The Grammar of English Grammars

by Goold Brown

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.—In defining our poetic feet, many late grammarians substitute the terms accented and unaccented for long and short, as did Murray, after some of the earlier editions of his grammar; the only feet recognized in his second edition being the Iambus, the Trochee, the Dactyl, and the Anapest, and all these being formed by quantities only. This change has been made on the supposition, that accent and long quantity, as well as their opposites, nonaccent and short quantity, may oppose each other; and that the basis of English verse is not, like that of Latin or Greek poetry, a distinction in the time of syllables, not a difference in quantity, but such a course of accenting and nonaccenting as overrides all relations of this sort, and makes both length and shortness compatible alike with stress or no stress. Such a theory, I am persuaded, is untenable. Great authority, however, may be quoted for it, or for its principal features. Besides the several later grammarians who give it countenance, even "the judicious Walker," who, in his Pronouncing Dictionary, as before cited, very properly suggests a difference between "that quantity which constitutes poetry," and the mere "length or shortness of vowels," when he comes to explain our English accent and quantity, in his "Observations on the Greek and Latin Accent and Quantity," finds "accent perfectly compatible with either long or short quantity;" (Key, p. 312;) repudiates that vulgar accent of Sheridan and others, which "is only a greater force upon one syllable than another;" (Key, p. 313;) prefers the doctrine which "makes the elevation or depression of the voice inseparable from accent;" (Key, p. 314;) holds that, "unaccented vowels are frequently pronounced long when the accented vowels are short;" (Key, p. 312;) takes long or short vowels and long or short syllables to be things everywhere tantamount; saying, "We have no conception of quantity arising from any thing but the nature of the vowels, as they are pronounced long or short;" (ibid.;) and again: "Such long quantity" as consonants may produce with a close or short vowel, "an English ear has not the least idea of. Unless the sound of the vowel be altered, we have not any conception of a long or short syllable."—Walker's Key, p. 322; and Worcester's Octavo Dict., p. 935.

OBS. 2.—In the opinion of Murray, Walker's authority should be thought sufficient to settle any question of prosodial quantities. "But," it is added, "there are some critical writers, who dispute the propriety of his arrangement."—Murray's Octavo Gram., p. 241. And well there may be; not only by reason of the obvious incorrectness of the foregoing positions, but because the great orthoëpist is not entirely consistent with himself. In his "Preparatory Observations," which introduce the very essay above cited, he avers that, "the different states of the voice," which are indicated by the comparative terms high and low, loud and soft, quick and slow, forcible and feeble, "may not improperly be called quantities of sound."—Walker's Key, p. 305. Whoever thinks this, certainly conceives of quantity as arising from several other things than "the nature of the vowels." Even Humphrey, with whom, "Quantity differs materially from time," and who defines it, "the weight, or aggregate quantum of sounds," may find his questionable and unusual "conception" of it included among these.

