profitless of our school studies, and a teacher's attention may well be drawn to the best means of diminishing the evils, and increasing the benefits, that may result from it. A few words may suffice as to the present system. Boys generally begin the study young, sometimes as early as 10 or n, and very often before they have any very clear notions of the difference between poetry and prose. Having mastered the rules of prosody, and learned how to construct tags for the beginning and end of a hexameter or pentameter, they then pass to some Clavis, or Nuces, or Elementa, or other manual, in which they are presented with a mass of words, neither Latin nor English, but a mongrel Latin- English, to be rendered literally into Latin Verse. Seldom attaining any amusing height of absurdity, these exercises generally keep a low level of uncouth obscurity, which is, to say the least, not calculated to train the young reader to appreciate a good English style. Take the following extract from a book of merit above the average. The subject is Marius . Of him the Li...