the word; and no doubt a very simple living language might be written quite intelligibly to the natives without any vowel sounds marked at all. The words would be traditionally and conventionally recognized as in short hand thus - Gd crtd th Hvn nd th Rth. I wish I understood Arabic; and yet I doubt whether to the European philosopher or scholar it is worth while to undergo the immense labour of acquiring that or any other Oriental tongue, except Hebrew. August 23. 1833. GREEK ACCENT AND QUANTITY. THE distinction between accent and quantity is clear, and was, no doubt, observed by the ancients in the recitation of verse. But I believe such recitation to have been always an artificial thing, and that the common conversation was entirely regulated by ac cent. I do not think it possible to talk any language without confounding the quantity of syllables with their high or low tones * This opinion, I need not say, is in direct opposition to the conclusion of Foster and Mitford, and scarcely reconcilable with the apparent meaning of the authorities from the old critics and grammarians. Foster's opponent was for rejecting the accents and attending only to the syllabic quantity; - Mr. C. would, in prose, attend to the accents only as indicators of the quantity, being unable to conceive any practical distinction between time and tone in common speech. Yet how can we deal with the authority of Dionysius of Halicarnassus alone, who, on the one hand, discriminates quantity so exquisitely as to make four degrees of shortness in the penultimates of ὁδός, ῥόδος, τρόπος and στρόφος, and this expressly ἐν λόγοις ψιλοῖς, or plain prose, as well as in verse; and on the other hand declares, according to the evidently correct interpretation of the passage, that the difference between music and ordinary speech consists in the number only, and not in the quality of tones: - τῷ Ποσῷ διαλλάττουσα τῆς ἐν ᾠδαῖς καὶ ὀργάνοις, καὶ οὐχὶ τῷ Пou. (IIεpi Σvv. c. 11.?) The extreme sensibility of the Athenian ear to the accent in prose is, indeed, proved by numerous anecdotes, one of the most amusing of which, though, perhaps, not the best authenticated as a fact, is that of Demosthenes in the Speech for the Crown, asking, "Whether, O Athenians, does Æschines appear to you to be the mercenary (μio0wròs) of although you may sing or recitative the difference well enough. Why should the marks of accent have been considered exclusively necessary for teaching the pronunciation to the Asiatic or African Hellenist, if the knowledge of the acuted syllable did not also carry the stress of time with it? If äv◊ρwπos was to be pronounced in common versation with a perceptible distinction of the con Alexander, or his guest or friend (voc)?" It is said that he pronounced μowròs with a false accent on the antepenultima, as μío@wrog, and that upon the audience immediately crying out, by way of correction, μoloròs, with an emphasis, the orator continued coolly,— ἀκούεις ἃ λέγουσι· “You yourself hear what they say!" Demosthenes is also said, whether affectedly, or in ignorance, to have sworn in some speech by 'Аσkλos, throwing the accent falsely on the antepenultima, and that, upon being interrupted for it, he declared, in his justification, that the pronunciation was proper, for that the divinity was "Toç, mild. The expressions in Plutarch are very striking: Θόρυβον ἐκίνησεν, ὤμνυε δὲ καὶ τὸν ̓Ασκληπιὸν, προπαροξύνων Ασκλήπιον, καὶ παρεδείκνυεν αὑτὸν ὀρθῶς λέγοντα· εἶναι γὰρ τὸν θεὸν ἤπιον· καὶ ἐπὶ τούτῳ πολλάκις Oopvenon." Dec. Orat.-ED. length of the penultima as well as of the elevation of the antepenultima, why was not that long quantity also marked? It was surely as important an ingredient in the pronunciation as the accent. And although the letter omega might in such a word show the quantity, yet what do you say to such words as λελόγχασι, τύψασα, and the like — the quantity of the penultima of which is not marked to the eye at all? altogether disregard the modern Greeks? Besides, can we practice of the Their confusion of accent and quantity in verse is of course a barbarism, though a very old one, as the versus politici of John Tzetzes * in the twelfth century and *See his Chiliads. The sort of verses to which Mr. Coleridge alluded are the following, which those who consider the scansion to be accentual, take for tetrameter catalectic iambics, like— (ὡς ἡδὺ και | νοῖς πράγμασιν ] καὶ δεξιοῖς | ὁμιλεῖν — ὁπόσον δύ | ναιτο λαβεῖν | ἐκέλευε | χρυσίον. the Anacreontics prefixed to Proclus will show; but these very examples prove a fortiori what the common pronunciation in prose then was. Η Ερεχθέως Πρόκρις τε καὶ Πραξιθέας κόρη. Chil. I. I'll climb the frost | y mountains high |, and there I'll coin | the weather; I'll tear the rain | bow from the sky, and tie both ends together. Some critics, however, maintain these verses to be trochaics, although very loose and faulty. See Foster, p. 113. A curious instance of the early confusion of accent and quantity may be seen in Prudentius, who shortens the penultima in eremus and idola, from ἔρημος and εἴδωλα. Cui jejuna eremi saxa loquacibus Exundant scatebris, &c. Cathemer. V. 89. cognatumque malum, pigmenta, Camœnas, Idola, conflavit fallendi trina potestas. Cont. Symm. 47. - Ed. |