OBS. 3.—Walker must have seen, as have the generality of prosodists since, that such a distinction as he makes between long syllables and short, could not possibly be the basis of English versification, or determine the elements of English feet; yet, without the analogy of any known usage, and contrary to our customary mode of reading the languages, 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 formed by what are called long or short vowels,[500] he suggests, "as a last refuge," (§25,) the very doubtful scheme of reading Latin and Greek poetry with the vowels conformed, agreeably to this English sense of long and short vowel sounds, to the ancient rules of quantity. Of such words as fallo and ambo, pronounced as we usually utter them, he says, "nothing can be more evident than the long 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, may be close or short, while the o, having its primal or name sound, is called long; 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, and misplacing it on the latter syllable. Were the principle true, which the learned author pronounces so "evident," these, and all similar words, would constitute iambic feet; whereas it is plain, that in English 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 names of our poetic feet are all of them derived, by change 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 presumed to stand for things somewhat similar. This reasonable presumption is an argument, too often disregarded by late grammarians, for considering 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 may be the difference or the coincidence between English verse and Greek or Latin, it is certain, that, in our poetic division of syllables, strength and length must always concur, and any scheme which so contrasts accent with long quantity, as to confound the different species of feet, or give contradictory names to the same foot, must be radically and grossly 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 reforming these their elementary principles, so as to adapt them to the quantities and rhythms actually found in our English verse, have all chosen to assume, that our poetical feet in general differ radically from those which the ancients called by the same names; and yet the coincidence found—the "exact sameness of nature" acknowledged—is sagely 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 scheme of feet, we have first a paragraph from Sheridan's Rhetorical Grammar, suggesting that the ancient poetic measures were formed of syllables divided "into long and short," and affirming, what is not very true, that, for the forming 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, i.e., monosyllables, which are very numerous, belong to neither of these classes. The contrast is also comparatively new; our language had much good poetry, long 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 something 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 formed by quantity."—Ib., p. 258. And again: "From the preceding view of English 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 in movement, though differing in measure,[501] and which make different impressions on the ear; an opulence peculiar to our language, 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 scheme, there should be thought a rare ingenuity in thus turning them all to the great advantage and peculiar riches of the English 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 Gram., p. 189;) and here we are gravely assured withal, that these different sorts, which have no separate names, are sometimes forsooth, "exactly of the same nature"! Secondly, it is incompatibly urged, that, "English verse is composed of feet formed by accent," and at the same time shown, that it partakes largely 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 encumbered with an enormous surplus; for, of the twenty-eight Latin feet,[502] mentioned by Dr. Adam and others, Murray never gave the names of more than eight, and his early editions acknowledged 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 materials" for versification, is as absurd as to imagine, in any other case, a variety of measures to be materials for producing the thing measured. Fifthly, "our heroic measure" is iambic pentameter, as Murray himself shows; and, to give to this, "all the ancient poetic feet," is to bestow most of them where they are least needed. Sixthly, "feet differing in measure," so as to "make different impressions on the ear," cannot well be said to "agree in movement," or to be "exactly of the same nature!"

OBS. 7.—Of the foundation of metre, Wells has the following account: "The quantity of a syllable is the relative time occupied in its pronunciation. A syllable may be long 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 almost wholly disregarded."—School Gram., 1st Ed., p. 185. Again: "Versification is a measured arrangement of words[,] in which the accent is made to recur at certain regular intervals. This definition applies only to modern verse. In Greek and Latin poetry, it is the regular recurrence of long syllables, according to settled laws, which constitutes verse."—Ib., p. 186. The contrasting of ancient and modern versification, since Sheridan and Murray each contrived an example of it, has become very common in our grammars, though 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 Romans, is a mere assumption, originating 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 from any thing 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 means probable; nor would it be more so, were a hundred great modern masters to declare themselves ignorant of any other. The words do not distinguish at all the long and short quantities even of our own language; much less can we rely on them for an idea of what is long or short in other tongues. Being monosyllables, both are long with 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 same, both long. 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 man of worth!
Let these words of mine go forth;
Let the Moorish Monarch know,
That to him I nothing owe:
Wo is me, Alhama!"

OBS. 8.—In the English grammars of Allen H. Weld, works remarkable for their egregious 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 number of accented and unaccented syllables, arranged according to certain rules."—Weld's English Grammar, 2d Edition, p. 207; "Abridged Edition," p. 137. A doctrine cannot be contrived, which will more evidently or more extensively confound accent with emphasis, than does this! In English verse, on an average, about three quarters of the words are monosyllables, which, according to 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 emphasized and unemphasized, as some others have thought to class them. Nor is this confounding of accent with emphasis at all lessened or palliated by teaching 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 term emphasis to the accenting 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 emphatic syllable in every foot; for it is by the interchange of emphatick and non-emphatick syllables, that verse grateful to the ear is formed."—Thomas Coar's E. Gram., p. 196. In Latin poetry, the longer words predominate, so that, in Virgil's verse, not one word in five is a monosyllable; hence accent, if our use of it were adjusted to the Latin quantities, might have much more to do with Latin verse than with English. With the following lines of Shakspeare, for example, accent has, properly speaking, no connexion;

