WESTBORO' REFORM SCHOOL. Mr. Talcott, late Superintendent of the Reform School at Providence, has assumed the duties of the office of Superintendent of the Reform School at Westboro', in place of Mr. Lincoln resigned.

JONATHAN TENNEY, ESQ., has resigned his place as Principal of Pittsfield High School, where his salary was $1000 per annum, and accepted the same office, with the same salary, in the High School in the city of MANCHESTER, N. H. A valuable gold-headed cane and a fine set of "Webster's Works," in 6 vols., 8vo, are among the pleasing testimonials of affection and esteem which he takes with him as presents from his pupils in Berkshire.

Mr. T. has been a Teacher in this State about four years; ⚫ and returns to New Hampshire, where he had previously taught five years, in obedience to a sense of duty to his many strong personal and educational friends in that State, who have been for some time soliciting him to do so.

NORFOLK CO. TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION.

THE next Semiannual Meeting of the Norfolk County Teachers' Association will be held at Chemung Hall, Stoughton, on Thursday and Friday, the 9th and 10th of June.

Lectures will be delivered by Rev. Nathaniel Hall, of Dorchester, and by Mr. Slafter, Principal of the High School in Dedham, and Mr. Rolfe, Principal of the High School, Dorchester.

A full attendance of the friends of education is earnestly solicited.

THE PLYMOUTH CO. TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION WILL hold its Seventh Semiannual Meeting in Loring Hall, at Hingham, on Friday and Saturday, the 10th and 11th of June current.

Lectures will be delivered by Gideon F. Thayer, Esq., of Boston, Rev. J. P. Terry, of South Weywouth, and Rev. Augustus R. Pope, of Somerville. Hon. Horace Mann is expected to be present. The time between lectures will be occupied in discussion.

A. G. BOYDEN, Secretary pro tem.

A Teachers' Institute will be held at Nantucket, August 1st-6th, 1853.

THE

MASSACHUSETTS TEACHER.

Vol. VI. No. 7.]

CHARLES HAMMOND, EDITOR OF THIS NUMBER.

[July, 1853.

DR. LATHAM'S WORKS ON THE GRAMMAR AND LITERATURE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

THE labors of Dr. Latham in illustrating the Grammar and History of the English language, are well known to the scholars of Great Britain. His elementary treatises, prepared for schools of different grades, have given him a wider popular celebrity in England than in the United States; still his Elementary English Grammar, reprinted in this country, and the more recent republication of his Hand-book of the English Language, for the use of the Universities and higher classes of schools, have caused the name of Dr. Latham to be known to American teachers. We are persuaded, however, that his various treatises are not, as yet, in this country, in the hands of that class of teachers and scholars for whose benefit they have been prepared.

We have thought it worth while, therefore, to direct the attention of the readers of the Teacher, to such facts as we have been able to gain respecting the author and the character of the works he has published on the Philology of the English language.

The earliest of his published works, is an Inaugural Lecture delivered at the induction of the author as Professor of the English Language in the London University. This took place October 14th, 1839. In this lecture he takes the ground, that "the English Language furnishes a sufficient disciplinal study in Grammar and Etymology irrespective of the fact of its being the native language of Englishmen." To those who are disposed to discard the use of Latin and Greek as disciplinal studies, we would commend the arguments in favor of a thorough study of English, and those works he has written to show the

comprehensiveness of the subject, as he understands it. We are not satisfied with the conclusion to which we fear he would lead many of his readers, that classical studies might be dispensed with, as a means of introducing the learner immediately and readily to a knowledge of universal Grammar; at the same time he has shown that such an analysis of all the forms and historical relations of our vernacular tongue, would be a task of hardly less difficulty than that now imposed on those who follow those methods so long pursued in all the best English and European schools.

Dr. Latham says, " Our native language is the best instrument in disciplinal study, simply because it is our native language.' The reason of this is, that before the system of any language can be profitably studied, we must acquire a certain quantity of its details. In the attempt to obtain the principles of General or Universal Grammar from the study of a foreign language, the "theory is swamped by the practice," and in the attempt to do two things at once, one is done badly.

The merits of our native language as a disciplinal study, depend, in the opinion of Dr. Latham, "on the chronological extent" of the language embraced or used for this purpose. "There are two stages in Languages through which all sooner or later make their way some sooner than others. The Latin may serve as an illustration. In the time of Augustus, it expressed the relations of Time and Place, its cases and tenses, by Inflection. In the time of Dante there was little inflection, but an abundance of auxiliary verbs and prepositions. In all Languages the inflectional stage comes first. There are languages that remain for an indefinite time in their earlier stage. Others again there are; with which we never come in contact till they have proceeded to their later stage. But languages of this latter kind, are of subordinate value to the Etymologist. He values most those seen in the two stages, so that he may watch the breaking up of one, the constitution of the other, and the transition intermediate to the two states."

