Description
Two volumes, 8vo, pp. iv, xvi, 64, 576, seven folding tables; 12136, 510, seven leaves of tables; woodcut head- and tailpieces, and numerous tables within text; paper largely browned throughout, with some spotting and light marginal staining; occasional contemporary ink marks; wormtrace to foot of tables in volume one, not affecting text, and small wormhole in bottom margin of several gatherings of volume one, again not affecting text; in contemporary calf; spines gilt in compartments between raised bands, gilt lettering-pieces, edges red; stain to foot of volume one, not affecting interior; otherwise, aside from some slight wear to extremities, an attractive copy.
First edition of this rare Latin course, 'useful for everyone studying the Latin language, and necessary for everyone, of either sex, who wishes to learn it easily, quickly, without the help of teachers, and without getting in the way of their everyday occupations'. The author, Ignace Vanière, whose name appears on the title-page of the second volume, was the nephew of the neo-Latin poet Jacques Vanière, and author of two Discours sur l'éducation, published in 1760 and 1763, where he set out his ideas on the reform of teaching methods.
These ideas can be seen in practice in the present work, for which he is now best remembered. The short first part is devoted to the principles of Latin grammar and parts of speech; this only takes up the first 64 pages of the first volume. The bulk of the work, as Vanière describes it, contains 'a collection of what Latin authors have considered the most appropriate to enrich the spirit, and to perfect reason, taste, and morals'. Week by week, Vanière offers a themed lesson where he offers a set of phrases and sentences, arranged as three columns: the first contains the Latin phrase translated word for word; the second a French translation; and the third, the Latin with an appropriate word order. So the very first lesson (on 'Spring') opens thus:
Incipe Commencez quandoquidem puisque consedimus nous nous sommes assis in sur herbâ l'herbe molli molle.
Nous voilà commodément assis sur le gazon, commencez.
Incipe, quandoquidem in milli consedimus herbâ.
By this method, Vanière hopes to show more clearly than the likes of Dumarsais how the sense of a word and that of a sentence are both related and separate. The extracts used are based in the first volume around the theme of the spectacles of nature and in the second around duties, and draw from Pliny, Cicero, and many others. Bound in the second volume is a treatise on syntax intended to complete and complement Vanière's course, also published by Boudet but printed after Vanière's death.
Not in Barbier; outside France, OCLC records copies at Georgetown, Aberdeen, and the BL.