"Good friend, thou hast no cause to say so yet;
But thou shalt have; and creep time ne'er so slow,
Yet it shall come, for me to do thee good.
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 rhythms are composed of syllables long and short, sets ours in contrast with them thus: "These terms are commonly employed also in speaking of English verse, though it is marked, not by long and short, but by accented and unaccented syllables; the accented syllables being accounted long; the unaccented, short."—Churchill's New Gram., p. 183. This, though far from being right, 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 "formed by quantity." To account syllables long or short and not believe them to be so, is a ridiculous inconsistency: it is a shuffle in the name of science.

OBS. 10.—Churchill, though not apt to be misled by others' errors, and though his own scanning has no regard to the principle, could not rid himself of the notion, that the quantity of a syllable must depend on the "vowel sound." Accordingly he says, "Mr. Murray justly observes, that our accented syllables, or those reckoned long:, may have either a 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 might. 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 am inclined to suspect that the English mode of reading verse is analogous to that of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Dion. Hal., de Comp., Verb. §xi, speaks of the rhythm of verse differing from the proper measure of the syllables, and often reversing 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 my readers have seen, very variously treated, and in general 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 common among the erudite is the confession of Walker, that "the accent and quantity of the ancients" are, to modern readers, "obscure and mysterious," that it will be taken as a sign of arrogance 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 remark: "Of the Saxon poetry some specimen is necessary, though 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 from that pleasure which the old bards undoubtedly gave to their contemporaries."

OBS. 12.—The imperfect measures of "the father of English 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 him, and sometime after him, thought it musical; and it continues so even in our judgment, if compared with the numbers of Lidgate 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 common sense (which is a rule in every thing 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 more faith in the ears of his own age than in those of an earlier one; but Poe, of our time, himself an ingenious versifier, in his Notes upon English Verse, conveys the idea that all ears are alike competent to appreciate the elements of metre. "Quantity," according to his dogmatism, "is a point in the investigation of which the lumber of mere learning 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 fashion 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, in metre, are either long or short. Our usual prosodies maintain that a long syllable 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 the most part, may be either long or 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. Emphasis will render any short syllable long."—Ibid., p. 105. In penning the last four sentences, the writer must have had Brown's Institutes of English Grammar before him, and open at page 235.

OBS. 14.—Sheridan, in his Rhetorical Grammar, written about 1780, after asserting that a distinction of accent, and not of quantity, marks the movement of English verse, proceeds as follows: "From not having examined the peculiar genius of our tongue, our Prosodians have fallen into a variety of errors; some having adopted the rules of our neighbours, the French; and others having had recourse to those of the ancients; though neither of them, in reality, would square with our tongue, on account of an essential difference between them. [He means, "between each language and ours," and should have said so.] With regard to the French, they measured verses by the number of syllables whereof they were composed, on account of a constitutional defect in their tongue, 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 the most part equally accented; and the number of long syllables 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 composed, not of feet, but syllables; and accordingly they are denominated verses often, eight, 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 numbers, by its being capable of a geometrical proportion, on which the harmony of versification depends; and blindly reduced ourselves to that of the arithmetical kind which contains no natural power of pleasing 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 Hallam, Johnson, Lord Kames, and other "Prosodians" in general, are charged with "astonishing ignorance of the first principles of our verse;" and, at the same time, he is as particularly commended of having "especially insisted on the subject of Quantity."—Everett's English Versification, Preface, p. 6. That the rhetorician was but slenderly entitled to these compliments, may plainly appear from the next paragraph of his Grammar just cited; for therein he mistakingly represents it as a central error, to regard our poetic feet as being "formed by quantity" at all. "Some few of our Prosodians," says he, "finding 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 some of them were utterly incompatible with the genius of our tongue. Thus because the Roman feet were formed by quantity, they asserted the same of ours, denominating all the accented syllables long; 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 makes it long. 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 most part regulated 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 circumstance has given us an amazing advantage over the ancients in the point of poetic numbers."—Sheridan's Rhetorical Gram., p. 64.

