only. Let a modern scholar explain and exemplify to me the Siάornua and the arsis and thesis, and I feel pretty confident I shall be able to show him the way to give each of these passages its proper effect by quantity alone, without doing any violence to the accent either in the Greek or in the Latin.

Having hazarded these conjectures as to the principles on which the Greeks fixed the quantity of their language, and the manner in which they expressed it, I must remind the reader, that any mistakes which I may have made in this part of the subject will not necessarily invalidate the main argument. The quantity may have been established and preserved upon principles different from those which I have suggested, and yet it may still be true, that the accentual marks are correct, and that, in order to preserve the quantity, it is not necessary to misplace the accent. The object of the argument is not so much to show what the rhythm of the Greeks was, as what it was not. The whole doctrine of quantity is obscure, from the obvious reason that it is connected with music which has been lost; and that it has for many centuries ceased to be the standard for measuring the feet of verses: but accent is very simple in its own nature, there being in truth scarcely any dispute respecting its effect or its pronunciation, but only respecting the syllables to which it ought to be applied. Now this being so, we ought, upon discovering any seeming in

consistency between the two, to reason from what we understand better, to what we understand less: but we reverse the process of reasoning; from some qualities which we attribute to quantity, of which we know less, we obstinately affix certain other qualities to accent, of which we know more; in spite of the clearest testimony of authors, who had the fullest knowledge of both, and who never hint at any discrepancy between them.

Our difficulty, too, in understanding the subject is materially aggravated by the defect in our education. Most of the modern scholars who have studied and taught what we call prosody, have been entirely ignorant of music. In Quinctilian's time this was looked upon as impossible. He tells us that without music his pupils could know nothing of metre or of rhythm. But it seems that either the ears of modern critics are naturally so correct as to give them an intuitive apprehension of rhythm and metre without musical study, or that they have derived from their lucubrations in Hephæstion and Burney so philosophical a knowledge of the principles of music, that their eyes will serve to instruct them on these subjects without the assistance of their ears: Απόδειξιν δ' ἰσχυροτάτην τοῦ τἀληθῆ λέγειν φέρειν οἴονται, μάλιστα μὲν τὴν αὑτῶν ἀναισθησίαν, ὡς πᾶν, ὅ, τι περ ἂν αὐτοὺς ἐκφύγῃ, τοῦτο καὶ δὴ πάντως ἀνύπαρκτον ὂν παντελῶς καὶ ἄχρηστον.” (Plutarch. de Music. 38. ed. Wyttenbach., vol. v. p. 681.)

ον

Finally, I must again remind the reader of the state of the question. I limit my endeavour to persuade him to read Saint Luke according to the marks. My conjectures as to quantity are only subsidiary to this argument, and are merely used by way of reply to an objection. I will suppose - that I have not only been unsuccessful in giving the reader an idea how Greek poetry was recited, but that he rises with the same conviction with which he sat down, that the accents, as evinced by the marks, are inconsistent with poetical rhythm. Still I contend that this affords no reasonable ground for neglecting the marks in prose. If we end in the persuasion, not only that we ourselves cannot pronounce πраyμάτ in an iambic verse without spoiling the rhythm, but that the ancient Greeks could not do so, then the only reasonable conclusion is, that which Primatt has drawn, that in verse it must be read πράγματων. This would only be to extend to metre generally what we have seen is sometimes true of choral music at least, that it prevents our distinguishing the accents. We might contend that, as in the chorus in Orestes the circumflex of κτυπείτε is annihilated (ἠφάνισται), so, in the iambic, the acute on the middle syllable of πραγ μatwv is drowned or destroyed by the rhythm: without disputing the authority of those authors who teach us generally that кTUTеîтe is a properispastic and pауμáтшv a paroxytone. I do not agree with this theory as to the difference between

μάτων

verse and prose, and I think I have shown grounds for distrusting it; but I am sure it is much less unreasonable than to set our opinion against the clearest testimony of Greeks at a time when the language was in its highest state of purity, because we fancy we understand the modulation of their language better than they did themselves.

OUR PRONUNCIATION VIOLATES QUANTITY.

8. I have endeavoured to refute the charge that by pronouncing Greek according to the accentual marks we violate the quantity. But if there be any truth in the preceding observations on the manner of expressing the distinction between long and short syllables, I shall be prepared not only to refute this charge, but to retort it. Our schools and universities do not teach us to dwell longer on the long syllables as such, either in Greek or in Latin, than on the short ones; we dwell as long on dè as on dn, on pater as on mater, on oμov as on μov; on oris, the genitive of os, as on oris, the dative plural of ora; on cano (I sing), as on the dative of canus. We should remember, that in the rhythm of the orators as well as in the metre of the poets, to say nothing of common discourse, the quantity of words under three syllables is just as important as that of longer words; many verses, of which the very first in the Æneid is one, being entirely composed of words of one and two syllables. And yet our boasted method of preserving the quantity by the due laying of

the accent, only pretends to do so in words of more than two syllables. But does it even do that? I venture to reply, that it generally does not; no, not even in the Latin, where I concede that we lay the accent on the proper syllable. For instance, how does an English scholar generally read "famosus?" He lays the accent on the O, and in so doing he is right: but is that enough? He ought, especially if he is reciting oratory or poetry, to dwell as long, or nearly so, on the A as on the O, and twice as long, or nearly so, on each of those vowels as on the U. If he satisfies himself, as our learned men usually do, with laying the accent right, he leaves the ear to seek whether the A be long or short: nay, even to the O, though he thinks he has given it the right quantity, he has in truth only given the right accent; and it will be by a process of reasoning, and not by the beat upon our ears, that we shall be assured that he meant it to be long. We first of all assume that he is acquainted with the rule, that where the penultimate of a Latin word is long it must be accented; and then, because he gives it the accent, and for that reason only, we infer that he considers it as long. But suppose he had called it fámosus, would not that have been a false quantity? I answer, certainly not; that is, not necessarily. Suppose a Greek conversant with the ancient principles of metre, but ignorant of the Latin language, and believing the accentuation of that language to be similar