,transcriber's ,notes3 ,underscores 80 before and after a word or phrase indicate italics in the original text4 ,equal signs 80 before and after a word or phrase indicate bold in the original text4 ,small capitals have been converted to ,,solid capitals4 ,old or antiquated spellings have been preserved4 ,typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected4 ,,the ,,pronunciation ,,of ,,greek2 ,,accent ,,and ,,quantity4 ,a ,,philological ,,inquiry4 ,,by ,,john ,,stuart ,,blackie1 ,,professor ,,of ,,greek ,,in ,,the ,,university ,,of ,,edinburgh4 ,,edinburgh3 ,,sutherland ,,and ,,knox4 ,,london3 ,,simpkin1 ,,marshall1 ,,and ,,co4 ,,mdccclii4 ,,edinburgh3 ,t4 ,,constable1 ,,printer ,,to ,,her ,,majesty4 8,sit omnibus rebus suum senium1 sua juventus2 et ut verba verbis1 sic etiam sonis sonos succedere permittamus40--,,bishop ,,gardiner4 8,this new pronunciation hath since prevailed1 whereby we ,englishmen speak ,greek1 and are able to understand one another1 which nobody else can40--,,thomas ,,fuller4 8,maxime cupio ut in omnibus ,academiis nostris hodierna ,grcorum pronuntiatio recipiatur40 --,,boissonade4 8,neque dubitamus quin ,,erasmus1 si in tantam ,grc pronuntiationis discrepantiam incidisset1 vulgarem usum intactum et salvum reliquisset40 --,,seyffarth4 8,ich gebe der neugriechischen ,aus-sprache im ,ganzen bei weitem den ,vorzug40--,,thiersch4 8,neque enim de clo dilapsa ad nos pervenit ,grcorum lingua1 sed e patria sua una cum omnibus qu habemus subsidiis1 suo vestita cultu prodiit1 quem tollere aut immutare velle esset imperium in linguam liberam exercere40--,,wetsten4 8,die sogenannte ,erasmische ,aus-sprache1 wie es in ,deutschland erscheint1 ist vllig grundlos1 ein ,gebilde man weiss nicht von wannen es kam1 ein ,gemische welches jeder sich zustutzt nach eigner ,lust und ,willkhr40--,,liscov4 ,,the ,,pronunciation ,,of ,,greek1 c4 ,it is purely as a practical man1 and with a direct practical result in view1 that ,i venture to put forth a few words on the vexed question of the ,,pronunciation ,,of ,,greek4 ,he were a frigid pedant1 indeed1 who1 with the whole glorious literature of ,hellas before him1 and the rich vein of ,hellenic ,archology1 scarcely yet opened in ,scotland1 should1 for the mere gratification of a subtle speculative restlessness1 walk direct into this region of philological thorns4 ,so far as my personal curiosity was concerned1 ,sir ,john ,cheke1 wrapt in his many folded mantle of ,ciceronian verboseness1 and the ,right ,reverend ,stephen ,gardiner's prtorian edicts in favour of ,greek sounds1#a and the of the old comedian's ,attic sheep1 might have been allowed to sleep undisturbed on the library shelves4 ,i had settled the question long ago in my own mind on broad grounds of common sense1 rather than on any nice results that seemed obtainable from the investigations of the learned2 but the nature of the public duties now imposed on me does not allow me to take my own course in such matters1 merely because ,i think it right4 ,i must shew to the satisfaction of my fellow-teachers and of my students1 that ,i am not seeking after an ephemeral notoriety by the public galvanisation of a dead crotchet2 that any innovations which ,i may propose are in reality1 as so often happens in the political world also1 and in the ecclesiastical1 a mere recurrence to the ancient and established practice of centuries1 and that whatever opinions ,i may entertain on points confessedly open to debate1 ,i entertain not for myself alone1 but in company with some of the ripest scholars and profoundest philologists of modern times4 ,i have reason also for thinking with a recent writer1 that the present time is peculiarly favourable for the reconsideration of the question2#b for1 although ,sir ,john ,cheke might have said with some show of truth in his day1 8,grca jam lingua nemini patria est10#c none but a prophetic partisan of universal ,russian domination in the ,mediterranean will now assert1 that the living ,greeks are not a nation and a people who have a right to be heard on the question1 how their own language is to be pronounced4 ,taking the ,greek language as it appears in the works of the learned commentator ,corais1 in the poetry of the ,soutzos and ,rangabe1 in the history of ,perrhbus1 so highly spoken of by ,niebuhr1 and in the publications of the daily press at ,athens2 and taking the new kingdom for no greater thing than the intrigues of meddling diplomatists1 its own wretched cabals1 and the guns of ,admiral ,parker will allow it to be2 it is plain that to disregard the witness of such a speaking fact1 standing as it does upon the unbroken tradition and catholic philological succession of eighteen centuries1 would be1 much more manifestly now than in the days of the learned ,,wetsten1 to 8exercise a despotism over a free language10 such as no man has a right to claim4#d ,besides1 in ,scotland we have already had our orthodox hereditary routine in this matter disturbed by the invasion of ,english teachers of the ,greek language2 an invasion1 no doubt1 which our strong national feeling may look on with jealousy1 but which we brought on ourselves by the shameful condition of prostration in which we allowed the philological classes in our higher schools and colleges to lie for two centuries2 and it was not to be expected that these ,english teachers1 being placed in a position which enabled them to give the law within a certain influential circle1 should sacrifice their own traditional pronunciation of the ,greek language1 however arbitrary1 to ours1 in favour of which1 in some points1 there was little but the mere conservatism of an equally arbitrary usage to plead4 ,finding matters in this condition1 ,i feel it impossible for me to waive the discussion of a matter already fermenting with all the elements of uncertainty4 ,i have therefore taken the trouble of working my way through ,havercamp's two volumes1 and comparing the arguments used in the famous old ,cantabrigian controversy with those advanced by a well-informed modern member of the same learned corporation4 ,i have taken the learned ,germans1 too1 as in duty bound1 on such a question1 into my counsels2 ,i have devoted not a little time and attention to the language and literature of modern ,greece2 and above all1 ,i have carefully examined those places of the ancient rhetoricians and grammarians that touch upon the various branches of the subject4 ,with all these precautions1 if ,i shall not succeed in making converts to my views1 ,i hope1 at least with reasonable men1 to escape the imputation of rashness and superficiality4 #a ,ego sonorum causam tueor ex edicto possessorio1 et ut prtor1 interdixi de possessione4 #b ,an ,essay on the ,pronunciation of the ,greek ,language4 ,by ,g4 ,t4 ,,pennington1 ,m4,a41 late ,fellow of ,king's ,college1 ,cambridge4 ,london3 ,murray4 #ahdd4 ,this is the work that ,i recommend to the ,english student who wishes to understand the subject in detail1 without wading through the confounding mass of pertinent and impertinent matter that the learned eloquence of more than three centuries has heaped up4 #c ,sylloge scriptorum qui de lingu ,grc vera et recta pronuntiatione ,commentarios reliquerunt2 edidit ,,havercampus4 ,ludg4 ,bat41 #agdj4 ,vol4 ii4 p4 #bbj #d ,,joh4 ,,rudolfi ,,wetstenii3 pro ,grca et genuina lingu ,grc pronuntiatione ,orationes ,apologetic4 ,basil2 #afhf1 p4 #bg4 ,the whole passage is quoted in the prefixed mottoes4 ,the exact history of our present pronunciation of ,greek1 both in ,england and ,scotland1 ,i have not learning enough curiously to trace2 but one thing seems to me plain1 that all the great scholars in this country1 and on the continent generally1 in the fifteenth1 and the early part of the sixteenth century1 could have known nothing of our present arbitrary method of pronouncing2#e for they could pronounce ,greek no other way than as they received it from ,chrysoloras1 ,gaza1 ,lascaris1 ,musurus1 and the other native ,greeks who were their masters4 ,erasmus was1 if not absolutely the first1#f certainly the first scholar of extensive ,european influence and popularity who ventured to disturb the tradition of the ,byzantine elders in this matter2 but his famous dialogue1 ,de recta ,latini ,grcique sermonis pronuntiatione1 did not appear till the year #aebh1 by which time so strong a prescription had already run in favour of the received method1 that it seems strange how even his learning and wit should have prevailed to overturn it4 ,but there are periods in the history of the world when the minds of men are naturally disposed to receive all sorts of novelties2 and the era of the ,reformation was one of them4 ,erasmus1 though a conservative in religion1 7as many persons are who are conservative in nothing else17 pleased his free speculative whim with all sorts of imaginations2 and among other things fell--though1 if what ,wetsten tells be true1 in a very strange way#g--on the notion of purging the pronunciation of the classical languages of all those defects which belonged to it1 whether by degenerate tradition or perverse provincialism1 and erecting in its stead an ideal pronunciation1 made up of erudite conjecture and philosophical argumentation4 ,nothing was more easy than to prove that in the course of two thousand years the orthoepy of the language of the ,greeks had declined considerably from the perfection in which its musical fulness had rolled like a river of gold from the mouth of ,plato1 or had been dashed like a thunderbolt of ,jove from the indignant lips of ,demosthenes2 yet more easy was it1 and admirable game for such a fine spirit as ,erasmus1 to evoke the shades of ,cicero and ,quinctilian1 and make mirth to them out of a ,latin oration delivered before the ,emperor ,maximilian1 by a twittering ,french courtier and a splay-mouthed ,westphalian baron4#h ,it is certain also that there are in that dialogue many admirable observations on the blundering practices of the schoolmasters1 and even the learned professors1 his contemporaries1 which very many of