OBS. 16.—The lexicographer here claims to have "shewn" or "proved," what he had only affirmed, or asserted. Erroneously taking the quality of the vowel for the quantity of the syllable, he had suggested, in his confident way, that short quantity springs from the accenting of consonants, and long quantity, from the accenting of vowels—a doctrine which has been amply noticed and refuted in a preceding section of the present chapter. Nor is he, in what is here cited, consistent with himself. For, in the first place, nothing 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 them in reference to verse, or contradicts himself by ascribing to each the chief control over quantity. And, lastly, if our poetic feet are not quantitative, not formed of syllables long and short, as were the Roman, what "advantage over the ancients," can we derive from the fact, that quantity is regulated by stress, whether accent or emphasis?

OBS. 17.—We have, I think, no prosodial treatise of higher pretensions than Erastus Everett's "System of English Versification," first published in 1848. This gentleman professes to have borrowed no idea but what he has regularly quoted. "He mentions this, that it may not be supposed that this work is a compilation. It will be seen," says he, "how great a share of it is original; and the author, having deduced his rules from the usage of the great poets, has the best reason for being confident of their correctness."—Preface, p. 5. Of the place to be filled by this System, he has the following conception: "It is thought to supply an important desideratum. It is a matter of surprise to the foreign student, who attempts the study of English 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 modern languages, the most learned philologers 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 as more valuable than any other modern language, not excepting the Italian, the student has no rules to guide him, but a few meagre and incorrect outlines appended to elementary text-books." Then follows this singularly inconsistent exception: "We must except from this remark two works, published in the latter part of the sixteenth century. But as they were written before the poetical language of the English tongue was fixed, and as the rules of verse were not then settled, these works can be of little practical utility."—Preface, p. 1. The works thus excepted as of reliable authority without practical utility, are "a short tract by Gascoyne," doubtless George Gascoigne's 'Notes of Instruction concerning the making of Verse or Rhyme in English,' published in 1575, and Webbe's 'Discourse of English Poetry,' dated 1586, neither of which does the kind exceptor appear to have ever seen! Mention is next made, successively, of Dr. Carey, of Dryden, of Dr. Johnson, of Blair, and of Lord Kames. "To these guides," or at least to the last two, "the author is indebted for many valuable hints;" yet he scruples not to say, "Blair betrays a paucity of knowledge on this subject;"—"Lord Kames has slurred over the subject of Quantity," and "shown an unpardonable ignorance of the first principles of Quantity in our verse;"—and, "Even Dr. Johnson speaks of syllables in such a manner as would lead us to suppose that he was in the same error as Kames. These inaccuracies," it is added, "can be accounted for only from the fact that Prosodians have not thought Quantity of sufficient importance to merit their attention."—See Preface, p. 4-6.

OBS. 18.—Everett's Versification consists of seventeen chapters, numbered consecutively, but divided into two parts, under the two titles Quantity and Construction. Its specimens of verse are numerous, various, and beautiful. Its modes of scansion—the things chiefly to be taught—though perhaps generally correct, are sometimes questionable, and not always consonant with the writer's own rules of quantity. From the citations above, one might expect from this author such an exposition of quantity, as nobody could either mistake or gainsay; but, as the following platform will show, his treatment of this point is singularly curt and incomplete. He is so sparing of words as not even to have given a definition of quantity. He opens his subject thus: "VERSIFICATION is the proper arrangement of words in a line according to their quantity, and the disposition of these lines in couplets, stanzas, or in blank verse, in such order, and according to such rules, as are sanctioned by usage.—A FOOT is a combination of two or more syllables, whether long or short.—A LINE is one foot, or more than one.—The QUANTITY of each word depends on its accent. In words of more than one syllable, all accented syllables are long, and all unaccented syllables are short. Monosyllables are long or short, according to the following Rules:—1st. All Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs, and Participles are long.—2nd. The articles are always short.—3rd, The Pronouns are long or short, according to emphasis.—4th. Interjections and Adverbs are generally long, but sometimes made short by emphasis.—5th. Prepositions and Conjunctions are almost always short, but sometimes made long by emphasis."—English Versification, p. 13. None of these principles of quantity are unexceptionable; and whoever follows them implicitly, will often differ not only from what is right, but from their author himself in the analysis of verses. Nor are they free from important antagonisms. "Emphasis," as here spoken of, not only clashes with "accent," but contradicts itself, by making some syllables long and some short; and, what is more mysteriously absurd, the author says, "It frequently happens that syllables long by QUANTITY become short by EMPHASIS."—Everett's Eng. Versif., 1st Ed., p. 99. Of this, he takes the first syllable of the following line, namely, "the word bids," to be an example:

