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ELEGANTIÆ LATINÆ;

OR,

RULES & EXERCISES

ILLUSTRATIVE OF

Elegant Latin Style z

INTENDED FOR THE

USE OF THE MIDDLE AND HIGHER CLASSES OF

GRAMMAR SCHOOLS.

By Edward Lo

Ipsa Oratio conformanda non solùm electione, sed etiam construc-
tione Verborum.Cic.

FROM THE FIFTH ENGLISH EDITION.

NEW-HAVEN:
HOWE & SPALDING PUBLISHERS.

$. CONVERSE, PRINTER

1819.

12-30-3, IS

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DURING the many years, in which I have been engage in the arduous but important task of teaching the Classi t has never failed to excite my wonder and concern, that in the many attempts, which have been made to smooth the difficulties, with which the road to classical excellence is attended, no method tending to facilitate Latin composition, has been successively pursued from the first introduction of a Youth into the Elementary Exercises, to his arrival into the flowery fields of correct elegance and dignity of style. The greatest care is usually taken in conducting him to a certain point: when he understands the plain application of his rules of Syntax, he is then thrown upon the wide world of elegant Latinity, in which the range he is to take, though stripped of the thorns of grammatical analysis, is still very precarious; his progress is still ascensu difficilis. For unless the Master is at liberty to point out very minutely the particular words or arrangement of words which constitute elegance, he must greatly depend upon his own judgment and observation for the knowledge of them. And there is as great a difference between the mere grammatical structure of a sentence, and the elegant usage and collocation of words, as between the rude sketch of an imperfeet outline, and the fine colouring of a finished painting.

Numerous are the books, both in this and other countries, which have been published upon the elegance of Latin style. But none do I know at all calculated to be put into the hands of Youth. Philologists have displayed much critical knowledge in their learned dissertations upon the style and the beauties of the Latin Language. But that knowledge and those researches were neither intended, nor calculated to be useful to young beginners. A pleasant little book, (Les Déli

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