them in that day1 and the great majority even now have wanted either sense or courage to attend to2 observations which1 ,i doubt not1 will yet bear fruit in the present age1 if education is to be advanced in the only way possible1 viz41 by those whose profession it is to teach others1 learning in the first place to teach themselves4 ,but in one great point of his rich and various discourse1 the learned ,dutchman was more witty than wise1 and achieved a success where he was altogether wrong1 or only half-right1 that has been denied to him where he is altogether right4 ,while his admirable observations on accent and quantity1 and many of his precepts on the practical art of teaching languages1 have been totally lost sight of by the great mass of our classical teachers1 his strictures on the pronunciation of the ,greek vowels and diphthongs have been received more or less by pedagogic men in all parts of ,europe2 or at least prevailed so far as to shake the faith of scholars in the pronunciation of the native ,greek1 and lead them to invent a new and arbitrary ,hellenic utterance for each country1 an altogether barbarous conglomerate1 made up of modern national peculiarities and scraps of ,erasmian philology4 ,this is a sorry state of matters2 but as ,european scholarship then stood1 innovators could look for no more satisfactory result4 ,neither ,erasmus nor the scholars who followed his 8divisive courses0 in ,england and other countries1 were in possession of philological materials sufficiently comprehensive for settling so nice a point4 ,much less could they use the materials in their hands with that spirit of calm philosophic survey1 and that touch of fine critical sagacity which the ripe scholars of ,germany now exhibit4 ,it was one thing to quarrel learnedly with the pronunciation of ,chrysoloras1 and to chuckle with academic pride over the tautophonic tenuity of ' 1 and other such ingeniously gathered scraps of ,atticism in the mouth of a modern ,turkish serf2 another1 and a far more serious thing1 to draw out a complete table of elocutionary sounds1 such as they existed at any given period in ,greek literature2 say at the successive epochs of ,homer1 schylus1 ,plato1 ,callimachus1 ,strabo1 ,chrysostom4 ,bishop ,gardiner1 therefore1 was right to press this point hard against the ,erasmians1--8,quod vero difficillimum dicebam neque statuis neque potes1 ut tanquam ad punctum constituas sonorum modum4 ,ab usu prsente manifeste recedis3 sed an ad veterum sonorum formam omnino accedas1 nihil expeditum est40 ,here1 as in more serious matters1 the good ,bishop saw that it was easier to destroy than to build up2 and therefore he interposed his interdict despotically in the ,roman style1 ne quid detrimenti respublica capiat4 ,but these maxims of old ,roman aristocracy do not apply to the democracy of letters4 ,so the ,bishop's philological thunderbolt started more heretics than it laid4 ,the love of liberty was now conjoined with the love of originality2 to speak ,greek with ,erasmus became now the sign of academic patriotism and the watchword of philological progress4 ,,force being the chief apparent power on the one side1 it was naturally felt by those against whom it was exercised1 that ,,reason was altogether on their side4 ,the matter was therefore practically settled on the side of persecuted innovation2 the subtlety of a few academic doctors triumphed proudly over the long tradition of ,byzantine centuries1 and the living protest of millions of men1 with ,greek blood in their veins and ,greek words in their mouths2 and they who were once the few despised ,nazarenes of the scholastic world1 are now a sort of philological ,scribes and ,pharisees1 sitting in the seat of ,aristarchus1 whose dictum it is dangerous to dispute4 #e ,see the opinions of ,,scaliger1 ,,salmasius1 and some others1 quoted by ,,wetsten4 #f ,,wetsten refers to a work by ,,aldus ,,manutius de potestate literarum1 which ,i have not seen4 #g 8,audici ,m4 ,rutgerum ,reschium professorem ,lingu ,grc in collegio ,baslidiano apud ,lovanienses1 meum pi memori prceptorem1 narrantem1 se habitasse in ,liliensi pdagogeo una cum ,erasmo1 eo superius1 se inferius cubiculum obtinente4 ,henricum autum ,glareanum ,parisiis ,lovanium venisse1 atque ab ,erasmo in collegium vocatum fuisse ad prandium3 quo cum venisset1 quid novi adferret interrogatum dixisse 7quod in itinere commentus erat1 quod sciret ,erasmum plus satis rerum novarum studiosum ac mire credulum7 quosdam in ,grcia natos ,lutetiam venisse1 viros ad miraculum doctos2 qui longe aliam ,grci sermonis pronunciationem usurparent1 quam qu vulgo in hisce partibus recepta esset3 ,eos nempe sonare pro ,vita ,beta1 pro ,,ii ita ,eta1 pro ,,ai1 ai1 pro ,,oi1 oi1 et sic in cteris4 ,quo audito ,erasmum paulo post conscripsisse dialogum de recta ,latini ,grcique sermonis pronunciatione1 ut videretur hujus rei ipse incentor1 et obtulisse ,petro ,alostensi ,typographo imprimendum3 ,qui cum forte aliis occupatus renueret1 aut certe se tam cito excudere quam volebat non posse diceret1 misisse libellum ,basileam ad ,frobenium1 a quo max impressus in lucem prodiit4 ,verum ,erasmum cognita fraude1 nunquam ea pronunciandi ratione postea usum1 nec amicis1 quibuscum familiariter vivebat1 ut eam observarent1 prcepisse4 ,in ejus rei fidem exhibuit ,rutgerus ipsius ,erasmi manu scriptam in gratiam ,damiani a ,gs ,hispani pronunciationis formulam1 in nullo diversam ab ea1 qua passim docti et indocti in hac lingua utuntur40 ,the voucher for the story is ,,vossius1 from whose ,aristarchus1 lib4 #a1 c4 #bh1 ,wetsten quotes it4 #h ,havercamp1 vol4 ii4 p #agd4 ,nevertheless1 ,erasmus1 ,wetsten distinctly asserts1 7pp4 #ae1 #aae17 did not himself adopt in his practice the perfect theory of ,hellenic vocalization which he sketched out4 ,so much the less cause is there for our having any hesitation in considering the whole question as now open1 and treating it exactly as if ,professor ,john ,cheke1 and ,professor ,thomas ,smith of ,cambridge ,university1 and ,adolphus ,mekerchus1 knight and perpetual senator of ,bruges1 and the other ,havercampian hoplites had never existed4 ,let us inquire1 therefore1 in the first place1 whether any certain data exist on which such a matter can be settled scientifically4 ,we shall give only the grand outlines of the question1 referring the special student to the ,english work of ,,pennington already quoted1 the ,german work of ,,liskov1 and the ,latin of ,,seyffarth4#i #i ,ueber die ,aus-sprache des ,griechischen4 ,leipzig1 #ahbe4 ,de ,sonis literarum ,grcarum2 auctore ,,gustavo ,,seyffarthio4 ,lipsi1 #ahbd4 ,now1 there are five ways by which the method of pronunciation used by any gone generation of 8articulate-speaking men0 may be ascertained1 if not with a curious exactness in every point1 at least with such an amount of approximation as will be esteemed satisfactory by a reasonable inquirer4 ,,first1 we have the imitation in articulate letters of natural sounds and of the cries of animals4 ,there is nothing more certain in the philosophy of language than that whole classes of words expressive of sound were formed on the principle of a direct dramatic imitation of the sound signified4 ,thus the words ,,dash1 ,,hash1 ,,smash1 in our most significant ,saxon tongue1 evidently express an action producing sound1 in which the strong vowel sound of ,a is combined with a sharp sound to which the aspirated ,s was considered the nearest approximation by the original framer of the word4 ,so1 in the names expressive of flowing water1 the liquids ,l and ,r are observed to preponderate in all languages1 these being the sounds which are actually given forth by the natural objects so signified3 thus river1 1 strom1 flumen1 purl1 the ,hebrew nahar and nahal1 c4 ,and in the same manner1 if the bird which we call ,,cuckoo was called by the ,latins cuculus1 by the ,greeks 1 and by the ,germans kukuk1 no person can doubt that the vowel sounds at least1 in these words1 were intended to be a more or less exact echo of the cry of the bird so designated4 ,in arguing1 however1 from such words1 care must be taken not to press the argument too closely2 for two things are manifest--that the original framer of the words might have given1 and in all likelihood did give only a loose1 and not a curiously exact imitation of the sound or cry he meant to express2 and then that in the course of centuries the word may have deviated so far from its original pronunciation1 as to be no longer a very striking likeness of the natural sound it is intended to imitate4 ,these considerations explain the fact how the very simple and obvious cry made by sheep1 which no child will mistake1 is expressed by three very different vowels1 in three of the most notable ,european languages1--our own bleat1 the ,latin balare1 and the ,greek 1 pronounced like ,a in mate1 according to the practice of the ,greeks in the classical age4 ,from such words1 therefore1 no safe conclusion can be drawn as to the pronunciation of any particular word at any particular period of a highly advanced civilization4 ,it is different1 however1 with words not forming any part of the spoken system of articulate speech1 but invented expressly for the occasion1 in order to represent by way of echo certain natural sounds4 ,in this way1 should we find in an old ,athenian spelling-book this sentence1 8the sheep cries 10 we should be most justly entitled to conclude1 if not that the ,greek ,b was pronounced exactly like the corresponding letter in our alphabet1 7for the consonants are less easily fixed down in such imitations of inarticulate cries17 certainly that ,h had the sound of our ,,ai2 and this conclusion would be irresistible if other arguments were at hand1 such as will presently be mentioned1 leading plainly to the same conclusion4 ,here1 however1 also1 care must be taken not to generalize too largely2 for1 strictly speaking1 the inference from such a fact as the one supposed1 is only that at the particular time and place where the said book was composed1 a particular