"B~ids m~e l=ive b~ut t=o h=ope f~or p~ost=er~it~y's pr=aise."

OBS. 19.—In the American Review, for May, 1848, Everett's System of Versification is named as "an apology and occasion"—not for a critical examination of this or any other scheme of prosody—but for the promulgation of a new one, a rival theory of English metres, "the principles and laws" of which the writer promises, "at an other time" more fully "to develop." The article referred to is entitled, "The Art of Measuring Verses." The writer, being designated by his initials, "J. D. W.," is understood to be James D. Whelpley, editor of the Review. Believing Everett's principal doctrines to be radically erroneous, this critic nevertheless excuses them, because he thinks we have nothing better! "The views supported in the work itself," says his closing paragraph, "are not, indeed, such as we would subscribe to, nor can we admit the numerous analyses of the English metres which it contains to be correct; yet, as it is as complete in design and execution as anything that has yet appeared on the subject, and well calculated to excite the attention, and direct the inquiries, of English scholars, to the study of our own metres, we shall even pass it by without a word of criticism."—American Review, New Series, Vol. I, p. 492.

OBS. 20.—Everett, although, as we have seen, he thought proper to deny that the student of English versification had any well authorized "rules to guide him," still argues that, "The laws of our verse are just as fixed, and may be as clearly laid down, if we but attend to the usage of the great Poets, as are the laws of our syntax."—Preface, p. 7. But this critic, of the American Review, ingenious though he is in many of his remarks, flippantly denies that our English Prosody has either authorities or principles which one ought to respect; and accordingly cares so little whom he contradicts, that he is often inconsistent with himself. Here is a sample: "As there are no established authorities in this art, and, indeed, no acknowledged principles—every rhymester being permitted to invent his own method, and write by instinct or imitation—the critic feels quite at liberty to say just what he pleases, and offer his private observations as though these were really of some moment."—Am. Rev., Vol. i, p. 484. In respect to writing, "to invent," and to "imitate," are repugnant ideas; and so are, after a "method," and "by instinct." Again, what sense is there in making the "liberty" of publishing one's "private observations" to depend on the presumed absence of rivals? That the author did not lack confidence in the general applicability of his speculations, subversive though they are of the best and most popular teaching on this subject, is evident from the following sentence: "We intend, also, that if these principles, with the others previously expressed, are true in the given instances, they are equally true for all languages and all varieties of metre, even to the denial that any poetic metres, founded on other principles, can properly exist."—Ib., p. 491

OBS. 21.—J. D. W. is not one of those who discard quantity and supply accent in expounding the nature of metre; and yet he does not coincide very nearly with any of those who have heretofore made quantity the basis of poetic numbers. His views of the rhythmical elements being in several respects peculiar, I purpose briefly to notice them here, though some of the peculiarities of this new "Art of Measuring Verses," should rather be quoted under the head of Scanning, to which they more properly belong. "Of every species of beauty," says this author, "and more especially of the beauty of sounds, continuousness is the first element; a succession of pulses of sound becomes agreeable, only when the breaks or intervals cease to be heard." Again: "Quantity, or the division into measures of time, is a second element of verse; each line must be stuffed out with sounds, to a certain fullness and plumpness, that will sustain the voice, and force it to dwell upon the sounds."—Rev., p. 485. The first of these positions is subsequently contradicted, or very largely qualified, by the following: "So, the line of significant sounds, in a verse, is also marked by accents, or pulses, and divided into portions called feet. These are necessary and natural for the very simple reason that continuity by itself is tedious; and the greatest pleasure arises from the union of continuity with variety. [That is, with "interruption," as he elsewhere calls it!] In the line,

