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LANGUAGE LESSONS: GRAMMAR-COMPOSITION.

A COMPLETE COURSE IN TWO BOOKS ONLY.

THE BEST AND THE CHEAPEST.

I. Graded Lessons in English:

AN ELEMENTARY ENGLISH GRAMMAR, consisting of One Hundred Practical Lessons, carefully graded and adapted to the class room. 160 pages, 16mo. Bound in linen.

II. Higher Lessons in English:

A WORK ON ENGLISH GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION, in which
the science of the language is made tributary to the art of
expression. A course of Practical Lessons, carefully graded,
and adapted to every day use in the school room.
280 pages,

16mo. Bound in cloth.

The two books completely cover the ground of Grammar and Composition, from the time the scholar usually begins the study until it is finished in the High School or Academy.

NOW READY.

A Text-Book on Rhetoric:

Supplementing the development of the Science with exhaustive practice in Composition. A Course of Practical Lessons adapted for use in High-Schools and Academies and in the Lower Classes of Colleges. By BRAINERD KELLOGG, A.M., Professor of the English Language and Literature in the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute, and one of the authors of Reed & Kellogg's Graded Lessons in English" and "Higher Lessons in English.” 276 pages, 12mo.

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A WORK

ON

ENGLISH GRAMMAR

AND

COMPOSITION,

IN WHICH THE SCIENCE OF THE LANGUAGE IS MADE
TO THE ART OF EXPRESSION.

A COURSE

TRIBUTARY

OF PRACTICAL LESSONS CAREFULLY GRADED, AND ADAPTED TO EVERY
DAY USE IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM,

BY

ALONZO REED, A. M.,

INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH GRAMMAR IN THE BROOKLYN COLLEGIATE AND
POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE,

AND

BRAINERD KELLOGG, A.M.,

PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN THE BROOKLYN COLLEGIATE
AND POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE.

NEW YORK:

CLARK & MAYNARD, PUBLISHERS,

734 BROADWAY.

1881.

COPYRIGHT, 1877,

BY

ALONZO REED and BRAINERD KELLOGG.

GEO. MANN RICHARDSON.

No................

C

J. J. Little & Co.,
Printers, Electrotypers, and Binders
10 to 20 Astor Place, N. Y.

LIBRARY

Leland Stanford, Jr.

UNIVERSITY

PREFACE

EVERY one appreciates the value of a correct use of language, and yet the footing of grammar-the only study in our schools that aims to teach this-is very insecure. Children are not enthusiastic in praise of grammar, most parents recall without pleasure their own trials with it, and many men of culture and of wisdom openly advise its banishment from the school-room.

But two causes can be assigned for this wide-spread aversion to grammar. There must prevail a belief either that there is another and a better way to correct expression than that along which grammar conducts one, or that the difficulties in this, the only path to it, are so serious that few ever surmount them and reach the desired goal.

There is, we believe, no other and better way to correct writing and speaking; turning a child loose into the fields of literature will not, we are sure, put his feet upon such a road. De Quincey says that through a circuit of prodigious reading he has met with only two or three writers who did not sometimes violate the accidence or the syntax of English grammar, and any one knows that ordinary writers trip on almost every page. But were literature better, in this regard,

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than it is, and were the influences surrounding the child, when among his mates in the street and on the play-ground, and even when within the circle of his home, less untoward than they are; how is it possible that a mind not yet by special training made sensitive to good usage, taught to discriminate, educated to choose and to reject— how is it possible, we ask, that such a mind should be open to the good and closed to the bad-receptive of the one and impervious to the other? Is it not enough to expect that the seed will take root and grow, after it has been well harrowed into soil that has been made mellow by the plough?

But literature almost valueless, as grammatical discipline, to the child before such training, is invaluable to him after it. It continues the work which grammar has started him in, confirms him in all the good habits he has begun, and carries him up beyond the groundwork of simple correctness to the graces and felicities of expression.

We are constrained, however, to think that this general aversion to grammar arises, not from a belief that there is within reach some substitute for it, but from the manner in which its principles and facts are presented by text-books and by teachers. These dry facts are taught as something to be learned by the pupil, to be stored away in the memory, and to be drawn out and used only or mainly in parsing. It scarcely dawns upon him that all this knowledge can be made helpful to him in his speech, even regulative of it, and can appear in its proper essence and power when by tongue or by pen he attempts to incarnate his thought in language.

We do not say that grammar, as still so generally taught, does no good-we say only that it fails of the highest, the main good possible

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