vowel sounded to the ear of the writer in a particular way2 the proof remaining perfectly open that at some other place during the same period1 or at the same place fifty years later1 the same vowel may have been pronounced in a perfectly different way4#aj4 ,those who are at all acquainted with the style of reasoning on such points1 exemplified in almost every page of ,havercamp's ,collection1 will see the necessity of applying at every step of their progress the rein of a strictly logical restraint4 #aj 8,if we find a word pronounced in a given manner in the time of ,athenus1 we are warranted1 in the absence of proof1 in supposing it to have been pronounced in the same way in the time of ,homer2 and what prevailed in ,homer's time may be presumed to have continued till the age of ,athenus40--,,pennington1 p4 #g4 ,this is too strong4 ,considering the immense interval of time and progress of culture between ,,homer and ,,athen,,us1 and considering the tendency to change inherent in human nature1 ,i can see no presumption that the pronunciation of the language should have remained through so many centuries unchanged4 ,another and a most scientific way by which we may recover the traces of a lost orthoepy1 is from the physiological description of the action of the organs of speech in producing the sounds belonging to certain letters1 as preserved in the works of grammatical or rhetorical writers4 ,this method of proof1 taken by itself1 may1 no doubt1 fail of giving complete satisfaction in delicate cases2 for it is extremely difficult to give such an exact description of the action of the organs of speech as will enable a student of an unknown language to reproduce the sound1 without the assistance of the living voice4 ,but1 taken along with other circumstances1 the proof from this source may be so strong as absolutely to force conviction2 or at all events imperatively to exclude certain suppositions1 which1 without the existence of such a description1 would have been admissible4 ,now1 it happens most fortunately for our present inquiry1 that a very satisfactory scale of the ,greek vowel-sounds is extant in the works of the well-known historian and critic ,dionysius of ,halicarnassus1 who lived in the time of ,augustus ,csar4 ,this we shall quote at length immediately2 and as the author was a professional rhetorician1 no higher authority on such a point1 for the epoch to which he belongs1 can be wished for4#aa #aa 8,i cannot help thinking that if this treatise of ,dionysius had been in early times made a text-book in schools1 no controversy would ever have arisen upon the pronunciation of the ,greek letters10 7except the diphthongs17 8or upon the nature of quantity40--,,pennington4 ,again1 a very large and various field of proof lies in those instances of the direct transference of the sounds of one language into those of another1 which literary composition sometimes requires1 and which are sure to occur very frequently in an extensive literature like the ,greek4 ,examples of this are most common in the case of proper names1 and occur especially in translations1 as in the ancient translations of the ,hebrew ,bible and of the ,new ,testament1 which have been admirably used for the illustration of ,greek orthoepy in the work of ,seyffarth4 ,when ,strabo1 for instance1 7p4 #bac17 in the case given by ,pennington1 7p4 #gc17 says of the inhabitants of the newly colonized town of ,como in ,upper ,italy1-- 1 we learn that the diphthong was considered by an intelligent scientific man in the time of ,augustus1 as being either the exact equipollent of the ,latin ,u1 or the nearest approximation to it within the compass of ,hellenic vocalization2 and when we are told further that the modern ,greeks and the modern ,italians pronounce the same vowels the same way even now1 we cannot for a moment doubt that the method of pronouncing that ,greek diphthong now practised in ,scotland 7as in boom7 is the correct one4 ,from the same passage we may legitimately draw the inference1 with regard to the second letter in the ,greek alphabet1 that it was in all probability pronounced softly like our ,v2 for our ,b is no representative whatever of the ,latin ,v1 whether we suppose that letter to have been pronounced like the corresponding letter with us1 or like our ,w4 ,the modern ,germans1 in the same way1 who have not our sound of ,w1 substitute for it in their language the sound of ,v regularly1 as in ,,wasser1 which they pronounce ,,vasser1 and many such words4 ,if1 therefore1 an ancient ,greek wished to express the letter ,v1 and does so by his own ,b1 the inference is irresistible1 either that his ,b was pronounced like our ,v1 and was viewed as the exact expression of the ,latin letter so pronounced1 or as an approximation to it1 if pronounced like our ,w2 or1 on the other hand1 that the ,greek organ being utterly incapable of pronouncing the soft sound of the ,latin ,v1 and having no letter or combination of letters capable of expressing it1 gave up the attempt in despair1 and wrote the soft ,latin ,v with a hard ,greek ,b4 ,but this supposition is improbable1 for three reasons3 ,,first1 because the general character of the ,greek language1 as contrasted with the ,roman1 was not that of blunt hardness but of liquid softness1 7see ,,quinctilian and ,,cicero1 passim27 ,,secondly1 the ancient ,greeks1 in fact1 had a combination of letters by which they could express in an approximate way the ,latin ,v1 namely1 1 and by which they actually did so express it on many occasions2 ,,thirdly1 the modern ,greeks likewise do pronounce the second letter of the alphabet like the ,latin ,v2 and the burden of proof lies on those who assert that the ancients pronounced it otherwise4 ,a fourth method of proof lies in the remarks made on the identical or cognate sounds of syllables1 either incidentally by general writers1 or specially by grammarians in treating orthography and orthoepy2 and in the accidental interchange of letters in inscriptions and coins4 ,of the strictly grammatical kind of evidence a very valuable fragment has been preserved in the of ,herodian1 the ,priscian of the ,greek grammarians1 published by ,boissonnade in #ahag4 ,in this work are alphabetically arranged large classes of words1 which1 while they are pronounced with the same vowel to the ear1 are differently spelt to the eye2 as if ,i should say in ,english that the vowel-sounds in the words ,,fair1 ,,fare1 ,,heir1 ,,there1 have the same or a similar orthoepy1 but a very different orthography4 ,of the other1 or incidental kind1 may be mentioned those plays of sound with which epigrammatic writers sometimes amuse themselves1 and of which the echo-poems found in some of the collections of modern ,latin1 are the most notable example4 ,thus1 ,erasmus1 in ridicule of the ,ciceronians1 wrote two lines1 of which the first1 a hexameter1 ends with ,cicerone1 the ablative case of the great orator's ,latin name1 while the second line1 a pentameter1 striking the ear as a sort of echo of the first1 ends with the ,greek word 1 ,o you ass6 from which significant jingle the inference is ready enough1 that the penultimate syllable of both these words1 in the classical pronunciation of ,erasmus1 was accented1 and that the sound of the vowel in both was the same4 ,the proof1 of course1 in such a case would have been equally complete if the word in the second line had been spelt with a different vowel instead of with the same4 ,fifthly1 ,in determining the pronunciation of any language at any past period of its history1 its presently existing pronunciation1 though furnishing no absolute proof1 is entitled to be taken into account along with other circumstances1 and in the absence of any distinct evidence to the contrary1 must be taken as conclusive4 ,erasmus appealed with great success to the vanity of academic men1 when he said1 with reference to the common ,greek pronunciation in his day1 8,pronuntiationem1 quam nunc habent eruditi1 non aliunde petunt quam a vulgo1 scis quali magistro20 but to this a learned advocate of the existing ,itacism very wisely replies1 that even supposing it were true that the vulgar pronunciation of ,greek comes to us only from the ,,vulgar1 the common people1 as is well known1 are generally far more tenacious of hereditary national accent than the upper classes of society2#ab of which we have a familiar ,english example in the case of the stout ,yorkshiremen1 who have preserved for two thousand years the deep hollow sound of u1 7saying ,ool1 for ,hull1 c417 which is the normal sound of that vowel in all the ,european languages4 ,in this view it is passing strange to note1 that the slender sound of the first syllable of 1 as if written heemra1 which is the rule with the modern ,greeks1 is the precise sound1 that in a passage of ,plato is noted as the ancient sound1 compared with the fuller sound1 haimra1 fashionable in his day2#ac while ,aristophanes#ad in one of his plays1 introduces a conservative old ,spartan lady saying 1 instead of 2 a distinct proof both that was not considered identical with in his day1 and that it was then sounded as it is now1 by one of the most ancient people in the ,pelasgic peninsula4 ,such appear to me to be the methods of proof that lie open to an inquirer into the orthoepy of any language1 living or dead1 at any given period of its history4 ,with these1 of course1 the student must combine such general rules on the philosophy of language1 and on the habits of human speech1 as a little experience of practical philology will readily supply4 ,i now proceed to state the results to which ,i have arrived1 by a thorough study of the existing evidences4 ,after that we shall make our practical inference1 and answer a few natural objections4 #ab 8,vulgus antiqu pronuntiationis tenacissimus est40--,,wetsten4 ,compare the observations of ,professor ,l4 ,ross1 below1 on the antique element in modern ,greek4 #ac ,pluto ,cratylus1 sec4 #gd1 ,bekker4 #ad ,aristophanes1 ,lysist4 #hf4 ,in the shape of results1 therefore1 all that my present purely