6.  Most grammars, and especially those which are designed for the senior class of students, to whom a well-written book is a sufficient instructor, contain a large proportion of matter which is merely to be read by the learner.  This is commonly distinguished in type from those more important doctrines which constitute the frame of the edifice.  It is expected that the latter will receive a greater degree of attention.  The only successful method of teaching grammar, is, to cause the principal definitions and rules to be committed thoroughly to memory, that they may ever afterwards be readily applied.  Oral instruction may smoothe the way, and facilitate the labour of the learner; but the notion of communicating a competent knowledge of grammar without imposing this task, is disproved by universal experience.  Nor will it avail any thing for the student to rehearse definitions and rules of which he makes no practical application.  In etymology and syntax, he should be alternately exercised in learning small portions of his book, and then applying them in parsing, till the whole is rendered familiar.  To a good reader, the achievement will be neither great nor difficult; and the exercise is well calculated to improve the memory and strengthen all the faculties of the mind.

7.  The objection drawn from the alleged inefficiency of this method, lies solely against the practice of those teachers who disjoin the principles and the exercises of the art; and who, either through ignorance or negligence, impose only such tasks as leave the pupil to suppose, that the committing to memory of definitions and rules, constitutes the whole business of grammar.[56] Such a method is no less absurd in itself, than contrary to the practice of the best teachers from the very origin of the study.  The epistle prefixed to King Henry’s Grammar almost three centuries ago, and the very sensible preface to the old British Grammar, an octavo reprinted at Boston in 1784, give evidence enough that a better method of teaching has long been known.  Nay, in my opinion, the very best method cannot be essentially different from that which has been longest in use, and is probably most known.  But there is everywhere ample room for improvement.  Perfection was never attained by the most learned of our ancestors, nor is it found in any of our schemes.  English grammar can be better taught than it is now, or ever has been.  Better scholarship would naturally produce this improvement, and it is easy to suppose a race of teachers more erudite and more zealous, than either we or they.

8.  Where invention and discovery are precluded, there is little room for novelty.  I have not laboured to introduce a system of grammar essentially new, but to improve the old and free it from abuses.  The mode of instruction here recommended is the result of long and successful experience.  There is nothing in it, which any person of common abilities will find it difficult to understand or adopt.  It is the