On the other hand the following rule, of which borrowed words provide many examples, still obtains in the Play. In words of more than two syllables any vowel in the antepenultima other than i or y was pronounced long if no consonant divided the two following vowels. Possibly the reason was that there was a synæresis of the two vowels, but I doubt this, for a parasitic y was treated as a consonant. Examples are alias, genius, odium, junior, anæmia, and on the other hand fĭlius, Ly̆dia. Compound verbs with a short prefix were exceptions, as ŏbeo, rĕcreo, whence our 'recreant'. A long prefix remained long as in dēsino. The only other exception that I can remember was Phŏloe.
In polysyllables the general rule was that all vowels and diphthongs before the penultima other than u, when it bore a primary or secondary stress, and au and eu were pronounced short except where the 'alias' rule or the 'larva' rule applied. Thus we said hĕrĕditaritis, æ̆quăbilitas, imbĕcillus, suspĭcionem, but fidūciarius, mēdiocritas, pārticipare. I do not know why the popular voice now gives Ăriadne, for our forefathers said Āriadne as they said ārea.
In very long words the alternation of stress and no-stress was insisted on. I remember a schoolmaster who took his degree at Oxford in the year 1827 reproving a boy for saying Álphesibœ́us instead of Alphesibœ́us, and I suspect that Wordsworth meant no inverted stress in
Laódamía, that at Jove's command—
nor Landor in
Artémidóra, gods invisible—
though I hope that they did.
It is not to be thought that these rules were in any way arbitrary. So little was this so that, I believe, they were never even formulated. If examples with the quantities marked were ever given, they must have been for the use of foreigners settling in England. English boys did not want rules, and their teachers could not really have given them. The teachers did not understand that each vowel represented not two sounds only, a long and a short, but many more. This fact was no more understood by John Walker, the actor and lexicographer, who in 1798 published a Key to the Classical Pronunciation of Greek and Latin proper names. His general rule was wrong as a general rule, and so far as it agreed with facts it was useless. He says that when a vowel ends a syllable it is long, and when it does not it is short. Apart from the confusion of cause and effect there is the error of identifying for instance the e in beatus and the e in habebat. Moreover, Walker confounds the u in 'curfew', really long, with the short and otherwise different u in 'but'. The rule was useless as a guide, for it did not say whether moneo for instance was to be read as ino-neo or as mon-eo, and therefore whether the o was to be long or short. Even Walker's list is no exact guide. He gives for instance Mō-na, which is right, and Mō-næses, which is not. Now without going into the difference between long vowels and ordinary vowels, of which latter some are long in scansion and some short, it is clear that there is no identity. In fact Mona, has the long o of 'moan' and Monæses the ordinary o of 'monaster'. A boy at school was not troubled by these matters. He had only two things to learn, first the quantity of the penultimate unit, second the fact that a final vowel was pronounced. When he knew these two things he gave the Latin word the sounds which it would have if it were an English word imported from the Latin. Thus he finds the word civilitate. I am not sure that he could find it, but that does not matter. He would know 'civility', and he learns that the penultima of the Latin word is long. Therefore he says cĭvĭlĭtātĕ. Again he knows 'ĭnfĭnĭt' (I must be allowed to spell the word as it is pronounced except in corrupt quires). He finds that the penultima of infinitivus is long, and he therefore says ĭnfĭnĭtīvŭs. Again he knows 'irradiate', and finding that the penultima of irradiabitur is short he says ĭrrādĭăbĭtŭr. It is true that some of these verb forms under the influence of their congeners came to have an exceptional pronunciation. Thus irradiābit led at last to irradiābitur, but I doubt whether this occurred before the nineteenth century. The word dabitur, almost naturalized by Luther's adage of date et dabitur, kept its short a down to the time when it regained it, in a slightly different form, by its Roman right; and amămini and monĕmini were unwavering in their use. Old people said vāriăbilis long after the true quantities had asserted themselves, and the word as the specific name of a plant may be heard even now. Its first syllable of course follows what I shall call the 'alias' rule. We may still see this rule in other instances. All men say 'hippopótămus', and even those who know that this a is short in Greek can say nothing but 'Mesopotāmia', unless indeed the word lose its blessed and comforting powers in a disyllabic abbreviation. When a country was named after Cecil Rhodes, where the e in the surname is mute, we all called it 'Rhodēsia'. Had it been named after a Newman, where the a is short or rather obscure, we should all have called it 'Newmānia ', while, named after a Davis, it would certainly have been 'Davĭsia'. The process of thought would in each case have been unconscious. A new example is 'aviation', whose first vowel has been instinctively lengthened.