practical purpose requires me to lay down1 with regard to ancient ,greek vocalization1 may be combined in the following two propositions-- ,,proposition ,i4--,it is demonstrably certain that the method of pronouncing the vowels and diphthongs generally practised in ,england and ,scotland1 especially in ,england1 since the days of ,sir ,john ,cheke1--that is from about the middle of the sixteenth century--is doubtful in many points1 and in not a few most important points directly opposed to the whole stream of ancient authority and tradition4 ,it is in fact in a great measure conjectural1 arbitrary1 and capricious4 ,,proposition ,,ii4--,it is equally certain that the modern ,greeks have declined in several most important points from the purity of ,hellenic orthoepy1 as practised in the most classic times2 but many of the striking peculiarities of the modern pronunciation can be traced back1 with more or less uniformity1 to a period not far removed from the most flourishing period of ,greek literature1 a period certainly when pure ,greek was both a spoken and a written language1 and preserving such a living organic power1 as entitled it by a spontaneous impulse from within to modify the laws of its own orthoepy4 ,both these propositions1 so far as the vowels are concerned1 are proved by a single glance at the passage of ,dionysius 7 7 already referred to1 and which ,i shall now translate3-- 8,there are seven vowels2 two long1 and 1 and two short1 and 2 three both long and short1 1 1 4 ,all these are pronounced by the wind-pipe acting on the breath1 while the mouth remains in its simple natural state1 and the tongue remaining at rest takes no part in the utterance4 ,now1 the long vowels1 and those which may be either long or short1 when they are used as long1 are pronounced with the stream of breath1 extended and continuous2 but the short vowels1 and those used as short1 are uttered by a stroke of the mouth cut off immediately on emission1 the wind-pipe exerting its power only for the shortest time4 ,of all these1 the most agreeable sounds are produced by the long vowels1 and those which are used as long1 because their sound continues for a considerable time1 and they do not suddenly break off the energy of the breath4 ,of an inferior value are the short vowels1 and those used as short1 because the volume of sound in them is small and broken4 ,of the long again1 the most sonorous is the 1 when it is used as long1 for it is pronounced by opening the mouth to the fullest1 while the breath strikes the palate4 ,the next is 1 because in its formation1 while the mouth is moderately open1 the sound is driven out from below at the mouth of the tongue1 and keeping in that quarter does not strike upwards4 ,next comes the 1 for in it the mouth is rounded1 and contracts the lips1 and the stroke of the mouth is sent against the extreme end of the mouth1 71 the lips1 ,i presume47 ,inferior to this is the 1 for in this vowel an observable contraction takes place in the extreme region of the lips1 so that the sonorous breath comes out attenuated and compressed4 ,last of all comes 1 for here the stroke of the breath takes place about the teeth1 while the opening of the mouth is small1 and the lips contribute nothing towards giving the sound more dignity as it passes through4 ,of the short vowels1 neither is sonorous2 but o is the least agreeable1 for it parts the mouth more than the other1 and receives the stroke nearer the wind-pipe40 ,now1 while every point of this physiological description may not be curiously accurate1#ae there is enough of obvious certainty in it to settle some of the most important points of ,greek orthoepy1 so far as the rhetorician of ,halicarnassus is concerned2 and his authority in this matter is that of a man of the highest skill1 which1 as the daily practice of our law courts shows1 is worth that of a thousand persons taken at random4 ,that the ,,itacism of the modern ,greeks did not exist1 or was not allowed by good speakers#af in the time of this writer1 so far as the single vowels are concerned1 is abundantly manifest2 for not only do 1 1 1 which the modern ,greeks identify1 mean different sounds1 but the sound of the in particular is removed as far from the as it could well be in any scale of vocalization1 which sets out with the supremacy of the broad ,a4 ,and if these sounds were distinguished by polished ears in the days of ,augustus ,csar1 it is contrary to all analogy of language to suppose that in the days of ,alexander the ,great1 ,plato1 or ,pericles1 they should have been confounded4 ,provincialisms1 indeed1 and certain itacizing peculiarities1 such as that noticed by ,plato1 7page #bd above71 there might have been2 but that any language should confound its vowel-sounds in its best days1 and distinguish them in its days of commencing feebleness1 is contrary to all that succession of things which we daily witness4 ,different letters were originally invented to express different sounds1 and did so naturally for a long time1 till fashion and freak combined with habit1 either overran the phonetic rule of speech by a rank growth of exceptive oddities1 7as has happened in ,english17 or fixed upon the organs of articulation some strong tendency towards the predominance of a particular sound1 which in process of time became a marked idiosyncrasy1 from which centuries of supervening usage could not shake the language free4 ,this is what has taken place in ,greece with regard to certain vowel-sounds4 ,but before pursuing these observations further1 let us see distinctly what the special points are1 that this remarkable passage of the ,halicarnassian distinctly brings out4 ,the ascertained points are these1-- #ae ,what he says about the tongue performing no part in the formation of the vowels is manifestly false1 as any one may convince himself by pronouncing the three sounds1 au1 ai1 ee1 successively1 with open mouth before a mirror4 ,he will thus observe a gradual elevation and advance of the tongue1 as the sound to be emitted becomes more slender4 #af ,this limitation must be carefully borne in mind2 for after ,athens ceased to be a capital1 being overwhelmed by ,alexandria1 it still remained a sort of literary metropolis1 giving1 or affecting to give1 the law in matters of taste1 long after its authority had ceased practically to bind large masses of those whose usage fashioned the existing language4 #a4 ,the long or slender sound of the ,english ,a1 7as in lane17 is not acknowledged by ,dionysius1 nor is its existence possible under his description4 ,it is altogether an anomaly and a monstrosity--like so many things in this island--and should never have been tolerated for a moment in the pronunciation of ,latin or ,greek4#ag #b4 ,the slender sound of used by the ,english and the modern ,greeks1 is an attenuation the farthest possible removed from the conception of ,dionysius4 ,about there is no dispute anywhere4 #c4 ,the sound of described is manifestly the ,french u1 or ,german heard in ,brder1 ,bhne3 a very delicate and elegant sound bordering closely on the slender sound of i1 7ee1 ,english17 into which it is sometimes attenuated by the ,germans1 and with which1 by a poetical license1 it is allowed to rhyme1 7as ,brder--nieder17 but having no connection with the ,english sound of oo1 7as in boom17 with which1 in ,scotland1 it is confounded4 ,this with us is the more unpardonable1 as our ,doric dialect in the south possesses a similar sound in such words as guid1 bluid1 attenuated by the ,northerns into the slender sound of gueed1 and bleed4 ,the ,english sound of long u is1 as ,walker has pointed out1 a compound sound1 of which one element is a sort of consonant--,y4 ,it is1 besides1 altogether a piece of ,english idiosyncrasy1 that we have no reason to suppose ever existed anywhere1 either amongst ,greeks or ,romans4#ah #d4 ,the ,english sound of ,i is another of ,john ,bull's phonetic crotchets1 and must be utterly discarded4 ,it is1 in fact1 a compound sound1 of which the deep vowel is the predominant element--an element which1 we have seen1 stands at the very opposite end of the ,halicarnassian's scale6 #ag ,in some ,english schools a small concession has been made to common sense1 and to sound principles of teaching1 by confining the long slender sound of a to the long 1 while the short is pronounced like the short a in bat4 ,now1 as changes are not easily made in ,england1 especially among schoolmasters1 who are a stiff-necked generation everywhere1 it would have been worth while when they were moving1 to kick the barbarous ,english ,a out of the scholastic world altogether4 ,but their conservatism was too strong for this2 besides1 the ears of many were so gross that they would not have distinguished1 or would have sworn that they could not distinguish1 a long a from a short one1 without giving the former the sound of an entirely distinct vowel6 ,there is no limit to the nonsense that men will talk in defence of an inveterate absurdity4 #ah ,the following passage from ,,mitford 7,pennington1 p4 #cg7 may stand here as an instructive lesson1 how blindly prejudice many sometimes speak3 8,strong national partiality only1 and determined habit1 could lead to the imagination cherished by the ,french critics1 that the ,greek was a sound so unpleasant1 produced by a position of the lips so ungraceful as the ,french ,u40--,history1 book ii4 sec4 iii41 note4 ,,scaliger 7,opuscula3 ,paris1 #afaj1 p4 #aca7 says rightly1 8,est obscurissimus sonus in ,grca vocali 1 qu ita pronuntianda est ut proxime accedat ad iota40 ,so far as we see1 therefore1 the ,english1 ,scotch1 and modern ,greek methods of pronouncing the five vowels all depart in some point from the highest authority that can be produced on the subject2 in fact1 the single vowel alone has preserved its full rounded purity uncorrupted by any party4 ,but with regard to the other four vowels1 there is a marked difference in the degree of deflection from the classical norm2 for1 while the ,scotch err only in one point1 1 the modern ,greeks err in