'Full màny a tàle theír mùsic tèlls,'

there are at least four accents or stresses of the voice, with faint pauses after them, just enough to separate the continuous stream of sound into these four parts, to be read thus:

Fullman—yataleth—eirmus—ictells,[503]

by which, new combinations of sound are produced, of a singularly musical character. It is evident from the inspection of the above line, that the division of the feet by the accents is quite independent of the division of words by the sense. The sounds are melted into continuity, and re-divided again in a manner agreeable to the musical ear."—Ib., p. 486. Undoubtedly, the due formation of our poetic feet occasions both a blending of some words and a dividing of others, in a manner unknown to prose; but still we have the authority of this writer, as well as of earlier ones, for saying, "Good verse requires to be read with the natural quantites [sic—KTH] of the syllables," (p. 487,) a doctrine with which that of the redivision appears to clash. If the example given be read with any regard to the cæsural pause, as undoubtedly it should be, the th of their cannot be joined, as above, to the word tale; nor do I see any propriety in joining the s of music to the third foot rather than to the fourth. Can a theory which turns topsyturvy the whole plan of syllabication, fail to affect "the natural quantities of syllables?"

OBS. 22—Different modes of reading verse, may, without doubt, change the quantities of very many syllables. Hence a correct mode of reading, as well as a just theory of measure, is essential to correct scansion, or a just discrimination of the poetic feet. It is a very common opinion, that English verse has but few spondees; and the doctrine of Brightland has been rarely disputed, that, "Heroic Verses consist of five short, and five long Syllables intermixt, but not so very strictly as never to alter that order."—Gram., 7th Ed., p. 160.[504] J. D. W., being a heavy reader, will have each line so "stuffed out with sounds," and the consonants so syllabled after the vowels, as to give to our heroics three spondees for every two iambuses; and lines like the following, which, with the elisions, I should resolve into four iambuses, and without them, into three iambuses and one anapest, he supposes to consist severally of four spondees:—

"'When coldness wraps this suffering clay,
Ah! whither strays the immortal mind?'

[These are] to be read," according to this prosodian,

"Whencoldn—esswrapsth—issuff'r—ingclay,
Ah! whith—erstraysth'—immort—almind?"

"The verse," he contends, "is perceived to consist of six [probably he meant to say eight] heavy syllables, each composed of a vowel followed by a group of consonantal sounds, the whole measured into four equal feet. The movement is what is called spondaic, a spondee being a foot of two heavy sounds. The absence of short syllables gives the line a peculiar weight and solemnity suited to the sentiment, and doubtless prompted by it."—American Review, Vol. i, p. 487. Of his theory, he subsequently says: "It maintains that good English verse is as thoroughly quantitative as the Greek, though it be much more heavy and spondaic."—Ib., p. 491.[505]

