Until the end of the eighteenth century

English grammar and Latin grammar

It is a familiar but unavoidable difficulty when discussing the teaching of English that all the skills are so interdependent that there are objections to taking any one by itself. Learning to control language is of course an aspect of all the skills so far considered, but it has historically considerable autonomy. Almost without exception our seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury predecessors believed that linguistic control, in English, was achieved through the study of grammar, and it is grammars that provide most of the evidence on which this chapter is based. In a previous work I have described the principal contents of the early grammars, their relationship with Latin, their treatment of the parts of speech, and, less fully, of syntax, together with the grammarians' attempts to reform the categories. The present chapter deals with the aims and methods of the teachers in developing linguistic skill and with the various exercises they used in partial isolation from the teaching of expression and interpretation; but the content of the grammars must be briefly considered, as must the evidence that some teachers were dissatisfied with the traditional system and made efforts to reform it.

The grammars, as textbooks, included much more than parts of speech and syntax. In the same way as many spelling-books acted at an unsophisticated level as manuals of literacy and general knowledge, so the early grammars regularly included some orthography, the figures of speech, correct usage, Latin and Greek roots, homophones, punctuation, versification and letter-writing.