TO THE REVEREND R. W. EVANS, M.A. VICAR OF HEVERSHAM, WESTMORELAND, FORMERLY FELLOW AND TUTOR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. MY DEAR SIR, I am highly gratified in being permitted to dedicate this Volume to you, one of the most distinguished Pupils of our common Master, Samuel, sometime Lord Bishop of Lichfield. I had the good fortune to commence my academical career under your Tuition before higher duties called you from Trinity College. My recollections of that period, and more enlarged experience since, assure me that I cannot usher this Edition into the world under more favourable auspices than the sanction of your name: and I most gladly embrace the opportunity now afforded me of expressing at once the high esteem which, in common with all, I entertain towards you, and my grateful sense of your unvaried kindness. Believe me to remain, My dear Sir, Ever yours most faithfully, RICHARD SHILLETO. CAMBRIDGE, November 28, 1844. PREFACE. A MONG many arbitrary laws enjoined by prescription, is the obligation of writing a Preface. I obey it the more willingly in the present instance, as I wish to give some explanation of a seeming inconsistency in writing notes in two languages. I have long convinced myself that the affinity between the Greek tongue and our own is so much closer than that which the Latin bears to either, that I have frequently wondered why so few Scholars have broken through the usage of their forefathers, that a vast majority still continue to explain the Greek idioms and structure through a medium no longer necessary even for foreign readers. And surely one would hope it is from no fear of the cuckoo cry of some doxnolσopo, that English notewriting produces slip-shod and slovenly Scholars. If this charge has any foundation, it will equally apply to oral lectures in English, and Lexicons in English, and Grammars in English. Neither, one would fain believe, do they apprehend with the same worthies, that the cultivation of the Latin language is thereby neglected, as though we learnt our Latin style from the traditionary language of heavy and ponderous |