English Grammar, Past and Present

The plan that has been followed in preparing this book is to carry the student's mind gradually forward from the more easy to the less easy, from the better known to the less known or the unknown.
Accordingly, Part I. deals with "Modern English Grammar," covering the more familiar ground of Accidence, Analysis, Syntax, and Punctuation.
Part II discusses the idiomatic uses of the different Parts of Speech, explaining these, when necessary, by reference to idioms that were in force in the earlier stages of our language.
Part III deals solely with the subject of "Historical English and Derivation." On account of the greater complexity of this subject and the increasing importance ascribed to it, this Part has been made to cover about as much space as the other two Parts combined.
The Appendices deal with certain outlying subjects, such as Prosody, Figures of Rhetoric, Synonyms, etc., which do not belong to Grammar proper. Amongst them there is a valuable Note on the "Names of Vocalic Sounds" by Professor Skeat, which has been printed in this book with his permission. The graduated method here described was suggested to the writer by an experience extending over many years, most of which were spent in an eastern country, where English is studied with extraordinary keenness, and every effort is made to find out the best means of teaching it. In fact, the present book is not an entirely new one, but an adaptation of a manual prepared by the same author a few years ago in India, while he was still living there. In adapting this manual to English use, he has adhered to the original method, because he believes that for England no less than for India it is best to assume that the average student does not know very much to start with, and that every student must he well versed in the principles of Modern English, before he can be qualified to begin the much more difficult task of tracing these to their sources. The writer is glad to find that in following the plan thus suggested by his own experience and judgment, he was undesignedly acting up to the spirit of the directions given in the London Matriculation Directory, which run as follows :- " The English Language papers may roughly be divided into three parts : first, modern grammar, including, of course, parsing and analysis ; second, historical grammar and philology, including the history of the apparent solecisms of modern grammar, and especially of the traces of flexion that Modern English still shows ; third, subjects that come under neither of these heads, such as the correct use and meaning of words and the discrimination of synonyms, the metrical characteristics of English verse, etc. . . . From the above survey of the scope of the papers, it will be evident that the first essential of a sound and complete preparation will be a thorough grounding in the elements of English grammar."