two1 and 1 7though their error is but a very nice one in the case of 1 and has1 in both cases1 long centuries of undeviating usage to stand on17 and the ,english err in all the four points1 1 1 1 and 1 and that in the most paradoxical and abnormal fashion that could have been invented1 had it been the direct purpose of our ,oxonian and ,etonian doctors to put all classical propriety at defiance4 ,in such lawless anarchy has ended the restoration of the divine speech of ,plato1 so loftily promised by ,sir ,john ,cheke2 and so true in this small matter also1 is that wise parable of the ,new ,testament1 which advises reformers to beware of putting new patches on old vestments4 ,instead of the robe of genuine ,melibean purple which ,erasmus wished to throw round the shoulders of the old ,greek gods1 our ,english scholars1 following in his track of conjectural innovation1 have produced an ,english clown's motley jacket1 which the ,zeus of ,olympus never saw1 and even ,momus would disdain4 ,but let us proceed to the diphthongs4 ,unhappily ,dionysius1 by a very unaccountable omission1 has given us no information on this head2 so we are left to pursue our inquiries over a wide field of stray inquiry1 and conclude from a greater mass of materials with much less appearance of scientific certainty4 ,the following results1 however1 to any man that will fairly weigh the cumulative power of the evidence brought together with such laborious conscientiousness by ,liscov and ,seyffarth1 must appear unquestionable3-- #a4 ,it is proved by evidence reaching as far back as the time of the first ,ptolemies1 that the diphthong was pronounced like the same diphthong in our ,english word gain4#ai ,so the diphthong is pronounced by the living ,greek nation4 ,there is1 therefore1 the evidence of more than #bjjj years in its favour1 and against the prevalent pronunciation1 which gives it the broad sound of ai in the ,german word ,,kaiser1 rhyming pretty nearly with our ,english word ,,wiser4 #ai 8,utut sit1 id saltem nacti sumus interpretum ,s4 sc4 singularum atque omnium auctoritate ut constet ,,ai mature atque optimis adeo ,grcorum temporibus simplici vocali ,e respondisse40--,,seyffarth1 p4 #aja4 ,see also the ,stanza from ,,callimachus1 where echoes to 1 ,epig4 xxx4 #e1 7and ,,sextus ,,empiricus adv4 ,grammat4 c4 #e47 #b4 ,the diphthong ,,ei was pronounced in the time of ,ptolemy ,philadelphus like the ,english ee in seen1 or ea in beam4#bj ,this pronunciation it retains at the present day4 ,in this1 as in the preceding case1 we have a striking proof of the tenacity with which a great nation clings to elocutional peculiarities4 ,what likelihood is there that a people1 so constant to itself for #bjjj years under the most adverse circumstances1 should1 in the #bjj years previous to that period1 have known nothing of what was afterwards one of its most marked characteristics8 #bj 8,qu potestate liter ,,ei fuerint e ,grcorum tate in quam veteres ,sc4 s4 interpretes incidunt ex plurimis iisque variis verbis in singulas linguas conversis adeo clarum est ut nulla fere restet causa de e dubitare40--,,seyffarth4 ,the ,old ,testament translators1 in fact1 use it as regularly for ,hirek and ,yod1 as they do ,,ai for ,tzere1 ,segol1 and ,sheva4 #c4 ,the evidence for the pronunciation of the diphthong is more scanty4 ,unfortunately the ,septuagint translators use this diphthong only once for expressing a ,hebrew name in the whole compass of the ,old ,testament4 ,from other evidence1 and by a train of deduction that appears somewhat slippery1 ,seyffarth comes to the conclusion that its original pronunciation was probably that of the ,german oe1 from which it was by degrees softened into the ,french u1 and lastly into the slender sound of i 7ee71 which it now has4 ,but as ,i am dealing with certainties in this paper1 and not with probabilities1 it will be enough to say that ,,liscov has produced evidence to shew that it was confounded with i so early as the time of ,julius ,csar1 being found on a coin of the great dictator for 4 ,so in the coins of ,emperors of the second century1 frequently occurs for 4#ba ,that was not pronounced exactly like in the time of ,thucydides1 has been concluded from a well-known passage in his second book1 7c4 #ed27 but the passage is of doubtful interpretation1#bb and no man can tell at this time of day what the exact1 perhaps a very small shade of1 difference1 was between the two sounds4 #ba ,with regard to this sort of evidence arising from wrong spelt words1 it is manifest that a single example proves nothing4 ,when ,aunt ,chloe1 for instance1 in the ,american novel1 says1 8,i'm clar on't10 this is no proof that the ,americans pronounce the ea in clear like a2 the only conclusion is1 that certain vulgar people in ,america pronounce it so1 and a word with a different vocalization must be written in order to express their peculiar method of utterance4 ,but when mistakes of this kind occur extensively1 and in quarters where there is no reason to suspect anything particularly vulgar1 they authorize a conclusion as general as the fact1 especially where no evidence exists pointing in a different direction4 #bb ,,thiersch uses the passage as a proof of the antiquity of the modern slender sound4--,sprachlehre1 #af1 #e4 #d4 ,in the above three examples1 the ,scotch and the ,english have equally conspired to overthrow the living tradition of two centuries1 by an act of arbitrary academical conceit or pedagogic carelessness4 ,in the case of ,,ou1 we ,northerns have again been happy2 while the ,english1 with their fatal facility of blundering in such matters1 have invented a pronunciation of this diphthong which seems more natural to a growling ,saxon mastiff than to the smooth fulness of ancient ,greek eloquence4 ,the ,greek writers1 with great uniformity1 agree in expressing by this diphthong the sound of the ,latin u2 while the modern ,greeks1 with equal uniformity1 agree in pronouncing their as the ,italians pronounce u2 that is to say1 like the ,english oo in boom4 ,seyffarth classes this diphthong with a and i1 o and e1 as a sound about which there is no controversy4 #e4 ,the diphthongs ,,au and ,,eu follow2 and in their case the contrast between the pronunciation of the living ,greeks1 and that of those who are taught only out of dead grammars and dictionaries1 is so striking1 that the contest has been peculiarly keen4 ,here1 however1 as is wont to be the case in more important matters1 it may be that after much dusty discussion1 erudite wrangling1 and inky hostility1 it shall turn out that both parties are in the right4 ,on the first blush of the matter1 it seems plain that such words as 1 1 1 sound extremely harsh1 and not according to the famous euphony of the ,attic ear1 if in them the second letter of the diphthong receive the consonantal sound of v or f given by the modern ,greeks4 ,,vasilefs1 ,,nafn1 ,,calefntae--these are sounds which no chaste classic ear can tolerate1 and which1 among the phenomena of human articulation1 are more naturally classed with such harsh ,germanisms as ,pfingst1 ,probst1 c41 than with any sound that can be imagined to have been wedded euphoniously to ,apollo's lute4 ,all this is very true2 and yet1 as modern ,german is not all harsh1 so ancient ,greek1 it may be1 was not all mellow2 and no mere general talk about euphony or cacophony can1 in so freakish a thing as human speech1 be allowed to settle any question of orthoepy4 ,now1 when we look into the matter an inch beyond the film of such shallow scholastic declamation1 we find that so early as the time of ,crassus1 that is1 in the first half of the first century before the ,christian era1 the diphthong au1 which we pronounce ou1 7as in bound17 and the ,english like the same vowel in their own language1 7as in vault17 was actually enunciated consonantally like av or af4 ,for ,cicero 7,divinat4 ii4 #dj7 tells the anecdote how1 when that unfortunate soldier was on his way to the ,east1 and about embarking in a ship at ,brundusium1 he happened to meet a ,greek on the quay calling out ,,caunias6 by which call the basket slung over his shoulder might have plainly indicated that he meant ,,figs6 figs of the best quality 7worthy of a triumvir7 from ,caunus1 in the south-west corner of ,asia ,minor2 but the triumvir's ear--dark destiny brooding in his soul--caught up the syllables separately1 as ,cav' ne eas--,,beware ,,how ,,you ,,go6 ,now1 as no person pretends that the v in caveo was pronounced like the u in causa1 or could be so scanned in existing ,latin poetry1 it follows that the au in ,caunias was pronounced by a ,greek of those times as a v or f1 exactly as the living ,greeks pronounce it now4 ,this is one example1 among the many that we have adduced1 shewing in a particularly striking way how impossible it is for modern schoolmasters1 judging from mere abstract considerations1 and bad scholastic habits1 to say how the ancient ,greeks might or might not have pronounced any particular combination of sounds4 ,no doubt this ,calabrian fig-merchant might not have pronounced that combination of letters exactly in the same way that ,pericles did #djj years earlier1 when1 from the tribunal on the ,athenian ,pnyx1 with the ominous roar of a thirty years' war in his ear1 8he lightened and thundered and confounded ,greece20 but there is no reason1 on the other hand1 why a ,greek fig-merchant and a ,greek statesman should not have pronounced certain rough syllables in the same way1 7for a great orator requires rough as well as smooth syllables27 and this much at least is certain1 the anecdote proves that the modern pronunciation of 1 aftos1 is ancient as well as modern2 and the talk of those who will have it that this1 and other most characteristic sounds of the living orthoepy1 were introduced by the ,turks and the ,venetians1 or the ,greeks themselves under their perverse influence1 is mere talk--talk of that kind in which scholastic men are fond of indulging1 when1 knowing nothing1 they wish to have it appear that they know everything4 ,what