The Grammar of English Grammars Part 301

[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, _Quant.i.ty_, in grammar, is--"The measure of _time_ in p.r.o.nouncing 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 _Quant.i.ty_ 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 _quant.i.ty_--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 _quant.i.ty_"--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 cla.s.ses of syllables he holds to be _indeterminable_, "because their lengths are various." He began with destroying the proper distinction of quant.i.ty, 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 quant.i.ty, 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 p.r.o.nunciation; 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 quant.i.ty and stress_: alike both in place and nature, whether the words are p.r.o.nounced 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 quant.i.ty of _monosyllables_, (the cla.s.s 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 quant.i.ty; and because the effect of accent, as a "regulator of quant.i.ty," _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 _quant.i.ty_ 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 _quant.i.ty_ 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 quant.i.ty, 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 quant.i.ty 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 quant.i.ty_ of our own language," charges this current opinion with error, dissenting from Sheridan and Nares, who held it; and, having a.s.serted, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 _No?

which_ may therefore be called _the acute_ ACCENT: and falls from a higher to a lower tone upon the same word in the answer _N, 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 reverse of _accent_, and is obviously identified or confounded with _short quant.i.ty_, or what the author inclines to call "_small_ quant.i.ty." 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 "_subst.i.tution_," I do not know. _Subst.i.tution_ and _conception_ are terms of quite different import, and many authors have explained syllepsis by the latter word. Dr. Webster gives to "SUBSt.i.tUTION" 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 subst.i.tution 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 a.n.a.logous 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 a.n.a.logy 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 quant.i.ty"--_Brown's Inst.i.tutes 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 const.i.tute _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 const.i.tutes 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 quant.i.ty 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 Quant.i.ty_, --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 _quant.i.ty_, 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 quant.i.ty 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 quant.i.ty 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 _quant.i.ty_ 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 p.r.o.nunciation.

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 _quant.i.ty_, in the English language; that the accented syllables are always _long_, and the unaccented always _short_.

An absurdity so glaring, does not need refutation. p.r.o.nounce any one line from Milton, and the ear will determine whether or not the accent and quant.i.ty 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 _Quant.i.ty_, 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 c.u.m accentu a nonnullis male confunditur; quasi idem sit acui et produci. c.u.m brevis autem syllaba acuitur, elevatur quidem vox in ea proferenda, sed tempus non augetur. Sic in voce _hominibus_ acuitur _mi_; at _ni_ quae sequitur, aequam 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 p.r.o.nouncing 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 p.r.o.nunciation." To English ears, this can hardly seem a correct representation; for, in p.r.o.nouncing _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 _quant.i.ty_, 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 quant.i.ty_: 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 Quant.i.ty 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 quant.i.ty, for which he refers to Herries, is this: "The English _quant.i.ty_ 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 or shortened, as we please. This scheme of quant.i.ty," it is added, "is founded on fact and experience."--_Bicknell's Gram._, Part ii, p. 109. But is it not a _fact_, that such words as _cuttest, stopping, rapid, rugged_, are _trochees_, in verse? and is not _unlock_ an _iambus_?

And what becomes of syllables that end with vowels or liquids and are not accented?

[491] I do not say the mere absence of stress is _never_ called _accent_; for it is, plainly, the doctrine of some authors that the English accent differs not at all in its nature from the accent of the ancient Greeks or Romans, which was distinguished as being of three sorts, _acute, grave, inflex_; that "the stronger breathing, or higher sound," which distinguishes one syllable of a word from or above the rest, is _the acute accent_ only; that "the softer breathing, or lower sound," which belongs to an _unacuted_ (or _unaccented_) syllable, is _the grave accent_; and that a combination of these two sounds, or "breathings," upon one syllable, const.i.tutes the _inflex or circ.u.mflex accent_. Such, I think, is the teaching of Rev. William Barnes; who further says, "English verse is constructed upon sundry orders of _acute and grave accents_ and matchings of rhymes, while the poetic language of the Romans and Greeks is formed upon rules of the sundry cl.u.s.terings of _long and short syllables_."--_Philological Grammar_, p. 263. This scheme is not wholly consistent, because the author explains accent or accents as being applicable only to "words of two or more syllables;" and it is plain, that the accent which includes the three sorts above, must needs be "some other thing than what we call accent," if this includes only the acute.

[492] Sheridan used the same comparison, "To ill.u.s.trate the difference between the accent of the ancients and that of _ours_" [our tongue]. Our accent he supposed, with Nares and others, to have "no reference to _inflections_ of the voice."--See _Art of Reading_, p. 75; _Lectures on Elocution_, p. 56; _Walker's Key_, p. 313.

[493] (1.) It may in some measure account for these remarkable omissions, to observe that Walker, in his lexicography, followed Johnson in almost every thing but p.r.o.nunciation. On this latter subject, his own authority is perhaps as great as that of any single author. And here I am led to introduce a remark or two touching _the accent and quant.i.ty_ with which he was chiefly concerned; though the suggestions may have no immediate connexion with the error of confounding these properties.

(2.) Walker, in his theory, regarded the _inflections_ of the voice as pertaining to _accent_, and as affording a satisfactory solution of the difficulties in which this subject has been involved; but, as an English orthoepist, he treats of accent in no other sense, than as _stress laid on a particular syllable of a word_--a sense implying contrast, and necessarily dividing all syllables into accented and unaccented, except monosyllables. Having acknowledged our "_total ignorance_ of the nature of the Latin and Greek accent," he adds: "The accent of the English language, which is constantly sounding in our ears, and every moment open to investigation, seems _as much a mystery_ as that accent which is removed almost two thousand years from our view. Obscurity, perplexity, and confusion, run through every treatise on the subject, and nothing could be so hopeless as an attempt to explain it, did not a circ.u.mstance present itself, which at once accounts for the confusion, and affords a clew to lead us out of it. Not one writer on accent has given such a definition of the voice as acquaints us with its essential properties. * * * But let us once divide the voice into its rising and falling inflections, the obscurity vanishes, and accent becomes as intelligible as any other part of language. * * * On the present occasion it will be sufficient to observe, that _the stress we call accent_ is as well understood as is necessary for the p.r.o.nunciation of single words, which is the object of this treatise."--_Walker's Dict._, p. 53, _Princip._ 486, 487, 488.

(3.) Afterwards, on introducing _quant.i.ty_, as an orthoepical topic, he has the following remark: "In treating this part of p.r.o.nunciation, it will not be necessary to enter into the nature of _that quant.i.ty which const.i.tutes poetry_; the quant.i.ty here considered will be that which relates to words taken singly; and this is _nothing more than the length or shortness of the vowels_, either as they stand alone, or as they are differently combined with the vowels or consonants." _Ib._, p. 62, _Princip._ 529. Here is suggested a distinction which has not been so well observed by grammarians and prosodists, or even by Walker himself, as it ought to have been. So long as the practice continues of denominating certain mere _vowel sounds_ the _long_ and the _short_, it will be very necessary to notice that these are not the same as the _syllabic quant.i.ties_, long and short, which const.i.tute English verse.