Part 4

[30] QUINCTIL., lib. i. c. 5; DIOMED. de Oratione, ii.; PUTSCH. i. 426.

[31] JELF, in the Preface to his Grammar, calls the doctrine of accent “a difficult branch of scholarship.” The difficulty is altogether an artificial one, made by scholastic men who will insist on teaching by the eye only and the understanding, what has no meaning at all except when addressed to the ear. The doctrine of accentuation in English has no peculiar difficulty, plainly because men learn it in the natural way by hearing.

[32] “_Si quis igitur vestrum ad accuratam Græcarum literarum scientiam aspirat, is probabilem sibi accentuum rationem quam maturrime comparet, in propositoque perstet scurrarum dicacitate et stultorum derisione immotus_,” ad Med. 1, apud JELF, vol. i. p. 37. I wonder if Porson himself pronounced according to the accents. If he did not, he is just another instance of that extraordinary incapacity of apprehending a large principle that is so characteristic of the English mind.

[33] I may insert here the whole of the passage of BOISSONADE, from which the words in one of the prefixed mottoes are taken. “_Nisi quod maxime cupio, in omnibus academiis nostris, gymnasiis et scholis hodierna Græcorum pronuntiatio recipiatur. Nam cum prorsus perierit antiqua pronuntiandi ratio qua Demosthenes, et Sophocles, vel ipsi Alexandrini sub Ptolemæis utebantur, et fere ridiculum sit unumquemque populum ad suæ linguæ sonos, atque etiam ad libitum, Græcorum quos legit librorum pronuntiationem efformare, id saltem boni, admissa neotericorum pronuntiatione, lucrabimur, non solum ut Gallus homo et Germanus Anglum intelligant Græce loquentem et ab illo Græce ipsi loquentes intelligantur, sed id etiam ut cum Græcis doctis et scholastica institutione politis confabulemur verbis antiquorum et facillime, si velimus, hodiernæ linguæ cognitionem ac usum assequamur._”—HERODIAN, Epimerisni, BOISSONADE. London, 1819. Prefat.

[34] History of the University of Cambridge, Section vii.

