(2.) "Some of our Moderns (especially Mr. Bishe, in his Art of Poetry) and lately Mr. Mattaire, in what he calls, The English Grammar, erroneously use Accent for Quantity, one signifying the Length or Shortness of a Syllable, the other the raising or falling of the Voice in Discourse."—Brightland's Gram., London, 1746, p. 156.
(3.) "Tempus cum accentu a nonnullis malè confunditur; quasi idem sit acui et produci. Cum brevis autem syllaba acuitur, elevatur quidem vox in eà proferendà, sed tempus non augetur. Sic in voce hominibus acuitur mi; at ni quæ sequitur, æquam in efferendo moram postulat."—Lily's Gram., p. 125. Version: "By some persons, time is improperly confounded with accent; as if to acute and to lengthen were the same. But when a short syllable is acuted, the voice indeed is raised in pronouncing it, but the time is not increased. Thus, in the word hominibus, mi as the acute accent; but ni, which follows, demands equal slowness in the pronunciation." To English ears, this can hardly seem a correct representation; for, in pronouncing hominibus, it is not mi, but min, that we accent; and this syllable is manifestly as much longer than the rest, as it is louder.
[490] (1.) "Syllables, with respect to their quantity, are either long, short, or common."—Gould's Adam's Lat. Gram., p. 243. "Some syllables are common; that is, sometimes long, and sometimes short."—Adam's Lat. and Eng. Gram., p. 252. Common is here put for variable, or not permanently settled in respect to quantity: in this sense, from which no third species ought to be inferred, our language is, perhaps, more extensively "common" than any other.
(2.) "Most of our Monosyllables either take this Stress or not, according as they are more or less emphatical; and therefore English Words of one Syllable may be considered as common; i.e. either as long or short in certain Situations. These Situations are chiefly determined by the Pause, or Cesure, of the Verse, and this Pause by the Sense. And as the English abounds in Monosyllables, there is probably no Language in which the Quantity of Syllables is more regulated by the Sense than in English."—W. Ward's Gram., Ed. of 1765, p. 156.
(3.) Bicknell's theory of quantity, for which he refers to Herries, is this: "The English quantity is divided into long, short, and common. The longest species of syllables are those that end in a vowel, and are under the accent; as, mo in har_mo_nious, sole in con_sole_, &c. When a monosyllable, which is unemphatic, ends in a vowel, it is always short; but when the emphasis is placed upon it, it is always long. Short syllables are such as end in any of the six mutes; as cu_t_, sto_p_, ra_p_i_d_, ru_g_ge_d_, lo_ck_. In all such syllables the sound cannot be lengthened: they are necessarily and invariably short. If another consonant intervenes between the vowel and mute, as re_nd_, so_ft_, fla_sk_, the syllable is rendered somewhat longer. The other species of syllables called common, are such as terminate in a half-vowel or aspirate. For instance, in the words ru_n_, swi_m_, cru_sh_, pu_rl_, the concluding sound can be continued or shortened, as we please. This scheme of quantity," it is added, "is founded on fact and experience."—Bicknell's Gram., Part ii, p. 109. But is it not a fact, that such words as cuttest, stopping, rapid, rugged, are trochees, in verse? and is not unlock an iambus? And what becomes of syllables that end with vowels or liquids and are not accented?
[491] I do not say the mere absence of stress is never called accent; for it is, plainly, the doctrine of some authors that the English accent differs not at all in its nature from the accent of the ancient Greeks or Romans, which was distinguished as being of three sorts, acute, grave, inflex; that "the stronger breathing, or higher sound," which distinguishes one syllable of a word from or above the rest, is the acute accent only; that "the softer breathing, or lower sound," which belongs to an unacuted (or unaccented) syllable, is the grave accent; and that a combination of these two sounds, or "breathings," upon one syllable, constitutes the inflex or circumflex accent. Such, I think, is the teaching of Rev. William Barnes; who further says, "English verse is constructed upon sundry orders of acute and grave accents and matchings of rhymes, while the poetic language of the Romans and Greeks is formed upon rules of the sundry clusterings of long and short syllables."—Philological Grammar, p. 263. This scheme is not wholly consistent, because the author explains accent or accents as being applicable only to "words of two or more syllables;" and it is plain, that the accent which includes the three sorts above, must needs be "some other thing than what we call accent," if this includes only the acute.
[492] Sheridan used the same comparison, "To illustrate the difference between the accent of the ancients and that of ours" [our tongue]. Our accent he supposed, with Nares and others, to have "no reference to inflections of the voice."—See Art of Reading, p. 75; Lectures on Elocution, p. 56; Walker's Key, p. 313.
[493] (1.) It may in some measure account for these remarkable omissions, to observe that Walker, in his lexicography, followed Johnson in almost every thing but pronunciation. On this latter subject, his own authority is perhaps as great as that of any single author. And here I am led to introduce a remark or two touching the accent and quantity with which he was chiefly concerned; though the suggestions may have no immediate connexion with the error of confounding these properties.
(2.) Walker, in his theory, regarded the inflections of the voice as pertaining to accent, and as affording a satisfactory solution of the difficulties in which this subject has been involved; but, as an English orthoëpist, he treats of accent in no other sense, than as stress laid on a particular syllable of a word—a sense implying contrast, and necessarily dividing all syllables into accented and unaccented, except monosyllables. Having acknowledged our "total ignorance of the nature of the Latin and Greek accent," he adds: "The accent of the English language, which is constantly sounding in our ears, and every moment open to investigation, seems as much a mystery as that accent which is removed almost two thousand years from our view. Obscurity, perplexity, and confusion, run through every treatise on the subject, and nothing could be so hopeless as an attempt to explain it, did not a circumstance present itself, which at once accounts for the confusion, and affords a clew to lead us out of it. Not one writer on accent has given such a definition of the voice as acquaints us with its essential properties. * * * But let us once divide the voice into its rising and falling inflections, the obscurity vanishes, and accent becomes as intelligible as any other part of language. * * * On the present occasion it will be sufficient to observe, that the stress we call accent is as well understood as is necessary for the pronunciation of single words, which is the object of this treatise."—Walker's Dict., p. 53, Princip. 486, 487, 488.
(3.) Afterwards, on introducing quantity, as an orthoëpical topic, he has the following remark: "In treating this part of pronunciation, it will not be necessary to enter into the nature of that quantity which constitutes poetry; the quantity here considered will be that which relates to words taken singly; and this is nothing more than the length or shortness of the vowels, either as they stand alone, or as they are differently combined with the vowels or consonants." Ib., p. 62, Princip. 529. Here is suggested a distinction which has not been so well observed by grammarians and prosodists, or even by Walker himself, as it ought to have been. So long as the practice continues of denominating certain mere vowel sounds the long and the short, it will be very necessary to notice that these are not the same as the syllabic quantities, long and short, which constitute English verse.