Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	great_a	know_v	time_n	2,755	5	3.2913	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A38968	An examen of the way of teaching the Latin tongue to little children, by use alone Englished out of French.; Examen de la manier d'enseigner de latin aux enfans. English.		1669 (1669)	Wing E3707; ESTC R13765	24,631	92

number and vastness of things desirable to be known or to lengthen Life should want matter to employ it as long as it shall last and how those who avow that Latin may be learnt till the age of seaven years doubt Whether there will be matter enough of more consequence than the Latin Tong to take up the time from seaven years to fifteen For if you be onely in paine how to employ them without changing the ordinary course of instructing Children in Learning you may give them to read from time to time not only some of the familiar Letters or Orations of Cicero as is vsual but also his Books of Oratory and all his Philosophical Works wherein there is so much matter to learn and study besides Quintilian Terence the Commentaries of Caesar Pliny the Younger Livy Salust Columella Tacitus Pliny the Elder c. then Virgil and some selected parts of Ovid Horace c. Further the modern Historians as Cambden Strada Masseus Paulus Ievius thuanus c. not to mention so many French Books that may be recommended to their perusal during that time It cannot be doubted but that those and such like Books will employ a Child untill it be 17. or 18. years old 2. That such employment will be more beneficiall to Children than the rules of the Language 3. That it will be more pleasing and delightfull to them 4. That it it will prove a great ease to the Parents that cannot be at the charges requisite to entertaine Tutors at home forasmuch as after their Children shall have learnt the Latin Tongue by Use alone they may be placed in Colledges and there applyed to read Authors and Books written in the Language of their own Country and especially such as belong to the History thereof during the time which other Children spend in the inferior Schools making them give an account of what they thus read in the intervals of those Schools But as men are born to know other things besides Fables Rhetorick and History and since there is much knowledg more necessary and Children are capable to be entred in such knowledge it will certainly be found that that pretended Vacuum how great soever it may appear will hardly be sufficient to learn what a Child well born can and ought to know before it is engaged in any Profession It would be the only means to equall the Antients by following their Example For they have not surpassed us but in this that they employed in learning to Design Arithmetick Geometry Musick Exercises Eloquence Philosophy and Armes that same time we spend in learning the Rules of a Language And this was that which made their Philosophers Souldiers as we may see in the person of Socrates and their Generals Orators and Philosophers as Xenophon Alexander Caesar and so many others It would be proper to show in this place that Children are capable to understand some of the Sciences and even the most important and the most necessary For that purpose it would suffice to alledge that 't is a thing that hath been tryed not only by the Antients as easily appeares by reading Plato and Aristotle where there are express places but also by the Moderns and that most of the Sciences may be so propos'd that the study of them will rather be a divertisment than a Labor But it will be fit to add that though we had no Experience of it yet it were easy to foresee that it would be so by Reason For those that are most tyed to the Teaching of Latin by Rules must the more grant that they suppose Children are capable to understand them But there is none of all those who teach Grammar that knows not that it contains 1. The Ideas of the different parts of Discourse 2. The Rules for each of those different parts 3. The Rules of their Composition call'd Syntaxe They must therefore Iudge Children capable to understand all that even from the Age of 6. or 7. years And indeed I have known some of that age who had pass'd thorough all those 3. parts and understood them Now I say that whosoever is capable to enter into that knowledge by that way is capable also to enter into almost all Scienecs especially those that Object of which is sensible 1. What concerns the Ideas of the different parts of discours we must grant that they cannot be understood unless you make in generall at least the distinction of Substance Accident Place Time Action Passion and of all the Relations thence resulting which comprehends that part of the etaphysicks we call Categories or Predicaments which we know to be very abstract they being only invented to facilitate the Mentall distinction of many things which we commonly see confus'd in Nature Now who can doubt but it will be more easy to show to a Child the Rising and Setting of the Sun and Moon and the other Principles of Cosmography which they may be directed to see without vexing them with Abstractions and afterwards to make them pass to Geography and the other Sciences depending thereon 2. As to the different Inflections or Accidents of Speech who sees not that they depend on a thousand eqstractions from Persons time passed present and to come That the Infinitive comprehends in its Idea the abstraction of all the differences of Time Numbers and Persons And that in the Times given to it it is nevertheless Infinitiue that is Indefinite because it containes in its Idea the Abstraction from all Persons That the distinction of those Moods depends on the distinction which is between the Idea of the simple Indication and that of Command and Desire c. That the Cases of Nouns are at least as abstracted as the Moods of Verbs and yet more difficult to understand And this being so who can doubt but a Child would be more capable to understand History with some Figures That the Genealogies themselves who make one of the greatest difficulties thereof would not be more easie to him then the reducing of a Derivative to its Primitive call'd the Investigation of the Theme and that it would not be more ready to him to remember e.g. that the King is the Issue of Robert Count of Clermont Son of St. Louys descended of Hugh Capet issued of Childebrand son of Charles Martel borne of the Marriage of Ansbert and Blitilde Daughter of Clotaire the First than to say that such a Word is the third person of the singular number of the preter-plus-perfect Tense of the Subjunctive of the Passive of such a Verbe In short there is not a Child which you may not make comprehend sooner the Demonstration of that Theorem of Geometry and of almost all others which saith If two Sides are equall to two Sides and the Angle to the Angle the whole is equall than the simple terms of the following Rule of Syntax which may serve for an Example of many other Rules viz. If two Substantives meet of different Genders and different Persons then the

