the little boys to say arma virumque cauno, as the English again read cano, as if the accent could not be preserved upon its proper place, the penult, as well when we preserve the short quantity of the vowel as when we violate it. What is there to hinder us from saying canno with the sharpened tone of the voice on the short penult, and the prolonged grave on the last syllable, just as in the English word umpire ?-But in this place I had better state shortly, for the sake of those to whom this subject may be altogether new, what the laws of accentuation in the Latin language are; for the Greek is too complicated for a succinct view like the present. This matter therefore, without entering into some minute distinctions of acute and circumflex, stands simply thus: No Latin word is accented on the last syllable. A dissyllabic word of course is always accented on the penult, whether long or short. Again, no Latin word throws the accent further back than the antepenult. The rule for the accentuation of trisyllables and polysyllables accordingly is: if the penult be long, they are accented on that syllable, if the penult be short, they are accented on the antepenult, こ L whether long or short, Thus we say bonus, poena, amare, legere. Now it is a remarkable fact in the history of scholarship-only to be accounted for by the greater distance of the Greek system of accentuation from our own-that while in that language where the accents are marked to the eye, no regard is generally had to them by our teachers in reading Greek; in the Latin language, on the other hand, where the accents are never marked on the printed books, the ancient accentuation is generally observed by our scholars, though in such a way, we have seen, as often to inflict gross and needless injury on the quantity of the syllable. The only glaring violation of the simple rules of Latin accent that I have observed, is the practice which schoolboys are sometimes allowed to get into, of accenting the terminational syllable of a noun or verb, to mark the flexional changes of the word more distinctly, as I suppose, to the ear. Thus they will rattle off dominús, domini, dominó, dominum, &c. with an accent, more French and Italian than English or Latin, placed strongly on the last syllable. The careful teacher will correct this habit at first, and teach his pupil to say domini, dominorum, dominos, with a quick impulse, similar to what they call staccato in music, on the first syllable, and when the こ last syllable is long, prolonging it so as to bring out the legitimate anapæst, not change it into a tribrach. But this error in point of accentuation is of small practical importance, compared with the gross blunders in respect of quantity which are systematically allowed to be made even by those classical masters, who, if you appeal to their mere memory and not to their ear, are the most scrupulous and punctilious of Prosodians. This system of practical blundering may be best understood by stating it under two separate heads; the first class containing those cases in which short syllables are systematically lengthened, the second those cases in which long syllables are as systematically shortened. Instances of the first kind of perversion are most obvious in dissyllabic words, whether both the syllables are short as in bonus, or the first only, as in duces (generals), a word which is distinguished from duces, the 2nd per. sing. fut. ind. of the verb duco, only by the difference of quantity in the first syllable, that of the second syllable being the same in both; and the accent also the same. With regard to the first example bonus, it is impossible to see any principle on which an English mouth should prefer to say bonus, any more than rawpid for rapid, tæpid for tepid. It is a piece of mere carelessness and bad habit. The reason again why the quantity of the word duces should be inverted into duces in our school practice, is obvious enough. Though it is altogether false to say, as so many writers on this subject do, that there is any marked tendency in the English accent to lengthen the syllable ύνω on which it falls, (for in this case tribrachs, like terrible, would be much more scarce in our syllabic cadence than dactyles, like glorious, which they are not 2), we have however comparatively few words in which the first syllable being short has the accent, 24 Mr. Foster did himself great damage with Dr. Gally, by the admission with which he set out (c. II. "that we English cannot readily elevate a syllable without lengthening it, by which our acute accent and long quantity generally coincide, and fall together on the same syllable.") Now the case rather seems to be as stated in the text, that our accent loves to come with a rapid jerk on the syllable where it is placed, whereby not only this syllable is shortened in most cases, but, as an old musical doctor humorously expresses it "the other syllables, forced to shift for themselves, are tumbled down and trodden under foot in the crowd." (Dr. Anselm Bayly, Alliance between Poetry and Music. London. 1789). while the second syllable being long has it not: we have comparatively few words, that is to say, like umpire, engine, réptile, or the German word Weltmeer; and the few we have are generally such in which the short vowel is supported by two consonants (what the ancients called position,) and which can thus more readily withstand the impulse of the accent without any consequent prolongation. When therefore we meet with such a word as duces, we naturally lengthen the accented syllable, and as es in English is always a short syllable, (its corresponding long being a diphthong aise,) we as naturally shorten the final syllable which is long, and thus convert the Iambus into a Trochee. So much for dissyllables. With regard to tris- or poly-syllables having the antepenultimate short, I have not observed any particular tendency to lengthen the short syllable. The English speaker must rather have a decided tendency the other way—as in generosity-generositas—and this obviously enough, from that