was the real state of the pronunciation with regard to this and the other diphthong in the days of ,pericles or ,plato1 we have no means of knowing4 ,meanwhile the result which ,seyffarth1 after a long and learned investigation1 brings out1 that they were pronounced before a vowel as v1 or the ,german w1 and before a consonant as a real diphthong1 seems probable enough4 ,this agrees both with the natural laws of elocutional physiology1 and explains how the imperial name ,,flavius in ,roman coins 7,liscov1 p4 #ea7 came to be written sometimes and sometimes 4 ,however this be1 there is no doubt that the consonantal pronunciation of these letters has for more than #ahjj years been known among the ,greeks4 ,it has therefore all the claims that belong to a venerable conservatism2 whereas1 if we reject its title1 we throw ourselves loose into an element of mere conjecture2 as no person can tell us whether ,demosthenes pronounced in the ,scotch or ,english way1 7supposing one of the two to be right27 and as for 1 what extraordinary feats the human tongue can play with it1 we may learn from the ,germans1 who pronounce it like oy in our boy--a rare lesson to the restorers of a lost pronunciation how much is to be learnt in such a field from mere argument and analogy6 ,let us now collect the different points of this inquiry under a single glance4 ,in the days of the first ,emperors1 and1 in a majority of cases1 as early as the first ,ptolemies1 the scale of ,greek vocalization1 according to the best evidence now obtainable1 was as follows3-- ,letter4 ,power4 ,long a1 as in father4 ,short a1 0 hat4 ai1 0 pain4 e1 0 get4 o1 0 pore4 o1 0 got4 ,long 1 0 ,bhne4 ,short the same shortened4 ,long ,i ee1 as in green4 ,short ,i the same shortened4 ,,ai ai1 as in pain4 ,,ei ee1 0 green4 ,,oi ee1 0 green4 ,,ou oo1 0 boom4 ,,au av1 af1 or8 ,,eu ev1 ef1 or8 ,now1 in stating the results thus1 ,i wish it to be observed in the first place1 that ,i throw no sort of doubt on the possibility that in the days of ,herodotus and ,pericles some of the diphthongal sounds here declared normal in the days of the ,ptolemies and the ,csars might have been pronounced otherwise4 ,the theory of ,pennington1 also1 7p4 #ea71 that there might have co-existed in ancient times a system of orthoepy for reciting the old poets1 considerably different from that used in common conversation1 may be entertained by whosoever pleases1 and is not without its uses2 but in the present purely practical inquiry we must leave all mere theory out of view4 ,it is also perfectly open to ,liscov1 or any philologist1 working out a suggestion of the great ,herman1 to prove from the internal analogy of the language1 and especially from a comparison of the most ancient dialects1#bc that originally the diphthongs were pronounced differently from what they are now1 and were in the days of ,ptolemy ,philadelphus1 7,homer unquestionably said1 --pas1 and not pace4 ,,ii4 ,z1 #dfg27 but in the present investigation1 as a practical man1 ,i want something better than general probabilities and philosophical negations1 or even isolated correct assertions2 ,i want a complete scheme of ,greek pronunciation1 for some particular age1 congruous within itself1 and standing on something like historical evidence4 ,this ,i find only in the pronunciation of the modern ,greeks1 or in that of the ,ptolemies and ,csars1 which differs from the other only in a very few points4 ,what then1 we may ask1 should hinder us from at once adopting this pronunciation8 ,nothing1 ,i imagine1 but the dull inertness of mere conservatism1 7which in such matters is very potent17 the conceit of academical men1 proud of their own clumsy invention1 and the dread of ,,itacism4 ,is it not monstrous1 we hear it said1 that half a dozen different vowels1 or combinations of vowels1 should be pronounced in the same way1 and that in such a fashion as only curs yelp1 and mice squeak1 and tenuous shades with feeble whine flit through the airy paths that lead to ,pluto's unsubstantial hall8 ,now1 ,i at once admit that the prevalence of the slender sound of i 7ee71 is a corruption from the original purity of ,hellenic vocalization1 from which ,i have no doubt the ,pelasgi1 and the venerable patriarchs who put up the lions1 now seen on the gates of ,mycen1 were free2 but no language spoken by a polished people is free from some corruption of this kind2 and this particular corruption1 like the defects observable in men of great original genius1 is characteristic4 ,in such strongly marked men as ,beethoven1 ,samuel ,johnson1 and ,john ,hunter the physiologist1 nothing is more easy than for the nice moralist to point out half a dozen points of character that he could have wished otherwise4 ,so it is with language4 ,who1 for instance1 would not wish to reform the capriciousness of our ,english systemless system of spelling and pronunciation8 ,who can say that we have not too much of the sibilant sound of s and th in our language8 who will not lament the want of body in our vocalization1 and the tendency to the ineffective tribrachic and even proceleusmatic accent in the termination of our polysyllables8 ,in ,german1 again1 who does not indulge in a spurt of indignation against 8,wenn ,ich mich nicht10 and other such common collocations of gutturals8 and in ,italian are we not so cloyed with nes and res1 and other broad trochaic modulations1 that we long for the resurrection of some ,gothic ,quinctilian to inoculate the luscious 8lingua ,toscana in bocca ,romana10 with a few harsh solecisms2 while the ,french1 who for cleverness and refinement1 7and some other things also17 are a sort of ,greeks1 do so clip and mince the stout old ,roman lingo1 which they have adopted1 that except in the mouth of flower girls and ballet dancers1 their dialect is altogether intolerable to many a masculine ear4 ,all these things are true2 but no sane man thinks of rebelling against such hereditary characteristics of a human language1 any more than he would against the ingrained peculiarities of human character4 ,we take these things as we find them2 just as we must make the best of a snub nose1 or a set of bad teeth in an otherwise pretty face4 ,so also we must even attune our ears to the ,itacism of the ,greeks2 otherwise we shall assuredly sin against a notable characteristic of the language1 much more intimately connected with the genius of that singular people1 than many a clipper of new ,greek grammars and filcher of notes to old ,attic plays imagines4 ,what says ,,quinctilian8 ,non possumus esse tam ,,graciles2 simus ,,fortiores1 7xii4 #aj47 ,now1 ,i ask the defenders of our modern system of pronouncing ,greek in this country1 which some of them perhaps call classical and ,erasmian1 but which is in fact1 as has been proved1 an incoherent jabber of barbarisms1 what if the so much decried ,itacism were part of this gracilitas1 this slenderness or tenuity of ancient ,hellenic speech1 by which it was to the ear of the greatest of ,latin rhetoricians so strikingly distinguished from the ,roman8 ,certain it is1 that the rude ,teutonic sounds of ou and i1 7,english i and ai in ,kaiser71 that we hear so often in ,english ,greek1 do not answer to ,quinctilian's description4 ,in fact1 both ,english and ,scotch1 instead of preserving this natural contrast between ,greek and ,roman enunciation1 have in this1 and in other matters1 7as we shall see presently1 when we come to talk of accents17 done everything in their power to sweep it away2 and of nothing am ,i more firmly convinced than of this1 that a living conception of what the spoken ,greek language really was in its best days1 will never be attained by any scholar who has not the courage to kick all the ,erasmian academic gear aside for a season1 and take a free amble with some living ,christopoulos1 or ,papadopoulos1 on the banks of the ,ilissus1 or round the base of ,lycabettus4 ,this living experience of the language is indeed the only efficient way to argue against the learned prejudices of academic men2 for1 as ,,thiersch well observes1 every one laughs at that pronunciation to which he has not been accustomed1 7,sprachlehre1 sect4 xvii4 #c27 and no man can live at ,athens for any time1 without having his ears reconciled to a slight deviation from perfect euphony1 or even coming to admire it1 as one sometimes does the lisp of a pretty woman1 or the squint of an arch humorist4#bd #bc ,,godofredi ,,hermani de emendenda ratione ,grc grammatic1 ,lib4 i4 c4 #b1 quoted at length by ,,liscov1 p4 #ba4 #bd ,on revisal it strikes me ,i have given the enemies of ,itacism an unfair advantage by not stating1 that1 while in any other language the attenuation of so many different sounds into one1 might have proved a very grievous evil1 there is such a richness of the full sound of 7which the ,english have effaced7 and in ,greek1 that the blemish rarely offends4 ,i have to mention also1 that1 while a certain prominence even of this slender sound seems necessary to the phonetic character of ,greek1 as distinguished from ,latin1 ,i have no objection1 in reading ,homer and the elder poets1 7were it only for the sake of the often quoted 67 to pronounce 1 as boy in ,english1 and 1 as we do it in ,scotland2 just as in reading ,chaucer we may be forced to adopt some of the peculiarities of the pronunciation of his day4 ,but in the common use of the prose language1 ,i think it safer to stick by the tradition of so many centuries1 than to venture on patches of classical restoration1 where it is impossible to revive a consistent whole4 ,i may say also1 that if be pronounced uniformly like the ,french u1 the itacism will be diminished by one letter1 while the difference between that and the modern ,greek pronunciation is so slight1 that a ,scotchman so speaking in ,athens will be generally understood1 whereas our broad ,scotch u 7oo7 besides being entirely without classical authority1 recedes so far from the actual pronunciation of the ,greeks1 as to be a serious bar in the way of intelligibility4 ,so much for the vowel-sounds4 ,i say