But the path of learning is sometimes too rugged for their tender
feet. We pretend not to strew it for them with roses; we are not
poetically given-- nay, we cannot even promise them a Brussels carpet;--
but if a plain Kidderminster will serve their turn, we here display one
for their accommodation, that thus smoothly and pleasantly they may make
their safe ascent to the temple of Minerva and the Muses.

INTRODUCTION.

Very little introductory matter would probably be sufficient to place
the rising generation on terms of the most perfect familiarity with a
"Comic Latin Grammar." To the elder and middle-aged portion of the
community, however, the very notion of such a work may seem in the
highest degree preposterous; if not indicative of a degree of
presumptuous irreverence on the part of the author little short of
literary high treason, if not commensurate, in point of moral
delinquency, with the same crime as defined by the common law of
England. It is out of consideration for the praiseworthy, though perhaps
erroneous, feelings of such respectable personages, that we proceed to
make the following preliminary remarks; wherein it will be our object,
by demonstrating the necessity which exists for such a publication as
the present, to exonerate ourselves from all blame on the score of its
production.

When we consider the progress of civilization and refinement, we find
that all ages have in turn been characterized by some one distinctive
peculiarity or other. To say nothing of the Golden Age, the Silver Age,
the Iron Age, and so forth, which, with all possible respect for the
poets, can scarcely be said to be worth much in a grave argument; it is
quite clear that the Augustan Age, the Middle Ages, the Elizabethan Age,
and the Age of Queen Anne, were all of them very different, one from the
other, in regard to the peculiar tone of feeling which distinguished the
public mind in each of them. In like manner, the present (which will
hereafter probably be called the Victorian Age) is very unlike all that
have preceded it. It may be termed the Age of Comicality. Not but that
some traces of comic feeling, inherent as it is in the very nature of
man, have not at all times been more or less observable; but it is only
of late years that the ludicrous capabilities of the human mind have
expanded in their fullest vigour. Comicality has heretofore been evinced
only, as it were, in isolated sparks and flashes, instead of