be noticed _William Walker_, the preceptor of
Sir Isaac Newton, a teacher and grammarian of extraordinary learning, who
died in 1684. He has left us sundry monuments of his taste and critical
skill: one is his "Treatise of English Particles,"--a work of great labour
and merit, but useless to most people now-a-days, because it explains the
English in Latin; an other, his "Art of Teaching Improv'd,"--which is also
an able treatise, and apparently well adapted to its object, "the Grounding
of a Young Scholar in the Latin Tongue." In the latter, are mentioned other
works of his, on "_Rhetorick_, and _Logick_" which I have not seen.

28. In 1706, _Richard Johnson_ published an octavo volume of more than four
hundred pages, entitled, "Grammatical Commentaries; being an Apparatus to a
New National Grammar: by way of animadversion upon the falsities,
obscurities, redundancies and defects of Lily's System now in use." This is
a work of great acuteness, labour, and learning; and might be of signal use
to any one who should undertake to prepare a new or improved Latin grammar:
of which, in my opinion, we have yet urgent need. The English grammarian
may also peruse it with advantage, if he has a good knowledge of Latin--and
without such knowledge he must be ill prepared for his task. This work is
spoken of and quoted by some of the early English grammarians; but the
hopes of the writer do not appear to have been realized. His book was not
calculated to supply the place of the common one; for the author thought it
impracticable to make a new grammar, suitable for boys, and at the same
time to embrace in it proofs sufficient to remove the prejudices of
teachers in favour of the old. King Henry's edict in support of Lily, was
yet in force, backed by all the partiality which long habit creates; and
Johnson's learning, and labour, and zeal, were admired, and praised, and
soon forgot.

29. Near the beginning of the last century, some of the generous wits of
the reign of Queen Anne, seeing the need there was of greater attention to
their vernacular language, and of a grammar more properly English than any
then in use, produced a book with which the later writers on the same
subjects, would have done well to have made themselves better acquainted.
It is entitled "A Grammar of the English Tongue; with the Arts of Logick,
Rhetorick, Poetry, &c. Illustrated with useful Notes; giving the Grounds
and Reasons of Grammar in General. The Whole maki