The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown (read books for money TXT) 📖

not only requisite that the principle of distinction which we adopt should be clearly made known, but also proper to consider which of these three modes is the best or most popular foundation for a theory of versification. Whether or wherein the accent and quantity of the ancient languages, Latin and Greek, differed from those of our present English, we need not now inquire. From the definitions which the learned lexicographers Littleton and Ainsworth give to prosodia, prosody, it would seem that, with them, "the art of accenting" was nothing else than the art of giving to syllables their right quantity, "whether long or short." And some have charged it as a glaring error, long prevalent among English grammarians, and still a fruitful source of disputes, to confound accent with quantity in our language.[489] This charge, however, there is reason to believe, is sometimes, if not in most cases, made on grounds rather fanciful than real; for some have evidently mistaken the notion of concurrence or coincidence for that of identity. But, to affirm that the stress which we call accent, coincides always and only with long quantity, does not necessarily make accent and quantity to be one and the same thing. The greater force or loudness which causes the accented syllable to occupy more time than any other, is in itself something different from time. Besides, quantity is divisible,—being either long or short: these two species of it are acknowledged on all sides, and some few prosodists will have a third, which they call "common." [490] But, of our English accent, the word being taken in its usual acceptation, no such division is ever, with any propriety, made; for even the stress which we call secondary accent, pertains to long syllables rather than to short ones; and the mere absence of stress, which produces short quantity, we do not call accent.[491]

OBS. 3.—The impropriety of affirming quantity to be the same as accent, when its most frequent species occurs only in the absence of accent, must be obvious to every body; and those writers who anywhere suggest this identity, must either have written absurdly, or have taken accent in some sense which includes the sounds of our unaccented syllables. The word sometimes means, "The modulation of the voice in speaking."—Worcester's Dict., w. Accent. In this sense, the lighter as well as the more impressive sounds are included; but still, whether both together, considered as accents, can be reckoned the same as long and short quantities, is questionable. Some say, they cannot; and insist that they are yet as different, as the variable tones of a trumpet, which swell and fall, are different from the merely loud and soft notes of the monotonous drum. This illustration of the "easy Distinction betwixt Quantity and Accent" is cited with commendation, in Brightland's Grammar, on page 157th;[492] the author of which grammar, seems to have understood Accent, or Accents, to be the same as Inflections—though these are still unlike to quantities, if he did so. (See an explanation of Inflections in Chap. II, Sec. iii, Art. 3, above.) His exposition is this: "Accent is the rising and falling of the Voice, above or under its usual Tone. There are three Sorts of Accents, an Acute, a Grave, and an Inflex, which is also call'd a Circumflex. The Acute, or Sharp, naturally raises the Voice; and the Grave, or Base, as naturally falls it. The Circumflex is a kind of Undulation, or Waving of the Voice."—Brightland's Gram., Seventh Ed., Lond., 1746, p. 156.

OBS. 4.—Dr. Johnson, whose great authority could not fail to carry some others with him, too evidently identifies accent with quantity, at the commencement of his Prosody. "PRONUNCIATION is just," says he, "when every letter has its proper sound, and when every syllable has its proper accent, or which in English versification is the same, its proper quantity."— Johnson's Gram., before Dict., 4to, p. 13; John Burn's Gram., p. 240; Jones's Prosodial Gram., before Dict., p. 10. Now our most common notion of accent—the sole notion with many—and that which the accentuation of Johnson himself everywhere inculcates—is, that it belongs not to "every syllable," but only to some particular syllables, being either "a stress of voice on a certain syllable," or a small mark to denote such stress.—See Scott's Dict., or Worcester's. But Dr. Johnson, in the passage above, must have understood the word accent agreeably to his own imperfect definition of it; to wit, as "the sound given to the syllable pronounced."—Joh. Dict. An unaccented syllable must have been to him a syllable unpronounced. In short he does not appear to have recognized any syllables as being unaccented. The word unaccented had no place in his lexicography, nor could have any without inconsistencey. [sic—KTH] It was unaptly added to his text, after sixty years, by one of his amenders, Todd or Chalmers; who still blindly neglected to amend his definition of accent. In these particulars, Walker's dictionaries exhibit the same deficiencies as Johnson's; and yet no author has more frequently used the words accent and unaccented, than did Walker.[493] Mason's Supplement, first published in 1801, must have suggested to the revisers of Johnson the addition of the latter term, as appears by the authority cited for it: "UNA'CCENTED, adj. Not accented. 'It being enough to make a syllable long, if it be accented, and short, if it be unaccented.' Harris's Philological Inquiries."—Mason's Sup.

