[35] When I was at the railway station, Skipton, in Yorkshire, waiting for a train, I heard one of the men call out, “Any person for Mánchéster” with a distinct and well-marked dwelling of the voice on the second as well as the first syllable. This gave me a very vivid idea of the manner in which the Greeks must have pronounced ἄνθρωπος, accenting the first syllable, but dwelling on the second syllable with a distinct prolongation of the voice.
[36] See the essay on this subject in the second volume of the Greek works of Professor Rangabe of Athens.
[37] Every practical teacher ought to know how much more easily the doctrine of quantity may be taught with constant reference to accent than without it; so that pronouncing a word like ἡμέρα, the accent on the penult, is the easiest way to make the student remember that the final syllable of that word is long.
[38] Δεῖ τὴν φωνὴν ἐν τῷ μελῳδεῖν τὰς μὲν ἐπιτάσεις τε καὶ ἀνέσεις ἀφανεῖς ποίεισθαι—Aristoxenus, apud Pennington, p. 226.
[39] “Our composition of classical verses is almost entirely mechanical. When a boy composes such a verse as Insignemque canas Neptunum vertice cano, how is he guided to the proper collocation of the words? Not by his ear, certainly, for that would be struck precisely in the same manner if he wrote it Insignemque cano Neptunum vertice canas; no, he learns from books that the first of cano (I sing) is short, and the first of canus (hoary) is long. Having so used them, their respective quantity is stored up as a fact in his memory, and by degrees he remembers them so well, that when he sees either of them used in a wrong place, he thinks it offends his ear, while in truth it only offends his understanding. But I apprehend a Roman boy’s process of composition would be quite different. Having been used from his cradle to hear the first syllable of canus take up about twice as much time as that of cano, such a verse as Insignemque cano Neptunum vertice canas, would really hurt his ear, because in the second foot the thesis would be complete before the syllable was expressed, and he would have a time or σημεῖον too much; and in the sixth he could not fill up the time of the arsis without giving to the syllable a drawling sound which would be both unusual and offensive.”—Pennington, p. 249. So long as such an absurd system of writing verses, whether Latin or Greek—from the understanding and not from the ear—is practised, the boys who refuse to have anything to do with prosody shew a great deal more sense than the masters who inculcate it.
[40] “Ἀπομνημονεύματα Πολεμικὰ, διαφόρων μαχῶν συγκροτηθεισῶν μεταξὺ Ἑλλήνων καὶ Ὀθωμάνων κατά τε τὸ Σούλιον καὶ Ἀνατολικὴν Ελλάδα ἀπὸ τοῦ 1820 μέχρι τοῦ 1829 ἔτους. Συγγραφέντα παρὰ τοῦ Συνταγματαρχοῦ Χριστοφόρου Πεῤῥαίβου τοῦ ἐξ Ὀλύμπου τῆς Θετταλίας, καὶ διῃρήμενκ εἰς τόμους δύω. Ἐν Ἀθήναις, ἐκ τῆς Τυπογραφίας Ἀνδρέου Κορόμηλα, Ὁδός Ἓρμου, Ἀριθ. 215. 1836.”
[41] “Αθηνα, Decemb. 31, 1851.”
[42] Perhaps some classical young gentleman at Oxford or Cambridge may be moved by the consideration brought forward in the following passage:—“I was much delighted with this really Grecian ball, at which I was the only foreigner. The Grecian fair I have ever found peculiarly agreeable in society. They are not in the smallest degree tainted with the artificial refinements and affectations of more civilised life, while they have all its graces and fascinations; and I cannot help thinking that as some one thought it worth while to learn ancient Greek at the age of seventy, for the sole purpose of reading the Iliad, so it is well worthy the pains of learning modern Greek at any age, for the pleasure of conversing, in her own tongue, with a young and cultivated Greek beauty.”—Wanderings in Greece, by George Cochran, Esq. London, 1837.
[43] In a paper on the Comparison of the Forms of the Nominative Case in certain Latin and Greek Nouns, (Zeitschrift für die Alterthums-Wissenschaft. 9ͭͤͬ Jahrgang, No. 49,) Professor Ross writes to Professor Bergh of Marburg, as follows:—“My views are founded chiefly on the observation of the dialect used by the common people of Greece, among whom and with whom I lived so long. This dialect, indeed, now spoken by the Greek shepherds and sailors, and which, of course, is not to be learnt from books, but from actual intercourse with the people, the majority of philologists are apt to hold cheap, but it has been to me a mine of rich instruction, and I have no hesitation in saying that, at all events, in reference to the non-Attic dialects of the Greek tongue, to Latin, Oscan, and even Etruscan, more may be got from this source than from the many bulky commentaries of the grammarians of the Middle Ages. See what I have said on this point in my Reisen auf den Griechischen Inseln, iii. p. 155.”
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