COMPARATIVE APPENDIX, DICTIONARY, AND CONVERSATIONAL CONTAINING A COMPLETE COURSE OF GRAMMATICAL EXERCISES: MONEY TABLES, SHOWING THE RELATIVE VALUE OF FOREIGN AND BRITISH AND VERBS OF BOTH LANGUAGES BY J. DE POIX-TYREL AUTHOR OF "THE GRAMMAR OF HOUSEHOLD WORDS IN FOUR LANGUAGES" PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL GRAMMAR IN FOUR LANGUAGES. "Yes, Education Reform will come and conquer." It is somewhere recorded, that once upon a time a boy found in his book the following definition :-“ A noun is the name of anything, as horse, hair, justice." He misconceived the passage, and read thus:—“ A noun is the name of anything, as horse-hair justice." Being of a reflective turn, he pondered long over the wonderful mysteries of a noun, but in vain; he could not make it out. His father happened to be a justice of the peace, and one day the old gentleman was holding a justice's court;-there he sat in state on an old-fashioned horse-hair seat. A new light suddenly broke in upon the tyro's mind,-"My father," said he, mentally, "is a horse-hair justice, and therefore a noun." It is, however, with the hope that a new and brighter ray of light than the one just mentioned may break in upon those who are desirous of acquiring the power of speaking foreign languages, that this work is offered for study and perusal. The present publication is not intended to supersede any of the many excellent grammars already in existence, but rather to form a grammatical appendix and conversational companion to each and all of them; nor is it intended to suit any particular grammatical theory, but its object is to assist both learned and unlearned in the acquirement of a conversational power in foreign languages hitherto considered so difficult of attainment, but which can easily be accomplished by keeping before the student the grammatical resemblance or difference of each language, together with the idioms as they daily and naturally occur. The present conversational course is based on the broad philological principle of comparative grammar; it is the result of a multitude of facts and experiments, developed step by step with a mathematical precision, that will not allow of a transposition of any of the sections any more than a transposition of the problems in Euclid, of which the truth will soon become patent to the student whose motto is "Try." As no work of this kind has yet appeared, experiment alone can decide whether it will be successful; that it can be made eminently useful to persons desirous of acquiring a conversational power in foreign languages the Author has no doubt, and he is confident that any Englishman will be able to accomplish the task on the simple condition that he proceeds in the right way. Most grammars profess to deal with grammatical difficulties only, leaving the difficulty of idiom for future and prolonged studies. Can this be wise? Does not idiom mingle with the earliest and the most simple sentence uttered by a child, whose fluency at an early age is often and deservedly a subject of envy to the student of mature age? And how has this fluency been attained? Has it been attained by practising the eye in studying a multiplicity of rules and the hand in writing interminable themes? No; the child has never been to school, and cannot even read; it is to the exercise of ear and tongue alone that he owes this fluency, and it is to the neglect of this exercise alone that must be attributed that lamentable deficiency of conversational power of which the most industrious student so often complains. "Fabricando fabri fimus" is an old proverb and a true one, and will ever remain so. It is well echoed in the words of the celebrated Roger Ascham, tutor to Queen Elizabeth," All languages, both learned and mother tongues together, are gotten solely by imitation." The art of speaking will never be acquired through the exercise of the eye and hand alone, any more than the power of performing on a musical instrument can be attained without practice. What would a pupil think of his music-master, if he were to say to him,-Study all the best rules for performing and fingering, but never touch the instrument, and some time or other you will be a magnificent player? Yet this is what is daily and hourly done in the study of language. Persons learn rules, but neglect putting them into practice. The words introduced into the present work differ from those generally used in grammars. Words of |