The object of this book is to present the essential facts of Latin grammar in a direct and simple manner, and within the smallest compass consistent with scholarly standards. While intended primarily for the secondary school, it has not neglected the needs of the college student, and aims to furnish such grammatical information as is ordinarily required in undergraduate courses.
The experience of foreign educators in recent years has tended to restrict the size of school-grammars of Latin, and has demanded an incorporation of the main principles of the language in compact manuals of 250 pages. Within the past decade, several grammars of this scope have appeared abroad which have amply met the most exacting demands.
The publication in this country of a grammar of similar plan and scope seems fully justified at the present time, as all recent editions of classic texts summarize in introductions the special idioms of grammar and style peculiar to individual authors. This makes it feasible to dispense with the enumeration of many minutiae of usage which would otherwise demand consideration in a student's grammar.
In the chapter on Prosody, I have designedly omitted all special treatment of the lyric metres of Horace and Catullus, as well as of the measures of the comic poets. Our standard editions of these authors all give such thorough consideration to versification that repetition in a separate place seems superfluous.
