The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown (free ebook reader .txt) 📕

[467] In the works of some of our older poets, the apostrophe is sometimes irregularly inserted, and perhaps needlessly, to mark a prosodial synsæresis, or synalepha, where no letter is cut off or left out; as,

   "Retire, or taste thy folly', and learn by proof,
    Hell-born, not to contend with spir'its of Heaven."
        —Milton, P. L., ii, 686.

In the following example, it seems to denote nothing more than the open or long sound of the preceding vowel e:

   "That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour,
    Even till a lethe'd dulness."
        —Singer's Shakspeare, Vol. ii, p. 280.

[468] The breve is properly a mark of short quantity, only when it is set over an unaccented syllable or an unemphatic monosyllable, as it often is in the scanning of verses. In the examples above, it marks the close or short power of the vowels; but, under the accent, even this power may become part of a long syllable; as it does in the word rav´en, where the syllable rav, having twice the length of that which follows, must be reckoned long. In poetry, r=av-en and r=a-ven are both trochees, the former syllable in each being long, and the latter short.

[469] 1. The signs of long and short sounds, and especially of the former, have been singularly slow in acquiring appropriate names—or any appellatives suited to their nature, or such as could obtain the sanction of general use. The name breve, from the French brève, (which latter word came, doubtless, originally from the neuter of the Latin adjective brevis, short,) is now pretty generally applied to the one; and the Greek term macron, long, (also originally a neuter adjective,) is perhaps as common as any name for the other. But these are not quite so well adapted to each other, and to the things named, as are the substitutes added above.

2. These signs are explained in our grammars under various names, and often very unfit ones, to say the least; and, in many instances, their use is, in some way, awkwardly stated, without any attempt to name them, or more than one, if either. The Rev. T. Smith names them "Long (=), and Short (~)."—Smith's Murray, p. 72. Churchill calls them "The long = and the short ~."—New Gram., p. 170. Gould calls them "a horizontal line" and "a curved line."—Gould's Adam's Gram., p. 3. Coar says, "Quantity is distinguished by the characters of - long, and ~ short."—Eng. Gram., p. 197. But, in speaking of the signs, he calls them, "A long syllable =," and "A short syllable ~."—Gram., pp. 222 and 228. S. S. Greene calls them "the long sound," and "the breve or short sound."—Gram., p. 257. W. Allen says, "The long-syllable mark, (=) and the breve, or short-syllable mark, (~) denote the quantity of words poetically employed."—Gram., p. 215. Some call them "the Long Accent," and "the Short Accent;" as does Guy's Gram., p. 95. This naming seems to confound accent with quantity. By some, the Macron is improperly called "a Dash;" as by Lennie, p. 137; by Bullions, p. 157; by Hiley, p. 123; by Butler, p. 215. Some call it "a small dash;" as does Well's, p. 183; so Hiley, p. 117. By some it is absurdly named "Hyphen;" as by Buchanan, p. 162; by Alden, p. 165; by Chandler, 183; by Parker and Fox, iii, 36; by Jaudon, 193. Sanborn calls it "the hyphen, or macron."—Analyt. Gr., p. 279. Many, who name it not, introduce it to their readers by a "this =," or "thus ~;" as do Alger, Blair, Dr. Adam, Comly, Cooper, Ingersoll, L. Murray, Sanders, Wright, and others!

[470] "As soon as language proceeds, from mere articulation, to coherency, and connection, accent becomes the guide of the voice. It is founded upon an obscure perception of symmetry, and proportion, between the different sounds that are uttered."—Noehden's Grammar of the German Language, p. 66.

[471] According to Johnson, Walker, Webster, Worcester, and perhaps all other lexicographers, Quantity, in grammar, is—"The measure of time in pronouncing a syllable." And, to this main idea, are conformed, so far as I know, all the different definitions ever given of it by grammarians and critics, except that which appeared in Asa Humphrey's English Prosody, published in 1847. In this work—the most elaborate and the most comprehensive, though not the most accurate or consistent treatise we have on the subject—Time and Quantity are explained separately, as being "two distinct things;" and the latter is supposed not to have regard to duration, but solely to the amount of sound given to each syllable.

This is not only a fanciful distinction, but a radical innovation—and one which, in any view, has little to recommend it. The author's explanations of both time and quantity—of their characteristics, differences, and subdivisions—of their relations to each other, to poetic numbers, to emphasis and cadence, or to accent and non-accent—as well as his derivation and history of "these technical terms, time and quantity"—are hardly just or clear enough to be satisfactory. According to his theory, "Poetic numbers are composed of long and short syllables alternately;" (page 5;) but the difference or proportion between the times of these classes of syllables he holds to be indeterminable, "because their lengths are various." He began with destroying the proper distinction of quantity, or time, as being either long or short, by the useless recognition of an indefinite number of "intermediate lengths;" saying of our syllables at large, "some are LONG, some SHORT, and some are of INTERMEDIATE LENGTHS; as, mat, not, con, &c. are short sounds; mate, note, cone, and grave are long. Some of our diphthongal sounds are LONGER STILL; as, voice, noise, sound, bound, &c. OTHERS are seen to be of INTERMEDIATE lengths."—Humphrey's Prosody, p. 4.

On a scheme like this, it must evidently be impossible to determine, with any certainty, either what syllables are long and what short, or what is the difference or ratio between any two of the innumerable "lengths" of that time, or quantity, which is long, short, variously intermediate, or longer still, and again variously intermediate! No marvel then that the ingenious author scans some lines in a manner peculiar to himself.

