doubled, as in the first of immediately: at no rate will it allow an acuted fyllable to be contracted. Wherever the acute falls, the quantity of the fyllable is decided for long or fhort; no acuted fyllable is of doubtful quantity.

But, for GRAVE SYLLABLES, the cuftom is not fo exact. The vowels of grave fyllables are feldom decidedly long: in the rapid delivery of colloquial intercourfe, almost all are generally fhort. But folemn elocution will often give them length, where not followed by a confonant within the fyllable; and for the purpofe of emphasis, as we have seen, a short fyllable may fometimes become long. Otherwise the rules of quantity are the fame for grave as for acuted fyllables. A long vowel, if fupported by a following confonant, will make a long fyllable, with a grave, equally as with an acute accent; and two confonants, diftinctly articulated, tho the preceding vowel be short, whether the accent be acute or grave, will make the fyllable formed with that vowel, long.

The PLACE of the EMINENT ACCENT in words is decided, for every language, by its own rules. For the Latin, as we learn from the highest authority," those rules were very few and fimple; for the Greek more various. The accentuation of Englifh fpeech has its laws, of which Johnson, in his grammar prefixed to his Dictionary, has given a collection,

"Quintil. de or.

collection, yet it has with them much irregularity. The most methodical and completeft view of its rules and its anomalies, yet published, is in Nares's Orthoëpy; apparently a juvenile work, yet of great merit, and to which the author's revifion, in maturer years, might give very high value.

The ACCENTUATION feems to be among the circumstances of language leaft liable to change. When new words indeed are introduced from another language, the accentuation of those words may be for fome time uncertain. Thus, in Chaucer's time, words from the French, ending in our, as honour, favour, admitted the acute on the last, where the convenience of riming poets would have fixed it; but the genius of English Speech has long fince given it irremoveably to the penultimate. Thus alfo Spenfer pronounced melancholy, with the acute on the antepenultimate, while Milton gave the acute to the first fyllable, where it remains established. affectation of forein idiom has of late years gone far toward abolishing the proper English pronuntiation of the word inviron, which had been an English word at leaft from Shakespear's age, and substituting a French pronuntiation for it, with curious abfurdity, adds the English fign of the plural, the s, which French pronuntiation abhors. But inftances of fuch violent and powerful depravity in the fashion of fpeech are rare. Nevertheless for the abundance of exceptions to F 3

An

rules

rules in English speech, all modern compilers of dictionaries, juftly weighing the importance of a proper accentuation, have thought it neceffary to mark, in every word, the place of the eminent

* In fome late publications, we find the mark of the acute accent applied to indicate, not an accent, but the articulation only of a final e. By this (no reasonable imitation of the French, who, acknowleging no accent in their language, ufe the fign of the acute to diftinguifh what they call their mafculine e.) the writers, or perhaps rather the printers, have been ufing their ability, which however it may be hoped is not very great, to add moft inconveniently to the exifting confufion and uncertainties of English: orthography.

SECTION V.

Of RHYTHMUS or CADENCE.

HAVING obferved what are the varieties of found in English speech, produced by articulation, and how represented in English orthography, what the proportionate measures, or quantities of time equired for a just delivery of English fyllables, and how far alfo indicated by orthography, and what the tones by which fpeech has the grace of melody and energy of expreffion, we should be poi feffed of all neceffary preparation for the inquiry, What is the rhythmus or cadence of English speech, the foundation of order in the diftribution of articulate founds, through the good or ill management of which the flow of profe is pleafing or offenfive, and whereon refts the whole mechanism of verse.

Among the antient writers, from whom anything remains on the subject, we find musical and poetical harmony univerfally confidered as holding the most intimate connection, as being fundamentally the fame thing. The doctrine of the harmony of language, even of profe,' fays one of the ablest and most elegant of the Grecian critics, 'belongs to the fcience of mufic;' and, according to the chief of the Roman, Grammar can

F4

"not

'not be complete without music, as it must treat

of rhythmus and measures.' y If then modern writers, and writers of great ability and great learning, have been univerfally unfatisfactory in treating of thofe fubjects, if the most learned have shown themselves evidently at a loss to understand much of what remains from the antients upon them, it appears to me to have been owing, in fome perhaps to a total ignorance of music, but, in all, to a failure of duly confidering the neceffary and intimate connection of mufic with poetry, and the identity of poetical and musical measures. For the texture of mufical cadence, we find, is readily comprehended by all of moderately accurate organs, who give it any attention. The dif ficulties of poetical cadence, feem to arise mostly from the perplexities of articulation, in the various combinations of elementary founds in fyllables. To begin therefore with confidering the nature and differences of cadences in mufic, and then proceed to obferve the analogy which the cadences of poetry bear to them, will be found, I think, the ready,

Η Μουσικὴ γὰρ τὶς ἦν καὶ ἡ τῶν πολιτικῶν λόγων ἐπισήμη. Dion. Hal. de ftruct. or. f. 11. Tum nec citra muficen grammatice potest effe perfecta, cum ei de rhythmis metrifque dicendum fit. Quintil. Inft. or. I. 1. c. 4. The intimacy of the original connection of music and poetry, whence the word Movih described both, will come under confideration in the fequel. In the paffage above cited from Dionyfius, the meaning of that word, as Dr. Foster, in his Effay on Accent and Quantity, has well obferved, is limited to mufic by the context.