nothing of the consonants1 because they are of less consequence in the controversy4 ,i have already spoken incidentally about 1 7p4 #ba above71 and ,i have no wish to write a complete treatise4 ,detailed information on minute points of neo-,hellenic pronunciation may be found in ,pennington's work already quoted1 and in a recent work by ,corpe4#be ,i now proceed to the matter of ,,accent1 which we shall find to be no less important1 but happily much more easily settled4 8,in the pronunciation of a ,greek word10 says ,,jelf1#bf 8regard ought to be had both to accent and quantity20 a most significant power lying in that word ,,ought1 as we know well that many teachers in this country pay a very irregular regard to quantity in reading1 and very few1 if any1 pay any regard to accent4#bg ,but that the proposition laid down by ,mr4 ,,jelf is true1 no scholar can doubt for a moment1 though ,mr4 ,,pennington1 in the year #ahdd1 most evidently anticipated a great amount of stolidity1 obstinacy1 and scepticism1 among his academic friends on this point2 with such minute and scrupulous care1 and breadth of philological preparation does he set himself to prove1 what no man that had ever dipped into an ancient ,greek grammar1 or a common ,latin work on rhetoric1 would ever dream of denying4 ,however1 ,i gave myself some trouble to set forth this matter learnedly some years ago1#bh knowing that ,i might have to do with persons not always open to reason1 and utterly impervious to nature and common sense2 and the ,fellow of ,king's also might have had occasion to know that it is one thing to prick soft flesh with a pin1 another to drive nails into a stone wall4 ,the fact is1 that the living ,greek language having come down to us with most audible accentuation1 and the signs of these accents being contained in all printed ,greek books1 and not only so1 but commented on by a long series of grammarians1 from ,herodian and ,arcadius1 down through the ,homeric bishop of ,thessalonica1 to ,gaza and ,lascaris2 in this state of the case1 if any man does not pronounce ,greek according to accents1 while ,i do1 the burden of proof lies with him who throws off all established authority in the matter1 not with me who acknowledge it4 ,if there is no authority for accent in the ancient grammarians1 then as little is there for quantity4 ,the fact of the existence of the one as a living characteristic of the spoken and written language of ancient ,greece1 stands exactly on the same foundation as the other4 ,so many ancient grammars1 and comments on grammars have been published within the last fifty years by ,bekker and other library-excavators1 that the teacher who now requires to be taught formally that the ancients really used accents in their public elocution1 is more worthy of a good flogging than the greatest dunce in his drill4 ,but what were accents8 ,accents are an intension and remission 7 and 7 of the voice in articulate speech1 whereby one syllable receives a marked predominance over the others1 this predominance manifesting itself principally in a higher note or intonation given to the accented syllable4#bi ,this definition occurs fifty times if it occurs once in the works of the ancient grammarians and rhetoricians2 so ,i need not trouble myself here by an array of erudite citations to prove it2 and that such an accent is both possible and easy to bring out in the case of any ,greek word1 may be experienced by anybody who will pronounce with a marked rise of the voice on the last syllable1 or with a similar intension of vocal utterance on the penult4 ,that the living ,greeks give a distinct prominence to these very syllables1 any man may learn by seeking them out in ,manchester or ,london1 in both which places they have a chapel4 ,why then should ,etonian schoolmasters1 and ,oxonian lecturers not do the same8 ,do they not teach the doctrine of accents8 ,have they not translated ,,goettling8 ,do they not print all their books with those very marks which ,aristophanes of ,byzantium1 two thousand years ago1 with provident cunning1 devised even for this purpose1 that we1 studious academic men1 in the then ,,ultima ,,thule of civilisation1 should now have the pleasure of intoning a philosophic period as the divine ,plato did1 or a blast of patriotic indignation as ,demosthenes8 ,they say there are no accents properly so called in the ,french language4 ,this ,i never could exactly understand2 but do our academic men actually realize this peculiar form of levelled human enunciation1 7the of the old grammarians17 without intension or remission1 by pronouncing ,greek altogether unaccented8 ,believe it not4 ,as if determined to produce a scholastic impersonation of every possible monstrosity with regard to the finest language in the world1 they neglect the written accents which lie before their nose1 and read according to those accents which they have borrowed from the ,latin6 and this directly in the teeth of the public declaration of ,,cicero and ,,quinctilian1 that ,latin had one monotonous law of accentuation1 ,greek another and a much more rich and various one4#cj ,and1 as if to place the top-stone on the pyramid of absurdities which they pile1 after reading ,greek with this ,latin accent 7which sounds to a ,greek ear exactly as a rude ,frenchman's first attempts at ,english sound to an ,englishman7 for some half dozen years1 they set seriously to cram their brain-chambers with rules how ,greek accents should be placed1 and exercise their memory and their eye1 with a most villainous abuse of function1 in doing that work which should have been done from the beginning by the ear6 ,if consistency could have been looked for from men involved in such a labyrinth of bungling1 there would have been something heroic in throwing away the marks altogether from their books and from their brains1 as well as from their tongue2 certainly this procedure would have saved many a peeping editor a great deal of trouble1 and many a brisk young gentleman riding up in a ,cambridge 8coach0 right into the possession of a snug tutorship in ,trinity1 would have travelled on a smoother road1 and felt less seriously how the flowers of ancient literature are scarce to be enjoyed amid the thorns of modern grammar that besiege a man's fingers and eyes from all sides4#ca ,but intellectual consistency is not to be expected from persons once involved in a gross error1 any more than moral consistency is from thieves2 and it is well for all parties that it is so2 for by this wise arrangement of nature1 as a thief's story often discovers the theft it would conceal1 so a philologer's nonsense is most readily refuted by the remnants of incoherent sense that he had not wit or courage enough to eliminate4 ,besides1 the dictum of ,,porson stood mighty over their heads2#cb and as for the young men1 the more time that was wasted on a reasonless method of teaching ,greek1 the less danger would there be of that rude invasion of ,,botany1 ,,geology1 ,,history1 and all the array of modern sciences which has long been the special terror of ,english academic men4 ,so they went on1 and so they go on now1 teaching that people ought to accent on the last syllable1 and yet actually accenting it on the first6 ,the consequence of which perverse proceeding is not only that accents are one of the most difficult things to learn in ,greek1 and seldom thoroughly mastered even by those who are excellent scholars otherwise1 7see ,,jelf1 page #eb1 note71 but an accomplished ,english scholar1 when he makes his continental tour1 as is common enough in these days1 even with men who have not much money1 finds that his perverse enunciation of the ,greek vowels1 combined with his utter neglect of accents1 has put him in possession of a language of which he can make no use except in soliloquy1 and which any person can understand sooner than a native of the country to which it belongs4#cc ,he then comes home belike and tells his ,english friends that the modern ,greeks are a set of barbarians1 who speak a 8swallow's jabber10 so corrupt that no scholar can understand a word they say6 ,so true is the record which honest ,thomas ,fuller has left of the issue of the notable ,hellenic controversy raised by ,sir ,john ,cheke--8,here ,bishop ,gardiner1 chancellor of the university1 interposed his power1 affirming ,cheke's pronunciation1 pretended to be ancient1 to be antiquated4 ,he imposed a penalty on all such as used this new pronunciation1 which1 notwithstanding1 since hath prevailed1 and whereby we ,englishmen speak ,greek and are able to understand one another1 which nobody else can40#cd #be ,,corpe's ,neo-,hellenic ,greek ,grammar4 ,london1 #ahea4 ,see also a notice of this work in the ,,athen,,um for last year1 where ,i am happy to observe that the opinions advocated in this paper are supported4 #bf ,greek ,grammar4 #ahea1 sect4 #dd1 #de4 ,,donaldson 7,greek ,grammar1 p4 #ag7 says1 #8,the accent is the sharp or elevated sound with which one of the last three syllables of a ,greek word is regularly pronounced4 ,this 8regularly0 is as significant as ,mr4 ,,jelf's 8ought40' #bg ,of course ,i except ,professor ,,masson of ,belfast1 whose complete mastery of the living dialect of ,greece is the object of admiration to all who know him4 #bh ,classical ,museum1 vol4 i4 p4 #cch4 #bi ,there is also a greater emphasis or stress given to the accented syllable1 as is manifest from the pronunciation of the modern ,greeks1 and from the striking fact that in the modern dialect1 the unaccented syllable has sometimes been dropt1 while the accented constitutes the whole modern word1 as for 1 for 4 #cj ,,quinctil41 lib4 i4 c4 #e2 ,,diomed4 de ,oratione1 ii42 ,,putsch4 i4 #dbf4 #ca ,,jelf1 in the ,preface to his ,grammar1 calls the doctrine of accent 8a difficult branch of scholarship40 ,the difficulty is altogether an artificial one1 made by scholastic men who will insist on teaching by the eye only and the understanding1 what has no meaning at all except when addressed to the ear4 ,the doctrine of accentuation in ,english