OBS. 5—This doctrine of Harris's, that long quantity accompanies the accent, and unaccented syllables are short, is far from confounding or identifying accent with quantity, as has already been shown; and, though it plainly contradicts some of the elementary teaching of Johnson, Sheridan, Walker, Murray, Webster, Latham, Fowler, and others, in regard to the length or shortness of certain syllables, it has been clearly maintained by many excellent authors, so that no opposite theory is better supported by authority. On this point, our language stands not alone; for the accent controls quantity in some others.[494] G H. Noehden, a writer of uncommon ability, in his German Grammar for Englishmen, defines accent to be, as we see it is in English, "that stress which marks a particular syllable in speaking;" and recognizing, as we do, both a full accent and a partial one, or "demi-accent," presents the syllables of his language as being of three conditions: the "accented," which "cannot be used otherwise than as long;" the "half-accented" which "must be regarded as ambiguous, or common;" and the "accentless," which "are in their nature short."—See Noehden's Gram., p. 87. His middle class, however, our prosodists in general very properly dispense with. In Fiske's History of Greek Literature, which is among the additions to the Manual of Classical Literature from the German of Eschenburg, are the following passages: "The tone [i.e. accent] in Greek is placed upon short syllables as well as long; in German, it accompanies regularly only long syllables."—"In giving an accent to a syllable in an English word we thereby render it a long syllable, whatever may be the sound given to its vowel, and in whatever way the syllable may be composed; so that as above stated in relation to the German, an English accent, or stress in pronunciation, accompanies only a long syllable."—Manual of Class. Lit., p. 437. With these extracts, accords the doctrine of some of the ablest of our English grammarians. "In the English Pronunciation," says William Ward, "there is a certain Stress of the Voice laid on some one syllable at least, of every Word of two or more Syllables; and that Syllable on which the Stress is laid may be considered long. Our Grammarians have agreed to consider this Stress of the Voice as the Accent in English; and therefore the Accent and long Quantity coincide in our Language."—Ward's Practical Gram., p. 155. As to the vowel sounds, with the quantity of which many prosodists have greatly puzzled both themselves and their readers, this writer says, "they may be made as long, or as short, as the Speaker pleases."—Ib., p. 4.

OBS. 6.—From the absurd and contradictory nature of many of the principles usually laid down by our grammarians, for the discrimination of long quantity and short, it is quite apparent, that but very few of them have well understood either the distinction itself or their own rules concerning it. Take Fisher for an example. In Fisher's Practical Grammar, first published in London in 1753,—a work not unsuccessful, since Wells quotes the "28th edition" as appearing in 1795, and this was not the last—we find, in the first place, the vowel sounds distinguished as long or short thus: "Q. How many Sounds has a Vowel? A. Two in general, viz. 1. A LONG SOUND, When the Syllable ends with a Vowel, either in Monosyllables, or in Words of more Syllables; as, t=ake, w=e, =I, g=o, n=il; or, as, N=ature, N=ero, N=itre, N=ovice, N=uisance. 2. A SHORT SOUND, When the Syllable ends with a Consonant, either in Monosyllables, or others; as H~at, h~er, b~it, r~ob, T~un; or, as B~arber, b~itten, B~utton."—See p. 5. To this rule, the author makes needless exceptions of all such words as balance and banish, wherein a single consonant between two vowels goes to the former; because, like Johnson, Murray, and most of our old grammarians, he divides on the vowel; falsely calls the accented syllable short; and imagines the consonant to be heard twice, or to have "a double Accent." On page 35th, he tells us that, "Long and short Vowels, and long and short Syllables, are synonimous [—synonymous, from [Greek: synonymos]—] Terms;" and so indeed have they been most erroneously considered by sundry subsequent writers; and the consequence is, that all who judge by their criteria, mistake the poetic quantity, or prosodical value, of perhaps one half the syllables in the language. Let each syllable be reckoned long that "ends with a Vowel," and each short that "ends with a Consonant," and the decision will probably be oftener wrong than right; for more syllables end with consonants than with vowels, and of the latter class a majority are without stress and therefore short. Thus the foregoing principle, contrary to the universal practice of the poets, determines many accented syllables to be "short;" as the first in "barber, bitten, button, balance, banish;—" and many unaccented ones to be "long;" as the last in sofa, specie, noble, metre, sorrow, daisy, valley, nature, native; or the first in around, before, delay, divide, remove, seclude, obey, cocoon, presume, propose, and other words innumerable.

OBS. 7.—Fisher's conceptions of accent and quantity, as constituting prosody, were much truer to the original and etymological sense of the words, than to any just or useful view of English versification: in short, this latter subject was not even mentioned by him; for prosody, in his scheme, was nothing but the right pronunciation of words, or what we now call orthoëpy. This part of his Grammar commences with the following questions and answers:

"Q. What is the Meaning of the Word PROSODY? A. It is a Word borrowed from the Greek; which, in Latin, is rendered Accentus, and in English Accent. "Q. What do you mean by Accent? A. Accent originally signified a Modulation of the Voice, or chanting to a musical Instrument; but is now generally used to signify Due Pronunciatian, i.e. the pronouncing [of] a syllable according to its Quantity, (whether it be long or short,) with a stronger Force or Stress of Voice than the other Syllables in the same Word; as, a in able, o in above, &c. "Q. What is Quantity? A. Quantity is the different Measure of Time in pronouncing Syllables, from whence they are called long or short. "Q. What is the Proportion between a long and a short Syllable? A. Two to one; that is, a long Syllable is twice as long in pronouncing as a short one; as, Hate, Hat. This mark (=) set over a Syllable, shows that it is long, and this (~) that it is short; as, r=ecord, r~ecord. "Q. How do you know long and short Syllables? A. A Syllable is long or short according to the Situation of the Vowel, i.e. it is generally long when it ends with a Vowel, and short when with a Consonant; as, F=a- in Favour, and M~an- in Manner."—Fisher's Practical Gram., p. 34.

Now one grand mistake of this is, that it supposes syllabication to fix the quantity, and quantity to determine the accent; whereas it is plain, that accent controls quantity, so far at least that, in the construction of verse, a syllable fully accented cannot be reckoned short. And this mistake is practical; for we see, that, in three of his examples, out of the four above, the author himself misstates the quantity, because he disregards the accent: the verb re-cord', being accented on the second syllable, is an iambus; and the nouns rec'-ord and man'-ner, being accented on the first, are trochees; and just as plainly so, as is the word f=av~our. But a still greater blunder here observable is,