"Our own language (the Anglo Saxon being borne in mind) comes under the conditions that constitute a good and sufficient language for disciplinal study in Etymology. It can be studied in two stages. When we come to the time of the Conquest we must acquire a new language. The breaking-up of the Latin is not more a study by itself, than is the study of the breaking-up of the Gothic. For in this stock of Tongues, not only did the Saxon pass into the English, but the Maso-Gothic, Scandinavian and the Frisian, each gave origin to some new Tongue. Considering not the English only, but the whole range of allied Languages forming the Gothic stock, we have a magazine of processes and principles, which not only equals the Classical stock,

but exceeds even the Greek branch of it. Let the Greek and Latin be learned for their own sake; and by those who have the privilege to appreciate them. One might think that the works of Homer and Demosthenes, of Lucretius, Cicero, and Cæsar, were a sufficient reason for turning with diurnal and nocturnal hands the copies that exhibit them. But let us not be told that it is necessary to study the Latin or Greek Accidence for the sake of learning Universal Grammar." Whatever may be thought of the soundness of the views of Dr. Latham we cannot but admire the enthusiasm of the man in entering upon a course of studies in which he had few associates and almost no predecessors among his own countrymen at the outset of his own career as a Professor of English Philology. He says in the preface to the second edition of his great work on the English Language, "In 1840, so little had been done by Englishmen for the English language, that in acknowledging my great obligations to foreign scholars, I was only able to speak of what might be done by my own countrymen. Since then, however, there has been a good beginning of what is likely to be done well. My references to the works of Messrs. Kemble Garnet and Guest, show that my authorities are now as much English as German. And this is likely to be the case. The details of syntax, the illustrations drawn from our provincial dialects, the minute history of individual words, and the whole system of articulate sounds can, for the English, only be done safely by an Englishman; or, to speak more generally, can, for any language, only be dealt with properly by the grammarian whose mother tongue is that language.

Dr. Latham admits that there are not wanting among the older works of English authors, some valuable contributions to what he terms "Gothic philology." But he regards them as forerunners of a brighter day, as suggesting general methods of study, rather than making explorations themselves in the vast field of learning which was to them as yet untraversed. "I should be sorry to speak as if, beyond the writers of what may be called the modern school of philology, there was nothing for the English grammarian both to read and to study. The fragments of Ben Jonson's English Grammar are worth the entireties of many later writers. The work of Wallis is eminently logical and precise. The voice of a mere ruler of rules is a sound to flee from; but the voice of a truly powerful understanding is a thing to be heard on all matters. It is this which gives to Cobbett and Priestly, to Horne Tooke as a subtle etymologist, and to Johnson as a practical lexicographer, a value in literary history which they never can have in grammar. It converts unwholesome doctrines into a fertile discipline of thought."

It is a matter of some surprise to us that no mention is made

of at least one eminent English philologist on this side the Atlantic. The fruits of the ripe scholarship of Dr. Webster in all the varied learning that was needed to write the best dictionary of the English tongue, had been nearly all gathered before the accession of Dr. Latham to his professorship, and before he had published any of his valuable works on the same subjects which had been well nigh exhausted by the great American lexicographer. The Herculean task of accomplishing what Dr. Webster undertook is not comprehended by those who are unacquainted with all that he did. We wish that his "Synopsis of the principal words in twenty languages arranged in classes under their primary elements or letters," might at length be published. It was the result of the hard toil of ten years of study, performed by a master mind in the exercise of its best powers. The scholars of Europe may not be aware of the merit due to the original researches, and successful and untiring industry of the American philologist, but they will always, whether consciously or not, be indebted to his labors in the department of English Literature. They would welcome as a rich addition to the stores of English and Anglo-Saxon philology, this unpublished work of Dr. Webster.

The work of which Dr. Latham speaks in the highest praise is the Deutsche Grammatik of Grimm, which he says is the work, not of an age, nor of a century, but, like the great history of Thucydides, a κτῆμα εἰς ἀεί.

It is the magazine from whence all draw their facts and illustrations. Still, Grimm has not exhausted any part of his great subject except that which pertains to the proper German. His exhibition of the grammar of other kindred tongues is capable of improvement.

The first edition of Dr. Latham's most extensive work, on "the English Language," was published in 1841. The last (third) edition was issued in 1850, and is so much enlarged as to be almost a new treatise. The aim of the author seems to have been to write a complete treatise on all that pertains to the history of the forms of the English language, and thus to show the indebtedness of our noble tongue to all the "languages, tongues, and people," who have each in the progress and revolutions of the ages contributed their part to make our vernacular speech what we now find it to be. Of course the general ethnological relations of the language form a very considerable and a very important part of the work to the general scholar. He goes back to the earliest records of the Anglican and Saxon races long before any thing that is properly English became British. This leads him to treat of the different immigrations of various Germanic tribes into the British Islands, and of the relations of the populations to each other, which coming from