“I had now learned that good Latinity lies in structure; that every word of a sentence may be Latin, yet the whole sentence remain English; and that dictionaries do not teach composition. Exulting in my discovery, I next proceeded to analyze and to throw into the shape of science that idea of Latinity to which I had attained. Rules and remarks, such as are contained in works on composition, had not led me to master the idea; and now that I really had gained it, it led me to form from it rules and remarks for myself. I could now turn Cicero to account, and I proceeded to make his writings the materials of an induction, from which I drew out and threw into form what I have called a science of Latinity,—with its principles and peculiarities, their connection and their consequences,—or at least considerable specimens of such a science, the like of which I have not happened to see in print. Considering, however, how much has been done for scholarship since the time I speak of, and especially how many German books have been translated, I doubt not I should now find my own poor investigations and discoveries anticipated and superseded by works which are in the hands of every school-boy. At the same time, I am quite sure that I gained a very great deal in the way of precision of thought, delicacy of judgment, and refinement of taste, by the processes of induction to which I am referring. I kept blank books, in which every peculiarity in every sentence of Cicero was minutely noted down, as I went on reading. The force of words, their combination into phrases, their collocation—the carrying on of one subject or nominative through a sentence, the breaking up of a sentence into clauses, the evasion of its categorical form, the resolution of abstract nouns into verbs and participles;—what is possible in Latin composition and what is not, how to compensate for want of brevity by elegance, and to secure perspicuity by the use of figures, these, and a hundred similar points of art, I illustrated with a diligence which even bordered on subtlety. Cicero became a mere magazine of instances, and the main use of the river was to feed the canal. I am unable to say whether these elaborate inductions would profit any one else, but I have a vivid recollection of the great utility they were at that time to my own mind.