tendency to a tribrachic syllabic cadence already mentioned as so characteristic of our tongue. Scotchmen, certainly, from the analogy of veesible, and majesty, and other such words may have an inclination to say terribilis for terribilis, gemitus for gemitus, and so forth; a tendency which the attentive teacher will, of course, set himself steadily to correct. Of much more consequence, however, towards discerning the true physiology of ancient speech, is the second class of cases mentioned, in which long syllables are perversely pronounced short. The root of this blunder lies much deeper in the philosophy of modern speech and modern literature; for altogether our poetry has a more intimate connexion with the conversational style of enunciation, whereas the ancient poetry, as it originally grew up, so when arrived at maturity, it remained in close union with, and is in fact, by the ancient writers, included under Movoký, as the part of a whole. From this alliance between poetry and music in ancient times, arose naturally a tendency in ancient speech to delight in those full and massive bodies of sound, which produce long syllables; while, on the other hand, modern poetry, and in an especial degree English poetry, which is altogether divorced from music, being written more to be read than to be sung, has naturally assumed something (more, unquestionably, than befits こ its dignity) of the rapid and running style of conversation 25. Hence, instead of the ancient dactyles, we have generally in our English verse, where the accent falls on every third syllable, tribrachs; what we call dactylic verse, being in most cases only a gross misnomer; we have changed the solemn march into a nimble jig or a flexile waltz; and instead of Spondees, and Dispondees, we do not scruple to employ largely, even in serious poetry, Pyrrhics and Proceleusmatics, feet which the massive and manly disciples of Pindar and Horace altogether excommunicated from the society of sober verse. Herein, also, we see plainly the reason why all attempts at reproducing the ancient Hexameter verse in English, even under the hands of such a master as Southey, have failed; for besides the mere strangeness of the thing to our ears, and the lame and limping effect which our frequent monosyllables produce, there is also the light tripping and undignified air of our Trochees, and, what is worse, Iambi and Pyrrhics in the place of Spondees, and Tribrachs in the place of Dactyles. The Germans succeed something better in imitating the majesty of the Virgilian verse; partly because they have mostly dissyllables, where we have monosyllables, but chiefly because they are accustomed to open their mouths wider, and give the vowels of all the syllables fair play. Such, therefore, being the nature of our speech, we are not to wonder that the British scholars, notwithstanding they have some few spondaic words in their language, as good as any in Latin, witness—female, bee-hive, evade, seldom or never-I believe literally never, in reading Latin verse, pay Horace the compliment of making perceptible to the ear, those frequent Spondees of which he was so curiously studious. The os rotundum of a Scotch physician is practically as much at fault here, as the nimble clack of a smart - ! 25 On the other hand, we have gained considerably in the greater freedom and variety which our looser metrical practice gives to our tragic dialogue. I remem He will not get fair play, no more than his bro- You will scarcely find two such lines in ber a remarkable instance of this in She-↓,~~ú,~~ú,uu 1, "Caius hath spoken For Vittius. I was certain he would do it. He has entered the lists, he has stripped for the course. I know Anapæstus in antepenultima sede, Spondæus, atque ( яanαí!) Рroceleusmaticus in ultima !!! Oxonian's tongue; and as for such a fearful prolongation of sound, as in that well-known word, with which the Horatian odes commence, Mæcenas, (which we generally pronounce Mæcenas,) we should certainly be apprehensive the breath was about to stick altogether in our throats that came out so slowly. I scarcely think, indeed, we have a single molossus, or word of three long syllables, in our tongue-unless it be-potatoes-as it is marked in Walker's Dictionary, though I fear in common prandial discourse, it would require a very solemn humorist to do it justice. What miserable tripping work, again, would be made of that weighty close in one of Cicero's periods, (doubtless studied as most things about ancient oratory were,) wherein he draws Catiline as not merely the disregarder and the despiser, but as the destroyer and the annihilator of the laws of his country-Tu non solum ad negligendas leges et questiones, verum etiam ad evertendas perfringendasque valuisti!-where a fleet-ambling Pæon, in conformity with a well-known precept in Aristotle's Rhetoric, is brought in at the close only to contrast with the two ponderous Di-spondees that precede. Modern eloquence knows little of these musical means of producing effect-the more the pity. A want of full, broad, and protracted vocality, is indeed the grand defect of all modern languages in comparison of the ancient, and of none more than the English. When in an old shilling the image and superscription have been altogether effaced, the most learned numismatist can say no more than the jeweller. Pity only that languages, when their vocal elements are so rubbed down and obliterated, can seldom be sent to the mint again, like silver, to be recoined. The practical application of this (may we be allowed to call it) spondaic principle in ancient declamation, will require some attention on the part of the teacher; but it is an attention which will amply reward his trouble. First, therefore, in monosyllables let us not slur them over as we generally do when they are long, but give them that natural prolongation which we never refuse to English words in the same situation; and as we do not talk of the immortality of the soll, but of the sole, so let us not say soll lucet, but sole lucet, when we are talking of the Roman sun. |