all their respects and dependences to learn words to distinguish all their significations and proprieties to apprehend the order they are to keep to one another c All these things are certainly very difficult in themselves and are the more so to Children in that they less comprehend what it means that they are taken all at once from the Commerce of the World to speake a language to them they understand not which they think they need not and which affords them no pleasure at all but rather deprives them of al their divertisements gives them much trouble and draws on them all the little punishments and tedious treatments which they cannot be exempted from how much soever you be inclined to educate them with ingenuity and gentleness When a Child is punisht for having beaten another for lying stealing c. it understands well enough that it hath done ill and though it should not know it yet it seeth that in those things there is equal Iustice done to all children they passing every where for faults which deserve punishment But it would be pretty difficult to give to a little child a reason naturall enough of the evill it hath done and of the punishment it hath deserved for having mis-construed an Adjective with a Substantive and why we exact that of him which we require not from so many other Children who doe no more than to read write and speak their Language without being oblig'd to take notice either of Declensions or Conjugations or Syntax or Heteroclites nor any of all those perplexities of Tenses Cases Persons Articles and Constructions 'T is notorious how great an aversion we naturally have from all what is constrain'd and how sure a means it is to hinder Children from doing a thing to command them to doe it though even that which they are commanded should be agreable to them And thence 't is easie to guess what aversion they naturally conceive for a thing painfull in it self wherein it seems that we command them only to command them And the whole sequele of their Studies may appear as if we would make them believe we took a kind of pleasure in tormenting them or at least that we indulged them not enough since besides the difficulties which seem unavoidable we also engage them in such as might be avoided as some Persons very able and very well versed in the Art of Teaching Children have shew'd both by their Writings and by the Tayals they have made In those Writings it hath been made appear first Of what importance it would be to give for example in French the Rules of the Latin Tongue that are given in Latin Secondly How much more advantagious it would be to make Children read Authors as soon as they have learnt the more general Rules of the Grammar and not to oblige them to translate French into Latin but when they shall have known by the reading of Authors the propriety of the words their order and dependences We shall not repeat here what may be seen in those Writings but t' is easie to infer from what is there layd down which experience confirms every day that 't is almost impossible that a young man educated after that manner entring into Rhetorick can therein produce any thing but what is very mediocre since 't is impossible to write well in a Language which one understands not well and well to understand a dead Tongue but by a long use of Authors and that the Schollars who are taught it have almost read nothing of Authors in the other Forms Thus they commonly spend two yeares in that Form in composing a Language they understand nor 'T is true that then 't is endeavour'd to make them understand it by Reading but 't is too late to make them begin what they should have done before they undertook any composition Thus all they can have profited at the end of those two yeares is to have got by their Reading some relish for the Latin Tongue yet without any readiness either to express themselves therein in familiar conversation or to write of any considerable matter in the same which two things are of a more important more frequent and more universal Use than those Themes in the Air which are given them to dilate upon teaching them to say that in many pages which they might say in few lines It is needless to add here the disadvantage there is in all this as to Rhetorick t is sufficient to take notice that none but a very inconsiderable progress can be made in the Latin Tongue the Old way And yet that is all the fruit of C. or 7. yeares In regard of which slender proficiency it would be the more proper not to expose a young habit which hath cost so much and is yet so feeble to so many things that may weaken it But yet this is that which is done to which two faults may be ioyned a third perhaps the most considerable viz. That Children are made to pass from Rhetorick to Philosophy There they remain two yeares during which time they are spoken to and are made to speak in a Language that is neither French nor Latin There is almost no Latin in it but the Terminations of words certainly you can find nothing of true Latinity there I see nothing more capable to make them forget Latin than this Philosophical Latin and I am perswaded that it maketh them lose more the true gust of it than the Tongue of all others most remote from Latin And yet it would be very easy to teach them the same things in the true purity of that Tongue There is nothing more accurate nor more acute in all Logick than in the Academick Questions of Cicero there is nothing greater nor sublimer in the Morals than in the Entertainments of Tusculum in the Books of Good and Ill and in those of the Duties of the Civil Life There is nothing more exact in Natural Philosophy than in the Books of the Nature of the Gods and the Fragment of the Traduction of Timeus by the same Author In a word I am perswaded that if one had a mind to copy with attention those Originals one might find matter and forme to frame thence a very dogmatical very clear and very Latine Philosophy It is now easie to conclude from all that hath been said that one learns in the common Schooles very litle Latin with great pain and with great expence of time To which may be added That children forget the best part of what they knew before they entred them which is their own Mother-tongue and the Writing thereof and that they faile to learn what they might have learnt all that time they have bestow'd upon a little Latin If now we shall put it into the ballance on one side the little that is gain'd the much that is lost and that might also have been acquired and on the other side the Uses that one may propose to one's self in the Learning of that