Part 189 (2/2)

OBS 3--Walker enerality of prosodists since, that such a distinction as hesyllables and short, could not possibly be the basis of English versification, or detery of any known usage, and contrary to our custoes, he proposes it as applicable--and as the only doctrine conceived to be applicable--to Greek or Latin verse Ignoring all long or short quantity not forests, ”_as a last refuge_,” (--25,) the very doubtful sche Latin and Greek poetry with the vowels confor_ and _short_ vowel sounds, to the ancient rules of quantity Of such words as _fallo_ and _ambo_, pronounced as we usually utter the quantity of the final vowel though without the accent, and the short quantity of the initial and accented syllable”--_Obs on Greek and Lat Accent_, --23; Key, p 331 Now the very reverse of this appears to me to be ”evident” The _a_, indeed,its pri; but the first _syllable_, if fully accented, will have _twice the time_ of the second; nor can this proportion be reversed but by changing the accent, andit on the latter syllable Were the principle _true_, which the learned author pronounces so ”evident,” these, and all similar words, would constitute _ialish they are _trochees_; and in Latin,--where ”_o_ final is _common_,”--either _trochees_ or _spondees_ The word _ambo_, as every accurate scholar knows, is always a _trochee_, whether it be the Latin adjective for ”_both_,” or the English noun for ”_a reading desk_, or _pulpit_”

OBS 4--The nae of endings, from similar names used in Greek, and thence also in Latin; and, of course, English words and Greek or Latin, so related, are presus soura our poetic feet to be quantitative, as were the ancient,--not accentual only, as some will have them,--nor separately both, as some others absurdly teach But, whatever lish verse and Greek or Latin, it is certain, that, in _our_ poetic division of syllables, strength and length must always concur, and any sche quantity, as to confound the different species of feet, or give contradictory narossly defective In the preceding section it has been shown, that the principles of quantity adopted by Sheridan, Murray, and others, being so erroneous as to be wholly nugatory, were as unfit to be the basis of English verse, as are Walker's, which have just been spoken of But, the puzzled authors, instead of refor these their elementary principles, so as to adapt thelish verse, have all chosen to assueneral _differ radically_ from those which the ancients called by the same names; and yet the _coincidence_ found--the ”_exact saely said by some of them _to duplicate each foot into two distinct sorts for our especial advantage_; while the _difference_, which they presume to exist, or which their false principles of accent and quantity would create, between feet quantitative and feet accentual, (both of which are allowed to us,) would _implicate different names_, and convert foot into foot--iambs, trochees, spondees, pyrrhics, each species into some other--till all were confusion!

OBS 5--In Lindley Murray's revised scheraph fro that the ancient poetic _ and _short_,”

and affir of ours, ”In English, syllables are divided into _accented_ and _unaccented_”--_Rhet

Gram_, p 64; _Murray's Gram_, 8vo, 253; _Hart's Gram_, 182; and others

Now _some_ syllables are accented, and others are unaccented; but syllables singly significant, ie,to neither of these classes The contrast is also co before _accented_ and _unaccented_ were ever thus misapplied in it Murray proceeds thus: ”When the feet are formed by _accent on vowels_, they are _exactly of the same nature as ancient feet_, and have the same just quantity in their syllables So that, in this respect, _we have all that the ancients had_, and so which they had not We have in fact _duplicates of each foot_, yet with such a _difference_, as to fit them for _different purposes_, to be applied at our pleasure”--_Ib_, p 253 Again: ”_We_ have observed, that _English verse is composed of feet formed by accent_; and that when the accent falls on _vowels_, the feet are equivalent to those forain: ”Frolish versification, we may see _what a copious stock of materials_ it possesses For _we are not only allowed the use of all the ancient poetic feet_, in our _heroic measure_, but we have, as before observed, _duplicates of each_, agreeing inin measure,[501] _and which_ make different ie, _and which_ may be the source of a boundless variety”--_Ib_, p 259

