Nor will it avail any thing for the student to rehearse definitions and rules of which he makes no practical application.

In etymology and syntax, he should be alternately exercised in learning small portions of his book, and then applying them in parsing, till the whole is rendered familiar.

To a good reader, the achievement will be neither great nor difficult; and the exercise is well calculated to improve the memory and strengthen all the faculties of the mind.
7.

The objection drawn from the alleged inefficiency of this method, lies solely against the practice of those teachers who disjoin the principles and the exercises of the art; and who, either through ignorance or negligence, impose only such tasks as leave the pupil to suppose, that the committing to memory of definitions and rules, constitutes the whole business of grammar.[56] Such a method is no less absurd in itself, than contrary to the practice of the best teachers from the very origin of the study.

The epistle prefixed to King Henry's Grammar almost three centuries ago, and the very sensible preface to the old British Grammar, an octavo reprinted at Boston in 1784, give evidence enough that a better method of teaching has long been known.