Let us now ask in a single sentence how all this mass of absurdity came about; for we may depend upon it a whole array of brave philologic hoplites cannot have stumbled on their way suddenly without the apparition of some real or imaginary ghost. The ghost that frightened them on the present occasion, and caused them to forswear SPOKEN ACCENT (for as we have seen they stuck to it on PAPER) was QUANTITY; concerning which, therefore, we must now inquire, whether it be a real ghost or only a white sheet. Quantity, they say, cannot stand before Accent, or rather is swallowed up by it. Like hostile religious sects, or belligerent medical corporations, they cannot meet without quarrelling; so the public peace is consulted by getting rid of one of them, not in the way of violent murder, (for the law does not allow that,) but by what certain philosophical Chartist-Reformers used to call “painless extinction.” Therefore they who speak according to accent, are wont to remove quantity out of the way noiselessly; and they who speak according to quantity must treat accent in the same way. This is an old story. The BEAR in Erasmus’ dialogue, (Havercamp, ii. 95,) speaking rare wisdom in a gruff Johnsonian sort of style, says, “_Sunt quidam adeo_ CRASSI _ut non distinguant accentum a quantitate, quum sit longe diversa ratio_. =ALIUD EST ENIM ACUTUM ALIUD DIU TINNIRE: ALIUD INTENDI, ALIUD EXTENDI.= _At eruditos novi qui, quum pronunciarent illud_ ἀνέχου καὶ ἀπέχου, _mediam syllabam, quoniam tonum habet acutum, quantum possent producerent, quum sit natura brevis vel brevissima potius_.” Certain learned men, it appears, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, could not accent the word ἀνέχου on the penult, as it ought to be accented, without in the same breath making that syllable long, which it is not. To avoid this blunder, the Etonians, Oxonians, and other famous modern teachers, omit the accent altogether on that syllable and on every syllable—of which the name is legion—similarly situated in the Greek language, and thus, by removing the cause, are sure of annihilating the effect. A very obvious, but surely a very clumsy expedient, and hardly worthy of the subtlety of the academic mind. A man by running too hard sometimes breaks his legs; and you forthwith vow to avoid his fate by sitting in your chair constantly and taking no exercise! Let us see how the case stands here. The accent, you say, lengthens the syllable. Take any English word in the first place, (as nonsense is not so transparent in a learned tongue,) and make the experiment. If a Scotsman says _véesible_, you will allow, I suppose, that the first syllable of that word is both long and accented: if an Englishman says _viśible_, ’tis equally clear that the same syllable is still accented, but it is not now long. Accent, therefore, in English has no necessary power to lengthen the sound of the vowel of the syllable on which it is placed; and if some learned men on the banks of the Rhine, in the days of Erasmus, or on the banks of the Isis, in our day, cannot accent a syllable without at the same time lengthening it, this happens merely because, as the Bear says, they are “ADEO CRASSI;” their ears are gross, and have lost—by the dust of the libraries, perhaps—the healthy power of discerning differences of modulation in the living human voice. Not a few persons have I met with among those who are, or would be scholars, in this country, who in this way assert that it is impossible to put the accent on the penult of a Greek word, and at the same time, as the law of the language requires, make the last syllable long. But these persons had got their ears confounded by the traditionary jargon of teachers inculcating from dead books a doctrine of which they had no living apprehension; and this, along with the utter neglect of musical and elocutionary culture so common among our classical devotees, had rendered them incapable of perceiving, without an act of special attention, the commonest phenomena of spoken language appealing to the ear. In the English words _echo_, _primrose_, and many other of the same description, the accent and quantity stand in that exact relation which is so characteristic of Greek, as in ἔχω, λόγῳ; while in the English words _clód-pated_, _hoúsekeeper_, we have that precise disposal of accent and quantity which occurs in the word ἄνθρωπος, and which has been so often quoted as a proof that it is impossible to give effect to accent without violating quantity.[35] A very slight elocutionary culture would put a stop to such vain talk; but we have, unfortunately, too many scholars who gather their crude notions on such subjects from a few phrases current in the schools, without ever questioning their own ears, the only proper witness of what is right or wrong in the matter of enunciation. Hence the cumbrous mass of erudite nonsense on accent and quantity under which our library shelves groan; hence the host of imaginary difficulties and impossibilities that birch-bearing men will raise when you tell them to perform the simplest act of perception of which an unsophisticated human ear is capable. “_Vel ab_ ASINIS _licebat hoc discrimen discere_,” continues the learned Bear, “_qui rudentes corripiunt acutam vocem, imam producunt_.” Very true; a really wise man may learn much from an ass; but they who conceit themselves to be wise, when they are not, will learn from nobody. And so I conclude with regard to this whole matter of QUANTITY, that it is only an imaginary ghost after all; a white sheet which a single touch of the finger will turn aside, or only a white mist, perhaps, which, if a brave man will only march up to, he shall not know that it is there.

[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.

One thing, however, I will admit—by way of palliation for the enormous blunders that have been committed in this matter—that in words of two, three, or more syllables, where the accent is on a syllable naturally short, while the long syllable is unaccented, a careless speaker may readily slur over the long syllable so as to make it short, thus converting an anapæst accented on the first syllable, as

ˏ ˏ _cĕlăndīne_, into a tribrach with the same accent _cĕlăndĭn_,

a very common vulgarism, as we all know. The unaccented syllable, indeed, is, in the very nature of things, placed in a position where it is not so likely to get its fair mass of sound as its accented neighbour. Thus, except in solemn speaking, the first syllable of ŌBĒDĬĔNT seldom gets full weight, though it is equally long with its accented sequent; and the second syllable of EDUCATION is vulgarized into _edication_, purely from the want of the accent. But that such vulgarisms should form any bar in the way of academical men doing proper justice to the correct elocution of the Greeks is really too bad. The modern Greeks, indeed, we know, go a step farther;[36] they not only in their common conversation fail to give the due prolongation to their long syllables, when unaccented—making no distinction between ω and ο—but they actually give _extension_ as well as _intension_ to all their accented syllables, and thus fall into the same sin as respects quantity that our academicians daily commit against accent. But there is not the slightest reason why we should imagine it necessary to imitate them in this idiosyncrasy. To do so would be for the sake of a superfluous compliment to the living, to cut off one great necessary organ, whereby the beautiful wisdom of the dead being made alive again becomes ours. The laws of accent are a most important element of the oratory of Pericles and Demosthenes; but without quantity the harmony of Homer’s numbers is unintelligible. There is no reason why we should sacrifice either the one or the other of these two great modulating principles of ancient Hellenic speech. The one, so far from destroying, does, in fact, regulate to a certain extent,[37] and beautifully vary the other. Quantity without accent were a monotonous level of dreary sing-song; accent without quantity can be likened only to a series of sharp parallel ridges, with steep narrow ravines interposed, but without the amplitude of grassy slope, flowering mead, and far-stretching fields of yellow-waving corn.