[472] It was the doctrine of Sheridan, and perhaps of our old lexicographers in general, that no English word can have more than one full accent; but, in some modern dictionaries, as Bolles's, and Worcester's, many words are marked as if they had two; and a few are given by Bolles's as having three. Sheridan erroneously affirmed, that "every word has an accent," even "all monosyllables, the particles alone excepted."—Lecture on Elocution, pp. 61 and 71. And again, yet more erroneously: "The essence of English words consisting in accent, as that of syllables in articulation; we know that there are as many syllables as we hear articulate sounds, and as many words as we hear accents."— Ib., p. 70. Yet he had said before, in the same lecture: "The longer polysyllables, have frequently two accents, but one is so much stronger than the other, as to shew that it is but one word; and the inferior accent is always less forcible, than any accent that is the single one in a word."—Ib., p. 31. Wells defines accent as if it might lie on many syllables of a word; but, in his examples, he places it on no more than one: "Accent is the stress which is laid on one or more syllables of a word, in pronunciation; as, re_ver_berate, under_take_."—Wells's School Gram., p. 185. According to this loose definition, he might as well have accented at least one other syllable in each of these examples; for there seems, certainly, to be some little stress on ate and un. For sundry other definitions of accent, see Chap. IV, Section 2d, of Versification; and the marginal note referring to Obs. 1st on Prosody.

[473] According to Dr. Rush, Emphasis is—"a stress of voice on one or more words of a sentence, distinguishing them by intensity or peculiarity of meaning."—Philosophy of the Voice, p. 282. Again, he defines thus: "Accent is the fixed but inexpressive distinction of syllables by quantity and stress: alike both in place and nature, whether the words are pronounced singly from the columns of a vocabulary, or connectedly in the series of discourse. Emphasis may be defined to be the expressive but occasional distinction of a syllable, and consequently of the whole word, by one or more of the specific modes of time, quality, force, or pitch."—Ibid.

[474] 1. This doctrine, though true in its main intent, and especially applicable to the poetic quantity of monosyllables, (the class of words most frequently used in English poetry,) is, perhaps, rather too strongly stated by Murray; because it agrees not with other statements of his, concerning the power of accent over quantity; and because the effect of accent, as a "regulator of quantity," may, on the whole, be as great as that of emphasis. Sheridan contradicts himself yet more pointedly on this subject; and his discrepancies may have been the efficients of Murray's. "The quantity of our syllables is perpetually varying with the sense, and is for the most part regulated by EMPHASIS."—Sheridan's Rhetorical Gram., p. 65. Again: "It is by the ACCENT chiefly that the quantity of our syllables is regulated."—Sheridan's Lectures on Elocution, p. 57. See Chap. IV, Sec. 2d, Obs. 1; and marginal note on Obs. 8.

2. Some writers erroneously confound emphasis with accent; especially those who make accent, and not quantity, the foundation of verse. Contrary to common usage, and to his own definition of accent, Wells takes it upon him to say, "The term accent is also applied, in poetry, to the stress laid on monosyllabic words; as,

'Content is wealth, the riches of the mind.'—Dryden." —Wells's School Grammar, p. 185.

It does not appear that stress laid on monosyllables is any more fitly termed accent, when it occurs in the reading of poetry, than when in the utterance of prose. Churchill, who makes no such distinction, thinks accent essential alike to emphasis and to the quantity of a long vowel, and yet, as regards monosyllables, dependent on them both! His words are these: "Monosyllables are sometimes accented, sometimes not. This depends chiefly on their being more or less emphatic; and on the vowel sound being long or short. We cannot give emphasis to any word, or it's [its] proper duration to a long vowel, without accenting it."—Churchill's New Gram., p. 182.

[475] Not only are these inflections denoted occasionally by the accentual marks, but they are sometimes expressly identified with accents, being called by that name. This practice, however, is plainly objectionable. It confounds things known to be different,—mere stress with elevation or depression,—and may lead to the supposition, that to accent a syllable, is to inflect the voice upon it. Such indeed has been the guess of many concerning the nature of Greek and Latin accents, but of the English accent, the common idea is, that it is only a greater force distinguishing some one syllable of a word from the rest. Walker, however, in the strange account he gives in his Key, of "what we mean by the accent and quantity of our own language," charges this current opinion with error, dissenting from Sheridan and Nares, who held it; and, having asserted, that, "in speaking, the voice is continually sliding upwards or downwards," proceeds to contradict himself thus: "As high and low, loud and soft, forcible and feeble, are comparative terms, words of one syllable pronounced alone, and without relation to other words or syllables, cannot be said to have any ACCENT. The only distinction to which such words are liable, is an elevation or depression of voice, when we compare the beginning with the end of the word or syllable. Thus a monosyllable, considered singly, rises from a lower to a higher tone in the question Nó? which may therefore be called the acute ACCENT: and falls from a higher to a lower tone upon the same word in the answer Nò, which may therefore be called the grave [ACCENT]."—Walker's Key, p. 316. Thus he tells of different accents on "a monosyllable," which, by his own showing, "cannot be said to have any accent"! and others read and copy the text with as little suspicion of its inconsistency! See Worcester's Universal and Critical Dictionary, p. 934.

[476] In Humphrey's English Prosody, cadence is taken for the