letters, is produced by the character and occasion of what is uttered. It is noticed by Walker, that, "Some of the vowels, when neither under the accent, nor closed by a consonant, have a longer or a shorter, an opener or a closer sound, according to the solemnity or familiarity, the deliberation or rapidity of our delivery."—Pronouncing Dict., Preface, p. 4. In cursory speech, or in such reading as imitates it, even the best scholars utter many letters with quicker and obscurer sounds than ought ever to be given them in solemn discourse. "In public speaking," says Rippingham, "every word should be uttered, as though it were spoken singly. The solemnity of an oration justifies and demands such scrupulous distinctness. That careful pronunciation which would be ridiculously pedantic in colloquial intercourse, is an essential requisite of good elocution."—Art of Public Speaking, p. xxxvii.
ARTICLE II—OF QUANTITY.
Quantity, or time in pronunciation, is the measure of sounds or syllables in regard to their duration; and, by way of distinction, is supposed ever to determine them to be either long or short.[1]
The absolute time in which syllables are uttered, is very variable, and must be different to suit different subjects, passions, and occasions; but their relative length or shortness may nevertheless be preserved, and generally must be, especially in reciting poetry.
Our long syllables are chiefly those which, having sounds naturally capable of being lengthened at pleasure, are made long by falling under some stress either of accent or of emphasis. Our short syllables are the weaker sounds, which, being the less significant words, or parts of words, are uttered without peculiar stress.
OBS.—As quantity is chiefly to be regarded in the utterance of poetical compositions, this subject will be farther considered under the head of Versification.
ARTICLE III.—OF ACCENT.
Accent, as commonly understood, is the peculiar stress which we lay upon some particular syllable of a word, whereby that syllable is distinguished from and above the rest; as, gram'-mar, gram-ma'-ri-an.
Every word of more than one syllable, has one of its syllables accented; and sometimes a compound word has two accents, nearly equal in force; as, e'ven-hand'ed, home'-depart'ment.[2]
- ↑ [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, reverberate, undertake."—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.