OBS. 23—For the determining of quantities and feet, this author borrows from some old Latin grammar three or four rules, commonly thought inapplicable to our tongue, and, mixing them up with other speculations, satisfies himself with stating that the "Art of Measuring Verses" requires yet the production of many more such! But, these things being the essence of his principles, it is proper to state them in his own words: "A short vowel sound followed by a double consonantal sound, usually makes a long quantity;[506] so also does a long vowel like y in beauty, before a consonant. The metrical accents, which often differ from the prosaic, mostly fall upon the heavy sounds; which must also be prolonged in reading, and never slurred or lightened, unless to help out a bad verse. In our language the groupings of the consonants furnish a great number of spondaic feet, and give the language, especially its more ancient forms, as in the verse of Milton and the prose of Lord Bacon, a grand and solemn character. One vowel followed by another, unless the first be naturally made long in the reading, makes a short quantity, as in th[=e] old. So, also, a short vowel followed by a single short consonant, gives a short time or quantity, as in tö give. [Fist] A great variety of rules for the detection of long and short quantities have yet to be invented, or applied from the Greek and Latin prosody. In all languages they are of course the same, making due allowance for difference of organization; but it is as absurd to suppose that the Greeks should have a system of prosody differing in principle from our own, as that their rules of musical harmony should be different from the modern. Both result from the nature of the ear and of the organ of speech, and are consequently the same in all ages and nations."—Am. Rev., Vol. i, p. 488.

OBS. 24.—QUANTITY is here represented as "time" only. In this author's first mention of it, it is called, rather less accurately, "the division into measures of time." With too little regard for either of these conceptions, he next speaks of it as including both "time and accent." But I have already shown that "accents or stresses" cannot pertain to short syllables, and therefore cannot be ingredients of quantity. The whole article lacks that clearness which is a prime requisite of a sound theory. Take all of the writer's next paragraph as an example of this defect: "The two elements of musical metre, time and accent, both together constituting quantity, are equally elements of the metre of verse. Each iambic foot or metre, is marked by a swell of the voice, concluding abruptly in an accent, or interruption, on the last sound of the foot; or, [omit this 'or:' it is improper,] in metres of the trochaic order, in such words as dandy, handy, bottle, favor, labor, it [the foot] begins with a heavy accented sound, and declines to a faint or light one at the close. The line is thus composed of a series of swells or waves of sound, concluding and beginning alike. The accents, or points at which the voice is most forcibly exerted in the feet, being the divisions of time, by which a part of its musical character is given to the verse, are usually made to coincide, in our language, with the accents of the words as they are spoken; which [coincidence] diminishes the musical character of our verse. In Greek hexameters and Latin hexameters, on the contrary, this coincidence is avoided, as tending to monotony and a prosaic character."—Ibid.

OBS. 25.—The passage just cited represents "accent" or "accents" not only as partly constituting quantity, but as being, in its or their turn, "the divisions of time;"—as being also stops, pauses, or "interruptions" of sound else continuous;—as being of two sorts, "metrical" and "prosaic," which "usually coincide," though it is said, they "often differ," and their "interference" is "very frequent;"—as being "the points" of stress "in the feet," but not always such in "the words," of verse;—as striking different feet differently, "each iambic foot" on the latter syllable and every trochee on the former, yet causing, in each line, only such waves of sound as conclude and begin "alike;"—as coinciding with the long quantities and "the prosaic accents," in iambics and trochaics, yet not coinciding with these always;—as giving to verse "a part of its musical character," yet diminishing that character, by their usual coincidence with "the prose accents;"—as being kept distinct in Latin and Greek, "the metrical" from "the prosaic" and their "coincidence avoided," to make poetry more poetical,—though the old prosodists, in all they say of accents, acute, grave, and circumflex, give no hint of this primary distinction! In all this elementary teaching, there seems to be a want of a clear, steady, and consistent notion of the things spoken of. The author's theory led him to several strange combinations of words, some of which it is not easy, even with his whole explanation before us, to regard as other than absurd. With a few examples of his new phraseology, Italicized by myself, I dismiss the subject: "It frequently happens that word and verse accent fall differently."—P. 489. "The verse syllables, like the verse feet, differ in the prosaic and [the] metrical reading of the line."—Ib. "If we read it by the prosaic syllabication, there will be no possibility of measuring the quantities."—Ib. "The metrical are perfectly distinct from the prosaic properties of verse."—Ib. "It may be called an iambic dactyl, formed by the substitution of two short for one long time in the last portion of the foot. Iambic spondees and dactyls are to be distinguished by the metrical accent falling on the last syllable."—P. 491.