[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.

But some one will still press the question, _How am I to read Homer? how Sophocles?_ Is it not manifest, that if I read according to the spoken accent, and not according to the quantitative metre, though I may preserve myself, by decent care, from grossly violating quantity, I shall certainly fail to bring out anything that the ear of the most harshly-modulated Hottentot or Cherokee could recognise as rhythm? Now what has been said hitherto of the compatibility of accent and quantity relates only to words taken separately, or as they occur in the loose succession of unfettered speech—a purely elocutional matter: of the musical element of rhythm nothing has been said. That this must modify the singing or recitation of measured verses to a considerable extent, so as to make it different from the oratorical declamation of prose, is evident; but that there is no such incomprehensible mystery in the matter, as some people imagine, I hope I shall be able to make plain in a very few words. The poetry of the ancients differed from the mass of that now written in nothing more than in this, that it was considered as a living element of the existing music, and exercised in subjection to the laws of that divine art. Now the singing of words in music has the effect of bringing out more prominently the mass of vocal sound in the words, or what the prosodians in their technical style call quantity, while the spoken accent—unless it be identified with the musical accent or rhythmical beat—is apt to be overwhelmed altogether and superseded. That this must be the case the very nature of the thing shows; but we have a distinct testimony of an ancient musical writer to this effect, which will be useful to those who in all matters are constitutionally apt to depend more on authority than on reason.[38] This explains why, in the ancient treatises on poetical measures, we find not a word said about the spoken accent. If the full musical value of each foot, (or bar, as we call it,) in point of vowel-fulness, according to an established sequence be given, the poet is considered to have done his duty to the musician; the rhythmical beat, or musical accent, accompanies the measured succession of bars, as with us, but the spoken accent is disregarded. Of all this in our elocutional poetry we do, and must, in the nature of things, do the very reverse. Poetry composed primarily for recitation must follow the laws of spoken speech; and the spoken accent being the most prominent element in that speech, becomes of course the great regulator of poetical rhythm. Quantity, as the secondary element of spoken speech, though the principal thing in music, is not indeed neglected altogether, but left to the free disposal of the poet, so that the technical structure of his verse is in no wise bound by it. The musician then comes in, and finding that he has no liberty in the matter of the spoken accent, (the public ear being altogether formed on that,) exercises his large discretion in the matter of quantity, drawing out, without ceremony, a spoken quaver into a sung minim, or cutting short a spoken minim into a sung quaver. Now this license, familiar as it is to us, would have strangely startled, and appeared almost ludicrous to a Greek ear; and by the same effect of mere custom, we have to explain the fact, that the practice of composing poetry, without any reference to the spoken accent, practised by the ancients, appears to us so extraordinary. In our attempts to explain it, we have sometimes altogether lost out of view the fact, that music and conversational speech, though kindred arts, and arts in the ancient practice of poetry indissolubly wedded, have each their own distinctive tendencies and laws, to which full effect cannot easily be given while they act together; and every such case of joint action must accordingly be, to a certain extent—like the harmonious practice of connubial life—a compromise. My conclusion, therefore, with regard to the reading of Homer and Sophocles is, in the first place, that they were never intended to be read in our sense of the word, that they are not constructed on reading principles, and that, when we do recite them—as the ancients themselves no doubt likewise did—we must read them in a manner that makes as near an approach as possible to the musical principles on which they were constructed. With regard to the strictly lyrical parts of poetry, as Pindar and the tragic choruses, I have no hesitation in saying, that the only proper way to obtain a full perception of their rhythmical beauty, is to sing or chant them to any extemporized melody, (which would be much more readily done were not music so unworthily neglected in our higher schools;) while with regard to the dialogic parts of the drama, which were declaimed and not sung by the ancients themselves, the teacher must take care to accustom his pupils to a deep and mellow fulness of vocalization, and a deliberate stateliness of verbal procession, as much as possible the reverse of that hasty trip with which we are accustomed to read the dialogue of our dramatic poetry. The musical accent, or rhythmical beat, will, of course, in such a method of recitation, receive a marked prominence; the long quantity will never be slurred; and with regard to the spoken accent, what I say is this, the ear of the student must first be trained in reading prose never to omit the accent, and accustomed to feel, by the living iteration of the ear, that both accent and quantity are an essential part of the word. This many schoolmasters will not do, because it requires science, and will take a little trouble; but let such pass. Those who do so train the young classical ear, will find that in turning to poetry, and keeping time with their foot as they read any metre, the attentive scholar will not only readily follow the given rhythm, and appreciate the position of the musical accent, (very few human beings being altogether destitute of the rhythmical principle,) but will be able also to preserve the spoken accent in those places where the flow of the rhythm does not altogether overpower it. What I mean is this. In the line, for instance,

