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- (Key, p. 313;) prefers the doctrine which "makes the elevation or depression of the voice inseparable from accent;" (Key, p. 314;) holds that, "unaccented vowels are frequently pronounced long when the accented vowels are short;" (Key, p. 312;) takes long or short vowels and long or short syllables to be things everywhere tantamount; saying, "We have no conception of quantity arising from any thing but the nature of the vowels, as they are pronounced long or short;" (ibid.;) and again: "Such long quantity" as consonants may produce with a close or short vowel, "an English ear has not the least idea of. Unless the sound of the vowel be altered, we have not any conception of a long or short syllable."—Walker's Key, p. 322; and Worcester's Octavo Dict., p. 935.
- In the opinion of Murray, Walker's authority should be thought sufficient to settle any question of prosodial quantities. "But," it is added, "there are some critical writers, who dispute the propriety of his arrangement."—Murray's Octavo Gram., p. 241. And well there may be; not only by reason of the obvious incorrectness of the foregoing positions, but because the great orthoëpist is not entirely consistent with himself. In his "Preparatory Observations," which introduce the very essay above cited, he avers that, "the different states of the voice," which are indicated by the comparative terms high and low, loud and soft, quick and slow, forcible and feeble, "may not improperly be called quantities of sound."—Walker's Key, p. 305. Whoever thinks this, certainly conceives of quantity as arising from several other things than "the nature of the vowels." Even Humphrey, with whom, "Quantity differs materially from time," and who defines it, "the weight, or aggregate quantum of sounds," may find his questionable and unusual "conception" of it included among these.
- Walker must have seen, as have the generality of prosodists since, that such a distinction as he makes between long syllables and short, could not possibly be the basis of English versification, or determine the elements of English feet; yet, without the analogy of any known usage, and contrary to our customary mode of reading the languages, he proposes it as applicable—and as the only doctrine conceived to be applicable—to Greek or Latin verse. Ignoring all long or short quantity not formed by what are called long or short vowels,[1] he suggests, "as a last refuge," (§25,) the very doubtful scheme of reading Latin and Greek poetry with the vowels conformed, agreeably to this English sense of long and short vowel sounds, to the ancient rules of quantity. Of such words as fallo and ambo, pronounced as we usually utter them, he says, "nothing can be more evident than the long quantity of the final vowel though without the accent, and the short quantity of the initial and accented syllable."—Obs. on Greek and Lat. Accent, §23; Key, p. 331. Now the very reverse of this appears to me to be "evident." The a, indeed, may be close or short, while the o, having its primal or name sound, is called long; but the first syllable, if fully accented, will have twice the time of the second; nor can this proportion be reversed but by changing the accent, and misplacing it on the latter syllable. Were the principle true, which the learned author pronounces so "evident," these, and all similar words, would constitute iambic feet; whereas it is plain, that in English they are trochees; and in Latin,—where "o final is common,"—either trochees or spondees. The word ambo, as every accurate scholar knows, is always a trochee, whether it be the Latin adjective for "both," or the English noun for "a reading desk, or pulpit."
- The names of our poetic feet are all of them derived, by change of endings, from similar names used in Greek, and thence also in Latin; and, of course, English words and Greek or Latin, so related, are presumed to stand for things somewhat similar. This reasonable presumption is an argument, too often disregarded by late grammarians, for considering our poetic feet to be quantitative, as were the ancient,—not accentual only, as some will have them,—nor separately both, as some others absurdly teach. But, whatever may be the difference or the coincidence between English verse and Greek or Latin, it is certain, that, in our poetic division of syllables, strength and length must always concur, and any scheme which so contrasts accent with long quantity, as to confound the different species of feet, or give contradictory names to the same foot, must be radically and grossly defective. In the preceding section it has been shown, that the principles of quantity adopted by Sheridan, Murray, and others, being so erroneous as to be wholly nugatory, were as unfit to be the basis of English verse, as are Walker's, which have just been spoken of. But, the puzzled authors, instead of reforming these their elementary principles, so as to adapt them to the quantities and rhythms actually found in our English verse, have all chosen to assume, that our poetical feet in general differ radically from those which the ancients called by the same names; and yet the coincidence found—the "exact sameness of nature" acknowledged—is sagely said by some of them to duplicate each foot into two distinct sorts for our especial advantage; while the difference, which they presume to exist, or which their false principles of accent and quantity would create, between feet quantitative and feet accentual, (both of which are allowed to us,) would implicate different names, and convert foot into foot—iambs, trochees, spondees, pyrrhics, each species into some other—till all were confusion!
- In Lindley Murray's revised scheme of feet, we have first a paragraph from Sheridan's Rhetorical Grammar, suggesting that the ancient poetic measures were formed of syllables divided "
- ↑ [500] "As to the long quantity arising from the succession of two consonants, which the ancients are uniform in asserting, if it did not mean that the preceding vowel was to lengthen its sound, as we should do by pronouncing the a in scatter as we do in skater, (one who skates,) I have no conception of what it meant; for if it meant that only the time of the syllable was prolonged, the vowel retaining the same sound, I must confess as ut er [sic—KTH] an inability of comprehending this source of quantity in the Greek and Latin as in English."—Walker on Gr. and L. Accent, §24; Key, p. 331. This distinguished author seems unwilling to admit, that the consonants occupy time in their utterance, or that other vowel sounds than those which name the vowels, can be protracted and become long; but these are truths, nevertheless; and, since every letter adds something to the syllable in which it is uttered, it is by consequence a "source of quantity," whether the syllable be long or short.
