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

PROSODY, OR ERRORS OF METRE, CORRECTED. LESSON I.—RHYTHM RESTORED.

   "Where thy true treasure? Gold says, 'Not in me.'"
        —Young.

   "Canst thou grow sad, thou say'st, as earth grows bright."
        —Dana.

   "It must be so;—Plato, thou reason'st well"
        —CATO: Enfield, p. 321.

   "Slow rises worth by poverty depressed."
        —Wells's Gram., Late Ed., p. 211.

   "Rapt into future times, the bard begun."
        —POPE.—Ib., p. 165.

   "Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
    To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
    But to confront the visage of offence?"
        —Shak., Hamlet.

   "Look! in this place ran Cassius' dagger through."
        —Id., J. Cæsar.

   "And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
    Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw."
        —Milton, Lycidas.

   "Did not great Julius bleed for justice' sake?"
        —Dodd and Shak. cor.

   "May I express thee' unblam'd? since God is light"
        —Milton, B. iii, l. 3.

   "Or hear'st thou rather pure ethereal stream?"
        —Id., B. iii, l. 7.

   "Republics, kingdoms, empires, may decay;
     Great princes, heroes, sages, sink to nought."
        —Peirce or La-Rue cor.

   "Thou bringst, gay creature as thou art,
    A solemn image to my heart."
        —Hallock cor.

   "Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
    The proper study of mankind is Man."
        —Pope, on Man, Ep. ii, l. 1.

   "Raised on pilasters high of burnished gold."
        —Dr. S. Butler cor.

   "Love in Adalgise' breast has fixed his sting."
        —Id.

   "Thirty days each have September,
    April, June, and old November;
    Each of the rest has thirty-one,
    Bating February alone,
    Which has twenty-eight in fine,
    Till leap-year gives it twenty-nine."
        —Dean Colet cor.

LESSON II.—RHYTHM RESTORED.

   "'Twas not the fame of what he once had been,
    Or tales in records old and annals seen."
        —Rowe cor.

    "And Asia now and Afric are explored
    For high-priced dainties and the citron board."
        —Rowe cor.

    "Who knows not how the trembling judge beheld
    The peaceful court with arm~ed legions fill'd?"
        —Rowe cor.

    "With thee the Scythian wilds we'll wander o'er,
    With thee the burning Libyan sands explore."
        —Rowe cor.

    "Hasty and headlong, different paths they tread,
    As impulse blind and wild distraction lead."
        —Rowe cor.

    "But Fate reserv'd him to perform its doom,
    And be the minister of wrath to Rome."
        —Rowe cor.

    "Thus spoke the youth. When Cato thus express'd
    The sacred counsels of his inmost breast."
        —Rowe cor.

    "These were the rigid manners of the man,
    This was the stubborn course in which they ran;
    The golden mean unchanging to pursue,
    Constant to keep the purpos'd end in view."
        —Rowe cor.

    "What greater grief can on a Roman seize,
    Than to be forced to live on terms like these!"
        —Rowe cor.

    "He views the naked town with joyful eyes,
    While from his rage an arm~ed people flies."
        —Rowe cor.

    "For planks and beams, he ravages the wood,
    And the tough oak extends across the flood."
        —Rowe cor.

    "A narrow pass the horn~ed mole divides.
    Narrow as that where strong Euripus' tides
    Beat on Euboean Chalcis' rocky sides."
        —Rowe cor.

    "No force, no fears their hands unarm~ed bear,"—or,
    "No force, no fears their hands unarm'd now bear,
    But looks of peace and gentleness they wear."
        —Rowe cor.

    "The ready warriors all aboard them ride,
    And wait return of the retiring tide."
        —Rowe cor.

    "He saw those troops that long had faithful stood,
    Friends to his cause, and enemies to good,
    Grown weary of their chief, and satiate with blood."
        —Rowe cor.

END OF THE KEY. APPENDIX I. TO PART FIRST, OR ORTHOGRAPHY. OF THE SOUNDS OF THE LETTERS.

In the first chapter of Part I, the powers of the letters, or the elementary sounds of the English language, were duly enumerated and explained; for these, as well as the letters themselves, are few, and may be fully stated in few words: but, since we often express the same sound in many different ways, and also, in some instances, give to the same letter several different sounds,—or, it may be, no sound at all,—any adequate account of the powers of the letters considered severally according to usage,—that is, of the sound or sounds of each letter, with its mute positions, as these occur in practice,—must, it was thought, descend to a minuteness of detail not desirable in the first chapter of Orthography. For this reason, the following particulars have been reserved to be given here as an Appendix, pertaining to the First Part of this English Grammar.

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.—A proper discrimination of the different vowel sounds by the epithets most commonly used for this purpose,—such as long and short, broad and slender, open and close, or open and shut,—is made difficult, if not impossible, by reason of the different, and sometimes directly contradictory senses in which certain orthoepists [sic—KTH] have employed such terms. Wells says, "Vowel sounds are called open or close, according to the relative size of the opening through which the voice passes in forming them. Thus, a in father, and o in nor, are called open sounds, because they are formed by a wide opening of the organs of speech; while e in me, and u in rule, are called close sounds, because the organs are nearly closed in uttering them."—School Grammar, 1850, p. 32. Good use should fix the import of words. How does the passage here cited comport with this hint of Pope?

   "These equal syllables alone require,
    Though oft the ear the open vowels tire."
        —Essay on Criticism, l. 344.

