Macmillan’s Shorter Latin Course

It will be well with the issue of the Second Part of this series to state once again what our aims are and by what method we hope to attain them.

We aim at making the first few steps of the student at once more easy to take and more productive of permanent result. It seems to us that it is possible, by following in some respects the method which a child pursues in learning its native language, to make the process of learning Latin easier. A child, for example, uses the little stock of words already acquired over and over again, and only adds a word or two each day. In the same way, we endeavour to make the increase of the vocabulary steady but gradual, so that the student will know or half-know nine-tenths of the words in each exercise, and will have to do comparatively little dictionary work (which is dull), but will be occupied rather in manipulating familiar words (which is interesting). Again, just as a child picks up the various ways in which sentences are put together not so much from explanation as from hearing numberless examples, so we try by constant iteration to accustom the student to the Latin constructions.