οὐλομένην ἣ μυρἴ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκεν,

the second of the Iliad, the boy who has been properly trained to put the accent on the penult of οὔλομένην, preserving the long quantity of the final syllable, will, even though he retains that accent in the rhythmical declamation of the line, find no impediment to the rhythmical progress of the verse, but rather an agreeable variety, and an antidote against monotony; and though, on account of the strong effect which the rhythm always exercises on the closing word of the line, it will be difficult to give the full effect to the spoken accent on the antepenultimate of ἔθηκεν, while the closing musical accent lies on the penult, nevertheless, a person who has been accustomed always to pronounce this word in prose with its proper accent and quantity, will bring out the first syllable of the word much more distinctly than is done in the sing-song of a merely rhythmical recitation, and will not spoil the verse, but rather improve it. And if any person asks me how I prove that the ancients read Homer this way, I might content myself by giving a Scotch answer, and asking, _How do you prove that they read it your way?_ But, in fact, there is no possibility of their having read it otherwise; for having once introduced the habit of reading compositions, constructed originally on musical, not elocutional principles, with that habit they could not but bring in as much of the element of their spoken language as was consistent with the musical principle on which the very existence of the composition, as a rhythmical work of art, depended; that is to say, they allowed the musical principle of quantitative rhythm to prevail over the elocutional principle of accent, so far only as to produce harmony, not so far as to fatigue with monotony.

[38] Δεῖ τὴν φωνὴν ἐν τῷ μελῳδεῖν τὰς μὲν ἐπιτάσεις τε καὶ ἀνέσεις ἀφανεῖς ποίεισθαι—ARISTOXENUS, apud PENNINGTON, p. 226.

The reader will observe that I am not theorizing in all this, but speaking from experience; and therefore I speak with confidence. For ten years I read the Latin poets in Aberdeen, and I found no difficulty in reading them so as to combine the living effect of both accent and quantity, and teaching the student both by the ear alone. The first line of Virgil, to take an example, in respect of accent and quantity, may be read three ways. Either

ˏ ˏ _Árma virúmque cānŏ Trōjæ qui prímus ab óris_

Or, ˏ ... _cănō Trōjáe_ ...

Or, ˏ ˏ ... _căn-ō Trōjæ_ ...

I take notice of these two words CANO and TROJǼ, only because they are the only two in which the musical accent of this line clashes with the spoken accent, the rules of which, though not marked in Latin books as in Greek, were preserved by the living tradition of the Roman Catholic Church, and the accentual Latin poetry of their Service, and are observed by our schoolmasters as faithfully (without knowing it, many of them) as they violate the accent of the Greek. Now, of these three ways of reading a Latin hexameter, the second is the only one which proceeds upon the principle of the quantitative rhythm exclusively, observing the spoken accent only where it happens to coincide with it, (as happens here in four bars of the six;) while the first, which is the vulgar English way, asserts the dominancy of the spoken accent in all the six cases; and yet, as the clash only takes place in two cases, preserves, without effort, (as I have just said with regard to Homer,) the flow of the musical rhythm. With that grossness of ear, however, which Erasmus and his learned Bear noticed in the learned of his day, they fall with respect to Latin, plump into the extreme error practised by the modern Greeks, and cannot accentuate the first syllable of CANO, without lengthening it, while the final syllable of the same word is generally deprived of its natural amount of sound, a strange error for a people to make with whom Latin verse making (I shall not say with what propriety) forms so prominent a part of school-discipline; but there is no end to their absurdities, no limit to their contradictions; the fact being, as one of themselves has distinctly stated,[39] that the “composition of classical verses with them is almost entirely MECHANICAL;” and yet they have the assurance to hold up this scholastic abortion to the admiration of the public as one of the indispensable elements in the training of that improved edition of the ancient Roman—John Bull. But to finish. The third method of recitation is, I think, the correct one. It violates neither quantity nor accent, but makes the one play with an agreeable variety over the other, as we see the iridescent colours in a gown of shot silk. I think I have now answered the question satisfactorily—_How is Homer to be read?_ If anything remains unclear, I shall be happy to communicate personally with any person who has an ear.

[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.