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PREFACE.

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THIS Analysis of the English Language' is intended as a brief, simple, and systematic introduction to the works of Angus, Latham, and Marsh.

Perhaps, at the present time, no subject possesses more Educational importance than the study and practice of Method. To meet, in this direction, a want extensively felt, no less than to counteract in the mind of the student uncertainty and confusion, special prominence has been given to Definition and Classification.

Examples of Syntactical Rules might have been multiplied to any extent, but the bulk of the work would have been seriously increased at a sacrifice of perspicuity.

The SECOND PART embraces, in twenty chapters, those words most likely to occur in general reading. The Saxon element has been carefully referred to the authority of Bosworth and Rask; for, of late years, several Saxon words of dubious origin have crept into existence.

* To promote this desirable object, Logic might receive some encouragement in the Public Examinations as a collateral branch of English. Until this be the case, Grammar may in some degree be made to supply its place.

Upon the subject of Derivation, the works of Wedgwood and Richardson have been principally consulted; and in cases of disputed etymology, two or three of the most plausible conjectures have been offered.

In PART III., to a systematic course of Examination Questions two series have been appended, to illustrate the tone and requirements of the Public Competitive Examinations. One contains a complete list of all the questions on English Grammar and Etymology proposed at the Competitive Examinations for admission to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, from their commencement (1854) to the present time. The other is a collection of the Papers set at the Oxford and Cambridge Local Examinations during a period of seven years.

A comparison of these two styles of examination will suggest several reflections; one especially, the notable absence from the former of Parsing and Analysis, which constitute so prominent a feature of the latter.

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