OBS. 2.—Walker, too, in his Principles, 64 and 65, on page 19th of his Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, mentions a similar distinction of vowels, "which arises from the different apertures of the mouth in forming them;" and says, "We accordingly find vowels denominated by the French, ouvert and fermé; by the Italians, aperto and chiuso; and by the English [,] open and shut. But whatever propriety there may be in the use of these terms in other languages, it is certain they must be used with caution in English for fear of confounding them with long and short. Dr. Johnson and other grammarians call the a in father the open a: which may, indeed, distinguish it from the slender a in paper; but not from the broad a in water, which is still more open. Each of these letters [the seven vowels] has a short sound, which may be called a shut sound; but the long sounds cannot be so properly denominated open as more or less broad; that is, the a in paper, the slender sound; the a in father, the broadish or middle sound; and the a in water, the broad sound. The same may be observed of the o. This letter has three long sounds, heard in move, note, nor; which graduate from slender to broadish, and broad [,] like [those three sounds of] the a. The i also in mine may be called the broad i, and that in machine, the slender i; though each of them is equally long; and though these vowels that are long [,] may be said to be more or less open according to the different apertures of the mouth in forming them, yet the short vowels cannot be said to be more or less shut; for as short always implies shut (except in verse,) though long does not always imply open, we must be careful not to confound long and open, and close and shut, when we speak of the quantity and quality of the vowels. The truth of it is," continues he, "all vowels either terminate a syllable, or are united with a consonant. In the first case, if the accent be on the syllable, the vowel is long, though it may not be open: in the second case, where a syllable is terminated by a consonant, except that consonant be r, whether the accent be on the syllable or not, the vowel has its short sound, which, compared with its long one, may be called shut: but [,] as no vowel can be said to be shut that is not joined to a consonant, all vowels that end syllables may be said to be open, whether the accent be on them or not."—Crit. Pron. Dict., New York, 1827, p. 19.

OBS. 3.—These suggestions of Walker's, though each in itself may seem clear and plausible, are undoubtedly, in several respects, confused and self-contradictory. Open and shut are here inconsistently referred first to one principle of distinction, and then to another;—first, (as are "open and close" by Wells,) to "the relative size of the opening," or to "the different apertures of the mouth;" and then, in the conclusion, to the relative position of the vowels with respect to other letters. These principles improperly give to each of the contrasted epithets two very different senses: as, with respect to aperture, wide and narrow; with respect to position, closed and unclosed. Now, that open may mean unclosed, or close be put for closed, is not to be questioned; but that open is a good word for wide, or that shut (not to say close) can well mean narrow, is an assumption hardly scholarlike. According to Walker, "we must be careful not to confound" open with long, or shut with short, or close with shut; and yet, if he himself does not, in the very paragraph above quoted, confound them all,—does not identify in sense, or fail to distinguish, the two words in each of these pairs,—I know not who can need his "caution." If there are vowel sounds which graduate through several degrees of openness or broadness, it would seem most natural to express these by regularly comparing the epithet preferred; as, open, opener, openest; or broad, broader, broadest. And again, if "all vowels that end syllables may be said to be open," then it is not true, that "the long sounds" of a in paper, father, water, cannot be so "denominated;" or that to "call the a in father the open a, may, indeed, distinguish it from the slender a in paper." Nor, on this principle, can it be said that "the broad a in water is still more open;" for this a no more "ends a syllable" than the others. If any vowel sound is to be called the open sound because the letter ends a syllable, or is not shut by a consonant, it is, undoubtedly, the primal and most usual sound, as found in the letter when accented, and not some other of rare occurrence.

OBS. 4.—Dr. Perley says, "It is greatly to be regretted that the different sounds of a vowel should be called by the names long, short, slender, and broad, which convey no idea of the nature of the sound, for mat and not are as long in poetry as mate and note. The first sound of a vowel[,] as [that of a in] fate[,] may be called open, because it is the sound which the vowel generally has when it ends a syllable; the second sound as [that of a in] fat, may be called close, because it is the sound which the vowel generally has when it is joined with a consonant following in the same syllable, as fat-ten; when there are more than two sounds of any vowel[,] they may be numbered onward; as 3 far, 4 fall."—Perley's Gram., p. 73.

OBS. 5.—Walker thought a long or short vowel sound essential to a long or short quantity in any syllable. By this, if he was wrong in it, (as, in the chapter on Versification, I have argued that he was,) he probably disturbed more the proper distinction of quantities, than that of vowel sounds. As regards long and short, therefore, Perley's regret seems to have cause; but, in making the same objection to "slender and broad," he reasons illogically. So far as his view is right, however, it coincides with the following earlier suggestion: "The terms long and short, which are often used to denote certain vowel sounds; being also used, with a different import, to distinguish the quantity of syllables, are frequently misunderstood; for which reason, we have substituted for them the terms open and close;—the former, to denote the sound usually given to a vowel when it forms or ends an accented syllable; as, ba, be, bi, bo, bu, by;—the latter, to denote the sound which the vowel commonly takes when closed by a consonant; as, ab, eb, ib, ob, ub"—Brown's Institutes, p. 285.

I. OF THE LETTER A.

The vowel A has four sounds properly its own; they are named by various epithets: as,

1. The English, open, full, long, or slender a; as in aid, fame, favour, efficacious.

2. The French, close, curt, short, or stopped a; as in bat, banner, balance, carrying.

3. The Italian, broadish, grave, or middle a; as in far, father, aha, comma, scoria, sofa.

4. The Dutch, German, Old-Saxon, or broad a; as in wall, haul, walk, warm, water.

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.—Concerning the number of sounds pertaining to the vowel a, or to certain other particular letters, and consequently