OBS 6--If it were not dullness to overlook the many errors and inconsistencies of this sche thelish tongue! Besides several grammatical faults, elsewhere noticed, these extracts exhibit, first, the inconsistent notion--of ”_duplicates with a difference_;” or, as Churchill expresses it, of ”_two distinct species of each foot_;” (_New Graravely assured withal, that these _different sorts_, which have no separate names, are sometimes forsooth, ”_exactly of the salish verse is _composed of feet formed by accent_,” and at the saely of _feet ”formed by quantity_” Thirdly, if ”_we have all that the ancients had_,”

of poetic feet, and ”_duplicates of each_,” ”_which they had not_” we are encuht Latin feet,[502] ave the naed _but four_, and these _single_, not ”_duplicates_”--_unigenous_, not severally of ”_two species_” Fourthly, to suppose a multiplicity of feet to be ”_a copious stock of ine, in any other case, a variety of _ measured Fifthly, ”_our heroic measure_” is _iaive to this, ”_all the ancient poetic feet_,” is to bestow most of the in measure_,” so as to ”_make different iree in movement_,” or to be ”_exactly of the same nature!_”

OBS 7--Of the foundation ofaccount: ”The _quantity_ of a syllable is the relative ti_ in quantity, as _fate_; or _short_, as _let_ The Greeks and Romans based their poetry on the quantity of syllables; but modern versification depends chiefly upon accent, the quantity of syllables being alain: ”_Versification_ is a ement of words[,] in which the _accent_ is ular intervals This definition applies only to ular recurrence of _long syllables_, according to settled lahich constitutes verse”--_Ib_, p 186 The contrasting of ancient and modern versification, since Sheridan and Murray each contrived an exah not in principle very uniform; and, however needless where a correct theory prevails, it is, to such views of accent and quantity as were adopted by these authors, and by Walker, or their followers, but a necessary counterpart The notion, however, that English verse has less regard to quantity than had that of the old Greeks or Ro in a false idea of what quantity is; and, that Greek or Latin verse was less accentual than is ours, is another assumption, left proofless too, of what many authors disbelieve and contradict Wells's definition of quantity is similar to mine, and perhaps unexceptionable; and yet his idea of the thing, as he gives us reason to think, was very different, and very erroneous His examples imply, that, like Walker, he had ”no conception of quantity arising fro but the nature of the vowels,”--no conception of a long or a short _syllable_ without what is called a long or a short _vowel sound_ That ”the Greeks and Romans based their poetry on quantity” of that restricted sort,--on _such ”quantity”_ as ”_fate_” and ”_let_” may serve to discriminate,--is by no reat norant of any other The words do not distinguish at all the long and short quantities even of our own language;or short in other tongues Beingwith emphasis, both short without it; and, could they be accented, accent too would lengthen, as its absence would shorten both In the words _phosphate_ and _streamlet_, we have the same sounds, both short; in _lettuce_ and _fateful_, the sa This cannot be disproved And, in the scansion of the following stanza from Byron, the word ”_Let_” twice used, is to be reckoned a _long_ syllable, and not (as Wells would have it) a short one:

”Cavalier! and o forth; _Let_ the Moorish Monarch know, That to hilish graious inaccuracy and worthlessness, yet honoured by the Boston school committee of 1848 and '9, the author is careful to say, ”Accent should not be confounded with emphasis _Emphasis_ is a stress of voice on a word in a sentence, to mark its importance _Accent_ is a stress of voice on a syllable in a word” Yet, within seven lines of this, we are told, that, ”A _verse_ consists of a certain nued according to certain rules”--_Weld's English Graed Edition,” p 137 A doctrine cannot be contrived, which will more evidently or more extensively confound accent with ee, about three quarters of the words areto Walker, ”have no accent,” certainly none distinguishable from emphasis; hence, in fact, our syllables are no more ”divided into _accented_ and _unaccented_” as Sheridan and Murray would have them, than into _eht to class the of accent with e with Wells, in its justification, that, ”The term _accent_ is also applied, in poetry, to _the_ stress laid on monosyllabic words”--_Wells's School Gram_, p 185; 113th Ed, --273 What better is this, than to apply the ter of syllables in poetry, or to all the stress in question, as is virtually done in the following citation? ”In English, verse is regulated by the _emphasis_, as there should be one _ee of _erateful to the ear is formed”--_Thoer words predoil's verse, not one word in five is a monosyllable; hence accent, if our use of it were adjusted to the Latin quantities, lish

With the following lines of Shakspeare, for exa, no connexion;

”Good friend, thou hast no cause to say so yet; But thou shalt have; and creep tiood

