VERSICULI A Latin Elegiac Verse Book BY THE REV. J. H. RAVEN, M.A. FORMERLY HEADMASTER OF THE FAUCONBERGE SCHOOL, BECCLES NEW IMPRESSION LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 1916 PA 2335 ES R3 1916 PREFACE THIS Latin Verse-book will be found, it is thought, to differ in many respects from most of those hitherto published. The Exercises in the First Part, which are hardly more than mechanical, may perhaps be considered too short. But brevity has been aimed at, because such Exercises are likely to present learners with more or less unmeaning puzzles. If, before a pupil passes on to Part II., more facility in the construction of Hexameters and Pentameters is desired than these elementary Exercises afford, it may be more readily acquired by again going through the First Part once or twice, than by doing more exercises of a similar kind. From the first the use, excessive in some verse-books, of hyphens, asterisks, brackets, etc., has been avoided. As the Latin versifier has to learn by degrees how to use freedom of expression, little can be gained by teaching him first of all to walk in chains. One of the widest gulfs that boys have to cross in a classical education is that which lies between elementary |