An Elementary Greek Grammar - Tapa blanda

From the Author’s PREFACE:

I HAVE attempted to make a Greek Grammar in which the facts and principles of the language shall be stated in as concise a form as is consistent with clearness and precision. The plan has been to exclude all detail which belongs to a book of reference, and to admit whatever will aid a pupil in mastering the great principles of Greek Grammar. The statement of the forms in Part Second has been condensed proportionally more than the Syntax. This has been done from a conviction that the chief principles of Syntax are a more profitable study for a pupil in the earlier years of his classical course than the details of vowel-changes and exceptional forms which are often thought to be more seasonable. The study of Greek Syntax, when it is viewed as an aid to reading and not as an ultimate end, gives the pupil an insight into the processes of thought of a highly cultivated people; and while it stimulates his own powers of thought, it teaches him habits of more careful expression, by making him familiar with many forms of statement more precise than those to which he has been accustomed. The Greek Syntax, as it was developed and refined by the Athenians, is an important chapter in the history of thought, and even those whose classical studies are confined to the rudiments cannot afford to omit this entirely. Nothing, in my opinion, does greater injustice to the pupil, and nothing does more to bring classical scholarship into discredit, than a system of teaching which employs only the memory and discourages all exercise of thought.