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

reverse of accent, and is obviously identified or confounded with short quantity, or what the author inclines to call "small quantity." He defines it as follows: "Cadence is the reverse or counterpart to accent; a falling or depression of voice on syllables unaccented: and by which the sound is shortened and depressed."—P. 3. This is not exactly what is generally understood by the word cadence. Lord Kames also contrasts cadence with accent; but, by the latter term, he seems to have meant something different from our ordinary accent. "Sometimes to humour the sense," says he, "and sometimes the melody, a particular syllable is sounded in a higher tone; and this is termed accenting a syllable, or gracing it with an accent. Opposed to the accent, is the cadence, which I have not mentioned as one of the requisites of verse, because it is entirely regulated by the sense, and hath no peculiar relation to verse."—Elements of Criticism, Vol. ii, p. 78.

[477] The Latin term, (made plural to agree with verba, words,) is subaudita, underheard—the perfect participle of subaudio, to underhear. Hence the noun, subauditio, subaudition, the recognition of ellipses.

[478] "Thus, in the Proverbs of all Languages, many Words are usually left to be supplied from the trite obvious Nature of what they express; as, out of Sight out of Mind; the more the merrier, &c."—W. Ward's Pract. Gram., p. 147.

[479] Lindley Murray and some others say, "As the ellipsis occurs in almost every sentence in the English language, numerous examples of it might be given."—Murray's Gram., p. 220; Weld's, 292; Fisk's, 147. They could, without doubt, have exhibited many true specimens of Ellipsis; but most of those which they have given, are only fanciful and false ones; and their notion of the frequency of the figure, is monstrously hyperbolical.

[480] Who besides Webster has called syllepsis "substitution," I do not know. Substitution and conception are terms of quite different import, and many authors have explained syllepsis by the latter word. Dr. Webster gives to "SUBSTITUTION" two meanings, thus: "1. The act of putting one person or thing in the place of another to supply [his or] its place.—2. In grammar, syllepsis, or the use of one word for another."—American Dict., 8vo. This explanation seems to me inaccurate; because it confounds both substitution and syllepsis with enallage. It has signs of carelessness throughout; the former sentence being both tautological and ungrammatical.—G. B.

[481] Between Tropes and Figures, some writers attempt a full distinction; but this, if practicable, is of little use. According to Holmes, "TROPES affect only single Words; but FIGURES, whole Sentences."—Rhetoric, B. i, p. 28. "The CHIEF TROPES in Language," says this author, "are seven; a Metaphor, an Allegory, a Metonymy, a Synecdoche, an Irony, an Hyperbole, and a Catachresis."—Ib., p. 30. The term Figure or Figures is more comprehensive than Trope or Tropes; I have therefore not thought it expedient to make much use of the latter, in either the singular or the plural form. Holmes's seven tropes are all of them defined in the main text of this section, except Catachresis, which is commonly explained to be "an abuse of a trope." According to this sense, it seems in general to differ but little from impropriety. At best, a Catachresis is a forced expression, though sometimes, perhaps, to be indulged where there is great excitement. It is a sort of figure by which a word is used in a sense different from, yet connected with, or analogous to, its own; as,

   "And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
    Striding the blast, as heaven's cherubim
    Hors'd upon the sightless couriers of the air,
    Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
    That tears shall drown the wind."—Shak., Macbeth, Act i, Sc. 7.

[482] Holmes, in his Art of Rhetoric, writes this word "Paraleipsis" retaining the Greek orthography. So does Fowler in his recent "English Grammar," §646. Webster, Adam, and some others, write it "Paralepsis." I write it as above on the authority of Littleton, Ainsworth, and some others; and this is according to the analogy of the kindred word ellipsis, which we never write either ellepsis, or, as the Greek, elleipsis.

[483] To this principle there seems to be now and then an exception, as when a weak dissyllable begins a foot in an anapestic line, as in the following examples:—

   "I think—let me see—yes, it is, I declare,
    As long ago now as that Buckingham there."—Leigh Hunt.

    "And Thomson, though best in his indolent fits,
    Either slept himself weary, or blasted his wits."—Id.

Here, if we reckon the feet in question to be anapests, we have dissyllables with both parts short. But some, accenting "ago" on the latter syllable, and "Either" on the former, will call "ago now" a bacchy, and "Either slept" an amphimac: because they make them such by their manner of reading.—G. B.

[484] "Edgar A. Poe, the author, died at Baltimore on Sunday" [the 7th].—Daily Evening Traveller, Boston Oct. 9, 1849. This was eight or ten months after the writing of these observations.—G. B.

