General Remarks on Method Observed

In writing this Book I have had three aims specially in view, which taken together have led to my treating the matter somewhat differently from most other recent writers on the subject.

1. I have endeavoured to set forth the usages both of the Latin of Plautus and of the post-Augustan writers, as well as the usage of Cicero and of the Augustan age. Few things can be more important in the treatment of language than an historical method: what appears hopelessly intricate and irrational, when judged from a scientific point of view which is not that of the historical development, becomes intelligible and almost simple, when we look along the line of growth. No doubt there is much about Latin constructions, as well as about Latin forms, which will always be dark, because we come upon the language not in its youth, but in its maturity, when it was no longer a mere rustic dialect, but a literary language; and, even so, we have at first but the plays of Plautus, a few fragments of other writers, and a few brief inscriptions. Nor have the materials, which exist, been as yet sufficiently studied from this point of view. There is no book on syntax which can bear comparison with Neue's work on inflexions. Yet something of the kind is necessary before a shorter treatise, such as I have attempted, can speak with real precision. Every year however increases the number of contributions to the work.