I had a thing to say,--But let it go”--_King John_, Act iii, Sc 3

OBS 9--T O Churchill, after stating that the Greek and Latin rhyth and short, sets ours in contrast with the of English verse, though it isand short_, but by accented and unaccented syllables; the accented syllables being _accounted_ long; the unaccented, short”--_Churchill's New Graht, is very different from the doctrine of Murray or Sheridan; because, in practice, or the scansion of verses, it comes to the _same results_ as to suppose all our feet to be ”for or short and not _believe_ them to _be_ so, is a ridiculous inconsistency: it is a shuffle in the nah not apt to behas no regard to the principle, could not rid himself of the notion, that the quantity of a syllable ly he says, ”Mr Murray _justly observes_, that our accented syllables, or those reckoned long:,or [a]

short vowel sound_, so that we have _two distinct species_ of each foot”--_New Gram_, p 189 The obvious impossibility of ”two distinct species” in one,--or, as Murray has it, of ”duplicates fitted for different purposes,”--should have prevented the teaching and repeating of this nonsense, propound it who ht The commender himself had not such faith in it as is here implied In a note, too plainly incompatible with this praise, he comments thus: ”Mr Murray adds, that this is 'an opulence _peculiar_ to our language, and which may be the source of a boundless variety:' a point, on which, I confess, _I have long entertained doubts_ I a verse _is analogous_ to that of the ancient Greeks and Romans Dion Hal, _de Co_ fro it: does not this imply, that the ancients, contrary to the opinion of the learned author of Metronariston, read verse as we do?”--_Churchill's New Gram_, p 393, note 329

OBS 11--The nature, chief sources, and true distinction of _quantity_, at least as it pertains to our language, I have set forth with clearness, first in the short chapter on Utterance, and again, more fully in this, which treats of Versification; but that the syllables, long and short, of the old Greek and Latin poets, or the feet they made of them, are to be expounded on precisely the same principles that apply to ours I have not deemed it necessary to affirm or to deny So far as the same laws are applicable, let them be applied This important property of syllables,--their _quantity_, or relative time,--which is the basis of all rhythm, is, as eneral but ill appreciated, by our English prosodists, who ought, at least in this their own province, to understand it all alike, and as it is; and so co the erudite is the confession of Walker, that ”the accent and quantity of the ancients” are, to modern readers, ”obscure and ance and superficiality, to pretend to a very certain knowledge of them Nor is the difficulty confined to Latin and Greek verse: the poetry of our own ancestors, from any remote period, is not easy of scansion Dr Johnson, in his History of the English Language, gave examples, with this reh our ignorance of the laws of their metre and the quantities of their syllables, _which it would be very difficult, perhaps impossible, to recover_, excludes us froave to their contemporaries”

OBS 12--The ilish poetry,” are said by Dryden to have been _adapted to the ears_ of the rude age which produced them ”The verse of Chaucer,” says he, ”I confess, is not harmonious to us; but it is like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus commends, it was _auribus istius temporis accommodata_:' they who lived with hiht it ate and Gower, his contemporaries: there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect It is true, I cannot go so far as he who published the last edition of him; for he would make us believe that the fault is in _our ears_, and that there were really ten syllables in a verse where we find but nine: but this opinion is not worth confuting; it is so gross and obvious an error, that co but matters of faith and revelation) must convince the reader that equality of numbers in every verse, which we call Heroic, was either not known, or not always practised in Chaucer's age It were an easy matter to produce some thousands of his verses, which are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a whole one, and which no pronunciation can make otherwise We can only say, that he lived in the infancy of our poetry, and that nothing is brought to perfection at the first”--_British Poets_, Vol iii, p 171

OBS 13--Dryden appears to have had e than in those of an earlier one; but Poe, of our tilish Verse, conveys the idea that all ears are alike competent to appreciate the eleation of which the lu may be dispensed with, if ever in any _Its appreciation_” says he, ”_is universal_ It appertains to no region, nor race, nor era in especial To melody and to harmony the Greeks hearkened with ears precisely similar to those which we employ, for similar purposes, at present; and a pendulum at Athens would have vibrated much after the same fashi+on as does a pendulum in the city of Penn”--_The Pioneer_, Vol

i p 103 Supposing here not even the oscillations of the same pendulum to be more uniform than are the nature and just estimation of quantity the world over, this author soon after expounds his idea of the thing as follows: ”I have already said that all syllables, inor short Our usual prosodiessyllable is equal, in its time, to two short ones; this, however, is but an approach to the truth It should be here observed that the quantity of an English syllable _has no dependence upon_ the sound of its vowel or dipthong [diphthong], but [depends] chiefly upon _accentuation_ Monosyllables are exceedingly variable, and, for theor short, to suit the demand of the rhythm In polysyllables, the accented _ones_ [say, _syllables_] are always long, while those which immediately precede or succeed them, are always short _E”--_Ibid_, p 105 In penning the last four sentences, the writer lish Grae 235

