PREFACE. THE present treatise has been drawn up at the urgent request of numerous teachers, who asked for an easier and more elementary work than my "Historical Outlines of English Accidence," published some two years ago. I have endeavoured to the best of my ability to produce a short historical grammar that might be advantageously used as an introduction to my larger book. I have not, however, made a new book by cutting down and compressing the old one. These "Elementary Lessons" constitute an entirely indepen dent work, with many peculiarities of arrangement that at once distinguish it from the "Accidence." A reference to the earlier chapters alone will at once show how very different the two books are. The illustrative examples scattered throughout the present work are for the most part new, very few of them having been quoted elsewhere. I trust that, to those engaged in the higher education of boys and girls, these lessons will prove helpful in promoting a more thorough knowledge of our "mother tongue," the study of which has of late years been put on a better footing, and has acquired a distinct, and by no means an unimportant, place in the curriculum of a liberal education. Syntax is not treated of in this volume, but I hope before long to be able to get out both a small and a large book on this important subject. |