Henr. Stephani Dialogus de bene instituendis Graecae linguae studiis

DE BENE INSTIT. L. GR. ST.

from thence it is necessary to extract them, even by someone who otherwise has decided to treat that part of grammar separately from the reading of those authors, it often happens in practice that the examples, that is, the passages brought forward as examples, are not sufficiently understood, or no certain judgment can be made about them unless the preceding and following context is considered; to such an extent that we are forced to return to the sources themselves (if it is possible to do so). This, indeed, I say can be called "coming to the actual subject matter."

Regarding booklets of exercises in grammatical precepts.

PH. Do you not then approve of those exercises in grammatical precepts (I do not know if I dare call them grammatical ἐγυμνάσματα exercises), which we know were first called "Meditations on the art of grammar," but were later called "Practice" or "Use of grammatical precepts," and also "Examination of rules"?

Regarding Clenardus’s Meditations.

CORN. I do approve; and I say that thanks are owed to Clenardus, since by his example others have proposed this kind of exercise to beginners: those whom he calls "rudimentary beginners" in the letter in which he dedicates that little work to Jacobus Cantas. In its beginning, he says that it often came into his mind to write a booklet of this kind which, for students of the Greek language, would serve as a teacher after the first taste of grammar, if ever they suffered from a scarcity of a living voice. And after a few words, he says that it also pleased Cantas himself that some Greek writer should be proposed to be read by rudimentary beginners in such a way that individual verses would be marked with the themes of the words. And he writes the same in the preface which he prefixes to that booklet, that he believed he would be doing something worthwhile, having recently published the "Institutions of the Greek Language," if he offered care and advice to the best of his ability for the weakness of the students and their reckless diligence, who are carried away reading various things up and down without any selection.