Every work is acceptable whose object is to secure the systematic and thorough training of the youthful scholar in the elements of classical learning. One of the mistakes of former times, in teaching grammar, both Latin and English, consisted in the severity of the task imposed on the learner, of committing, reviewing, and re-reviewing his Accidence, definitions, rules, observations, exceptions, and paradigms, before he was permitted to make the least practical use of his knowledge, or, in many cases, to understand its bearing, except in a most indistinct manner, on his future eminence as a classical scholar. We speak especially here of very young pupils, and not of those in advancing manhood, who, by a far more injurious method, hurry and have hurried from a mere cursory reading of the grammar, into an attempt to comprehend and translate Virgil or Cicero;—an awkward process, which reminds us of a system of machinery, moved by the interlocking of wheels and cogs, but of which one is vainly endeavoring to produce motion in the latter wheels, while three or four of the earlier wheels properly lying near the primary motive power are wanting.
Such a process forbids men to be accurate and ripe scholars. But to return to the young student,—anything is valuable which is calculated to make him feel that his acquisitions are immediately useful; that they are a part of the system by which he is to feel his way into the broad field of classic wealth and genius. Such is the object of the present work. As the scholar proceeds in his grammar, he is here furnished with exercises on every principle and rule, which he is required to construct and re-construct from Latin into English, from English into Latin, and to analyze them in such variations as are likely to occur. The plan is highly judicious, and is adapted to impart to the pupil a thorough command of all the knowledge he acquires in his progress from day to day.
Part second contains a short Chrestomathy, illustrating, from the usage of the best writers, the several rules of syntax, and a vocabulary. The recent apparatus for the elementary study of Latin is now very complete, and indicates an immense advancement in the theory of instruction. The little work of Mr. Weld is an honor to his knowledge of his subject, and to his skill in communicating that knowledge to others. We are happy to learn that some of the schools have adopted it, as a part of their course. Its influence, if it could be brought into general use, would be greatly to diminish the labor both of college students and college officers, to make thorough classical scholars, minutely familiar with the elements of the Latin tongue, and to open the way for a more honorable standard of attainment in this department among our literary men.
–The Christian Review, Vol. 10