OBS 14--Sheridan, in his Rhetorical Gra that a distinction of accent, and not of quantity, lish verse, proceeds as follows: ”Froue, our Prosodians have fallen into a variety of errors; sohbours, the French; and others having had recourse to those of the ancients; though neither of theue, on account of an essential difference _between thee and ours_,” and should have said so] With regard to the French, they measured verses by the number of syllables whereof they were coue, which rendered it incapable of numbers formed by poetic feet For it has neither accent nor quantity suited to the purpose; the syllables of their words being for thesyllables being out of all proportion greater than that of the short Hence for a long time it was supposed, _as it is by most people at present_, that our verses were coly they _are denoht, six, or four syllables, _even to this day_ Thus have we lost sight of the great advantage which our language has given us over the French, in point of poetic nueometrical proportion, on which the harmony of versification depends; and blindly reduced ourselves to that of the arith the ear And hence like the French, our chief pleasure in verse arises from the poor ornament of rhyme”--_Sheridan's Rhetorical Gram_, p 64

OBS 15--In a recent work on this subject, Sheridan is particularly excepted, and he alone, where Hallaeneral, are charged with ”astonishi+ng ignorance of the first principles of our verse;” and, at the sa ”especially insisted on the subject of Quantity”--_Everett's English Versification, Preface_, p 6 That the rhetorician was but slenderly entitled to these coraph of his Graly represents it as a central error, to regard our poetic feet as being ”formed by quantity” at all ”So this to be an error, and that our verses were really composed of feet, not syllables, without farther examination, boldly applied all the rules of the Latin prosody to our versification; though scarce any of them answered exactly, and soenius of our tongue _Thus because the Roman feet were formed by quantity, they asserted the sa; whereas I have formerly shewn, that the accent, in some cases, as certainly makes the syllable on which it is laid, short, as in others it _ And their whole theory of quantity, borrowed from the Roman, in which they endeavour to establish the proportion of long and short, as immutably fixed to the syllables of words constructed in a certain way, at once falls to the ground; when it is shewn, that the quantity of our syllables is _perpetually varying with the sense_, and is _for the ulated by_ EMPHASIS: which has been fully proved in the course of Lectures on the Art of reading Verse; where it has been also shewn, that _this very circue over the ancients_ in the point of poetic numbers”--_Sheridan's Rhetorical Grarapher here claims to have ”_shewn_” or ”_proved_,”

what he had only _affir the quality of the vowel for the quantity of the syllable, he had suggested, in his confident way, that short quantity springs fro quantity, fro of _vowels_--a doctrine which has been a section of the present chapter Nor is he, in what is here cited, consistent with hi comes nearer than this doctrine of his, to an ”endeavour to establish the proportion of long and short, as immutably fixed to the syllables of words constructed in a certain way”! Next, although he elsewhere contrasts accent and emphasis, and supposes them different, he either confounds the to each the chief control over quantity And, lastly, if our poetic feet are not quantitative, not for and short, as were the Roe over the ancients,” can we derive froulated by stress, whether accent or emphasis?

OBS 17--We have, I think, no prosodial treatise of higher pretensions than Erastus Everett's ”Systeentleularly quoted ”He mentions this, that it may not be supposed that this work is a coreat a share of it is original; and the author, having deduced his rules fro confident of their correctness”--_Preface_, p 5 Of the place to be filled by this Systeht to supply an in student, who attelish poetry and the structure of its verse, to find that _we have no work on which he can rely as authority on this subject_ In the other ers have treated of the subject of versification, in all its parts In English alone, in a language which possesses a body of poetical literature more extensive, as well asthe Italian, _the student has no rules to guide hire and incorrect outlines appended to eleularly inconsistent exception: ”We must except from this remark torks, published in the latter part of the sixteenth century