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We have never seen the laws of the στίχοι πολιτικοὶ explained; and, considering their simplicity, it is very singular that Doctor Foster should have written thus; • Whether the metre of them be considered as accentual, or as a common temporal metre, it is faulty and corrupt each way; but, on the whole, I do not think it accentual.' We have, however, examined a large part of the oúvols without discovering any lines that offend against the following simple rules: The verse shall consist of 15 syllables, and shall be divided into hemistichs of 8 and 7. An accent shall invariably fall on the 14th, and no expressed accent, grave, acute, or circumflex, shall fall upon any odd syllables, saving the 1st and 9th, in which the aberration is permitted, excepting in the case of monosyllables, and acute accents, thrown by an enclitic upon a circumflexed word, which may occupy any of the odd places except the last. This metre is not connected, as some have imagined, with the catalectic iambic, which has not that division, and seldom that cadence; but it is an accentual form of the trochaic, quantity being disregarded. Many such verses will be found amongst the trochaics of Aristophanes and the tragedians. For instance, Εἶτα θυμαίνειν ἔφασκε· δεινὰ yaρ TETOVOÉvau. Nephel. It is difficult to ascertain exactly, how and when quantity was first banished; these orixo Torikoì are of the 11th century. Not long after, Tzetzes wrote verses exactly similar; but although they are accented like our poetry, and clearly derive their whole harmony from those accents, he, the same Tzetzes, wrote also strict iambic verse; and though there is no reason, nor shadow of reason, for supposing that he pronounced each individual word differently

in the different metres, he expressed his sense of the superior excellence of those, in which temporal rule, were observed. By this it appears indi-putably, that the Greek words were then pronounced according to their accents; that such pronunciation did not, to a Greek ear, destroy the harmonious cadence of temporal verse; and that the same combination of accents did produce the same metrical effect in that language that it does in ours; and certainly they deserved the same conside ration from a composer of music.

But if it be further asserted, that such accents were solely expressive of musical notes, and were not regarded in conversation; or, if they were, that such conversation must have been in recitative: we ask whether those, who hold that opinion, are prepared to say, that a Greek orator, using the word unтOOKтOVOC, would have had no means of expressing whether a man had killed his mother, or had been slain by her, without having recourse to musical notes; and, consequently, that such of his audience as were not gifted with good musical ears, might have doubted which was the case. Μητρόκτονος, slain by his mother, and μητροκτόνος, Η matricide, differ only in their accents. These words the English reader pronounces alike, meetroctonos; giving the second and 4th syllables the sound used in moss, and preserving nearly the true short o in the 3rd. We request our readers to speak the word with the short o, as above explained, in all the three last syllables; and, not suffering the long o, or short aw to intrude themselves, to throw the accent in one case on the second, in the other on the third syllable, and they will find, that without at all approaching the long sound.

(which would be expressed by meetroke-tone-ose) they may throw an accent as emphatic as the energy of the cause might require, upon either; and that it would be distinguishable without the least ambiguity, as far as the voice could reach. The same is the case with the English word revenue, which some accent on the first, and others on the second; but none, except a few of our countrymen, pronounce it as if the accented syllable had a long e, which would be expressed, according to English orthography, by raivenue or revainue. Let it not be said that the v or n, are doubled; an error not unlikely to arise from our faulty orthography. When a consonant is reduplicated, we very rarely pronounce both, which we are convinced the Greeks and Romans did; for they could not have deemed them longer than a mute and liquid, if they had not distinctly sounded both consonants, as the French do in some futures like je courrais, and the English in some compound words, like overrun; or where a mute e intervenes, as in supineness, solely, &c. For this reason, no Greek or Latin words end with a reduplication. With us, a reduplicated consonant is generally a sign that the preceding vowel is short, and bears the acute, and only one is articulated.

Trissino's Italia Liberata was printed in 1547 and 48, with Greek vowels, in Italy: this edition may be of great use in explaining the Greek pronunciation, and the difference between accent and quantity, which have been strangely confounded. The Italians have a distinct long and short o; the first pronounced like ours, the second as we have above stated. In their verbs, the first person of the present tense ends with the long o

unaccented, and the third of the past with the short accented: therefore we find very properly the present of tornere printed torno, and the past turnò; at the same time honor accented on the last is printed hwnwr, and vostro accented on the first is vostro. We pronounce the Latin vos, as if written with ; but the sound in the first syllable of vostro is very different from that, and from the short aw which Englishmen express in voster. No good speaker of Italian will give the same sound to the accented syllables of tornò and onòr; like the former is the Greek upòs, and very different from morose or moross. The acute accent certainly does not induce length of time; the more rapidly an Englishman pronounces the contraction I don' know, the more strongly does he accent the middle syllable; and in the same manner should the Greek Ouró be articulated. Dr. Foster was not able to divest himself sufficiently of habitual prejudices to consider this justly; for instance, he said, (p. 31), that the voice dwelt longer on the first than on the second syllable of the word honestly; an assertion, when applied to English pronunciation, directly contrary to fact, and which has arisen from the strange confusion that has been made between accent and quantity. In the first of that word, we find the aw, as it is used in hock; but the most acute accent, that can be thrown upon it, will not make it approach the more to the long sound in hawk, which is produced by the same motion of the organs of speech with a longer breathing. The theory of Sheridan was so unintelligible, that it scarcely requires notice. He felt the truth, but old prejudices prevented his fully comprehending it; and therefore,

when he found short syllables accented, he said that, in such cases, the accent was on the consonant; forgetting, that co-existence with some vowel, and conformity to its tone, are the principal clauses in the charter, by which consonants hold their place in articulated speech. It has been however disputed, whether, in the English language, the accented syllables are pronounced higher, or only louder, than the others. We are persuaded that, according to the best English articulation, they are spoken in a higher tone; but we are willing to admit (as Mr. Mitford does) that it is possible to speak one syllable louder than the rest without speaking it higher and perhaps in some provinces that habit may prevail; but we agree with him, that it would produce an effect very inferior to the melody of good English speech. This, however, we must observe, that whether spoken higher or louder, a short syllable will still be a short syllable; for length of time has nothing to do with high or low, loud or low. We are not surprised that our learned countryman, Lord Kaimes, should have held that every accented syllable in English was long; for it is the peculiarity of our Scottish dialect rarely to use the acute, but generally to prolong the syllable which has the English accent; as it is perhaps the peculiarity of the Irish to speak it in a higher tone than Englishmen. Hence arises much confusion in the discussion of this subject. We readily admit, that the tone which our countrymen (i. e. the Scotch) generally give to the accented syllable, is incompatible with brevity; it is the proper tone that should be given to the Greek circumflexed vowel; and the circumflex cannot be placed on a short one; and perhaps that

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