[485] "Versification is the art of arranging words into lines of correspondent length, so as to produce harmony by the regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity"—Brown's Institutes of E. Gram., p. 235.

[486] This appears to be an error; for, according to Dilworth, and other arithmeticians, "a unit is a number;" and so is it expounded by Johnson, Walker, Webster, and Worcester. See, in the Introduction, a note at the foot of p. 117. Mulligan, however, contends still, that one is no number; and that, "to talk of the singular number is absurd—a contradiction in terms;"—because, "in common discourse," a "number" is "always a plurality, except"—when it is "number one!"—See Grammatical Structure of the E. Language, §33. Some prosodists have taught the absurdity, that two feet are necessary to constitute a metre, and have accordingly applied the terms, monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, and hexameter,—or so many of them as they could so misapply,—in a sense very different from the usual acceptation. The proper principle is, that, "One foot constitutes a metre."—Dr. P. Wilson's Greek Prosody, p. 53. And verses are to be denominated Monometer, Dimeter, Trimeter, &c., according to "THE NUMBER OF FEET."—See ib. p. 6. But Worcester's Universal and Critical Dictionary has the following not very consistent explanations: "MONOMETER, n. One metre. Beck. DIMETER, n. A poetic measure of four feet; a series of two meters. Beck. TRIMETER, a. Consisting of three poetical measures, forming an iambic of six feet. Tyrwhitt. TETRAMETER, n. A Latin or Greek verse consisting of four feet; a series of four metres. TETRAMETER, a. Having four metrical feet. Tyrwhitt. PENTAMETER, n. A Greek or Latin verse of five feet; a series of five metres. PENTAMETER, a. Having five metrical feet. Warton. HEXAMETER, n. A verse or line of poetry, having six feet, either dactyls or spondees; the heroic, and most important, verse among the Greeks and Romans;—a rhythmical series of six metres. HEXAMETER, a. Having six metrical feet. Dr. Warton." According to these definitions, Dimeter has as many feet as Tetrameter; and Trimeter has as many as Hexameter!

[487] It is common, at any rate, for prosodists to speak of "the movement of the voice," as do Sheridan, Murray, Humphrey, and Everett; but Kames, in treating of the Beauty of Language from Resemblance, says "There is no resemblance of sound to motion, nor of sound to sentiment."—Elements of Criticism, Vol. ii, p. 63. This usage, however, is admitted by the critic, had cited to show how, "causes that have no resemblance may produce resembling effects."—Ib. 64. "By a number of syllables in succession, an emotion is sometimes raised extremely similar to that raised by successive motion: which may be evident even to those who are defective in taste, from the following fact, that the term movement in all languages is equally applied to both."—Ib. ii. 66.

[488] "From what has been said of accent and quantity in our own language, we may conclude them to be essentially distinct and perfectly separable: nor is it to be doubted that they were equally separable in the learned languages."—Walkers's Observations on Gr. and Lat. Accent and Quantity, §20; Key, p. 326. In the speculative essay here cited, Walker meant by accent the rising or the falling inflection,—an upward or a downward slide of the voice: and by quantity, nothing but the open or close sound of some vowel; as of "the a in scatter" and in "skater," the initial syllables of which words be supposed to differ in quantity as much as any two syllables can!—Ib., §24; Key, p. 331. With these views of the things, it is perhaps the less to be wondered at, that Walker, who appears to have been a candid and courteous writer, charges "that excellent scholar Mr. Forster—with a total ignorance of the accent and quantity of his own language," (Ib., Note on §8; Key, p. 317;) and, in regard to accent, ancient or modern, elsewhere confesses his own ignorance, and that of every body else, to be as "total." See marginal note on Obs. 4th below.

[489] (1.) "We shall now take a view of sounds when united into syllables. Here a beautiful variation of quantity presents itself as the next object of our attention. The knowledge of long and short syllables, is the most excellent and most neglected quality in the whole art of pronunciation.

The disputes of our modern writers on this subject, have arisen chiefly from an absurd notion that has long prevailed; viz. that there is no difference between the accent and the quantity, in the English language; that the accented syllables are always long, and the unaccented always short.

An absurdity so glaring, does not need refutation. Pronounce any one line from Milton, and the ear will determine whether or not the accent and quantity always coincide. Very seldom they do."—HERRIES: Bicknell's Gram., Part ii, p. 108.

(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