has no peculiar difficulty1 plainly because men learn it in the natural way by hearing4 #cb 8,si quis igitur vestrum ad accuratam ,grcarum literarum scientiam aspirat1 is probabilem sibi accentuum rationem quam maturrime comparet1 in propositoque perstet scurrarum dicacitate et stultorum derisione immotus10 ad ,med4 #a1 apud ,,jelf1 vol4 i4 p4 #cg4 ,i wonder if ,porson himself pronounced according to the accents4 ,if he did not1 he is just another instance of that extraordinary incapacity of apprehending a large principle that is so characteristic of the ,english mind4 #cc ,i may insert here the whole of the passage of ,,boissonade1 from which the words in one of the prefixed mottoes are taken4 8,nisi quod maxime cupio1 in omnibus academiis nostris1 gymnasiis et scholis hodierna ,grcorum pronuntiatio recipiatur4 ,nam cum prorsus perierit antiqua pronuntiandi ratio qua ,demosthenes1 et ,sophocles1 vel ipsi ,alexandrini sub ,ptolemis utebantur1 et fere ridiculum sit unumquemque populum ad su lingu sonos1 atque etiam ad libitum1 ,grcorum quos legit librorum pronuntiationem efformare1 id saltem boni1 admissa neotericorum pronuntiatione1 lucrabimur1 non solum ut ,gallus homo et ,germanus ,anglum intelligant ,grce loquentem et ab illo ,grce ipsi loquentes intelligantur1 sed id etiam ut cum ,grcis doctis et scholastica institutione politis confabulemur verbis antiquorum et facillime1 si velimus1 hodiern lingu cognitionem ac usum assequamur40--,,herodian1 ,epimerisni1 ,,boissonade4 ,london1 #ahai4 ,prefat4 #cd ,history of the ,university of ,cambridge1 ,section vii4 ,let us now ask in a single sentence how all this mass of absurdity came about2 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 ghost4 ,the ghost that frightened them on the present occasion1 and caused them to forswear ,,spoken ,,accent 7for as we have seen they stuck to it on ,,paper7 was ,,quantity2 concerning which1 therefore1 we must now inquire1 whether it be a real ghost or only a white sheet4 ,quantity1 they say1 cannot stand before ,accent1 or rather is swallowed up by it4 ,like hostile religious sects1 or belligerent medical corporations1 they cannot meet without quarrelling2 so the public peace is consulted by getting rid of one of them1 not in the way of violent murder1 7for the law does not allow that17 but by what certain philosophical ,chartist-,reformers used to call 8painless extinction40 ,therefore they who speak according to accent1 are wont to remove quantity out of the way noiselessly2 and they who speak according to quantity must treat accent in the same way4 ,this is an old story4 ,the ,,bear in ,erasmus' dialogue1 7,havercamp1 ii4 #ie17 speaking rare wisdom in a gruff ,johnsonian sort of style1 says1 8,sunt quidam adeo ,,crassi ut non distinguant accentum a quantitate1 quum sit longe diversa ratio4 ,,aliud ,,est ,,enim ,,acutum ,,aliud ,,diu ,,tinnire3 ,,aliud ,,intendi1 ,,aliud ,,extendi4 ,at eruditos novi qui1 quum pronunciarent illud 1 mediam syllabam1 quoniam tonum habet acutum1 quantum possent producerent1 quum sit natura brevis vel brevissima potius40 ,certain learned men1 it appears1 in the beginning of the sixteenth century1 could not accent the word on the penult1 as it ought to be accented1 without in the same breath making that syllable long1 which it is not4 ,to avoid this blunder1 the ,etonians1 ,oxonians1 and other famous modern teachers1 omit the accent altogether on that syllable and on every syllable--of which the name is legion--similarly situated in the ,greek language1 and thus1 by removing the cause1 are sure of annihilating the effect4 ,a very obvious1 but surely a very clumsy expedient1 and hardly worthy of the subtlety of the academic mind4 ,a man by running too hard sometimes breaks his legs2 and you forthwith vow to avoid his fate by sitting in your chair constantly and taking no exercise6 ,let us see how the case stands here4 ,the accent1 you say1 lengthens the syllable4 ,take any ,english word in the first place1 7as nonsense is not so transparent in a learned tongue17 and make the experiment4 ,if a ,scotsman says vesible1 you will allow1 ,i suppose1 that the first syllable of that word is both long and accented3 if an ,englishman says viible1 'tis equally clear that the same syllable is still accented1 but it is not now long4 ,accent1 therefore1 in ,english has no necessary power to lengthen the sound of the vowel of the syllable on which it is placed2 and if some learned men on the banks of the ,rhine1 in the days of ,erasmus1 or on the banks of the ,isis1 in our day1 cannot accent a syllable without at the same time lengthening it1 this happens merely because1 as the ,bear says1 they are 8,,adeo ,,crassi20 their ears are gross1 and have lost--by the dust of the libraries1 perhaps--the healthy power of discerning differences of modulation in the living human voice4 ,not a few persons have ,i met with among those who are1 or would be scholars1 in this country1 who in this way assert that it is impossible to put the accent on the penult of a ,greek word1 and at the same time1 as the law of the language requires1 make the last syllable long4 ,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 apprehension2 and this1 along with the utter neglect of musical and elocutionary culture so common among our classical devotees1 had rendered them incapable of perceiving1 without an act of special attention1 the commonest phenomena of spoken language appealing to the ear4 ,in the ,english words echo1 primrose1 and many other of the same description1 the accent and quantity stand in that exact relation which is so characteristic of ,greek1 as in 1 2 while in the ,english words cld-pated1 hosekeeper1 we have that precise disposal of accent and quantity which occurs in the word 1 and which has been so often quoted as a proof that it is impossible to give effect to accent without violating quantity4#ce ,a very slight elocutionary culture would put a stop to such vain talk2 but we have1 unfortunately1 too many scholars who gather their crude notions on such subjects from a few phrases current in the schools1 without ever questioning their own ears1 the only proper witness of what is right or wrong in the matter of enunciation4 ,hence the cumbrous mass of erudite nonsense on accent and quantity under which our library shelves groan2 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 capable4 8,vel ab ,,asinis licebat hoc discrimen discere10 continues the learned ,bear1 8qui rudentes corripiunt acutam vocem1 imam producunt40 ,very true2 a really wise man may learn much from an ass2 but they who conceit themselves to be wise1 when they are not1 will learn from nobody4 ,and so ,i conclude with regard to this whole matter of ,,quantity1 that it is only an imaginary ghost after all2 a white sheet which a single touch of the finger will turn aside1 or only a white mist1 perhaps1 which1 if a brave man will only march up to1 he shall not know that it is there4 #ce ,when ,i was at the railway station1 ,,skipton1 in ,yorkshire1 waiting for a train1 ,i heard one of the men call out1 8,any person for ,mnchster0 with a distinct and well-marked dwelling of the voice on the second as well as the first syllable4 ,this gave me a very vivid idea of the manner in which the ,greeks must have pronounced 1 accenting the first syllable1 but dwelling on the second syllable with a distinct prolongation of the voice4 ,one thing1 however1 ,i will admit--by way of palliation for the enormous blunders that have been committed in this matter--that in words of two1 three1 or more syllables1 where the accent is on a syllable naturally short1 while the long syllable is unaccented1 a careless speaker may readily slur over the long syllable so as to make it short1 thus converting an anapst accented on the first syllable1 as clndne1 into a tribrach with the same accent clndn1 a very common vulgarism1 as we all know4 ,the unaccented syllable1 indeed1 is1 in the very nature of things1 placed in a position where it is not so likely to get its fair mass of sound as its accented neighbour4 ,thus1 except in solemn speaking1 the first syllable of ,b,d,,nt seldom gets full weight1 though it is equally long with its accented sequent2 and the second syllable of ,,education is vulgarized into edication1 purely from the want of the accent4 ,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 bad4 ,the modern ,greeks1 indeed1 we know1 go a step farther2#cf they not only in their common conversation fail to give the due prolongation to their long syllables1 when unaccented--making no distinction between and --but they actually give extension as well as intension to all their accented syllables1 and thus fall into the same sin as respects quantity that our academicians daily commit against accent4 ,but there is not the slightest reason why we should imagine it necessary to imitate them in this idiosyncrasy4 ,to do so would be for the sake of a superfluous compliment to the living1 to cut off one great necessary organ1 whereby the beautiful wisdom of the dead being made alive again becomes ours4 ,the laws of accent are a most important element of the oratory of ,pericles and ,demosthenes2 but without quantity the harmony of ,homer's numbers is unintelligible4 ,there is no reason why we should sacrifice either the one or the other of these two great modulating principles of ancient ,hellenic speech4 ,the one1 so far from destroying1 does1 in fact1 regulate to a certain extent1#cg and beautifully vary the other4 ,quantity without accent were a monotonous level of dreary sing-song2 accent without quantity can be likened only to a series of sharp parallel ridges1 with steep narrow ravines interposed1 but without the amplitude of grassy slope1 flowering mead1 and far-stretching fields of yellow-waving corn4 #cf ,see the essay on this subject in the second volume of the ,greek works of ,professor ,,rangabe of ,athens4 #cg ,every practical teacher ought to know how much more easily the doctrine of quantity may be taught with constant reference to accent than without it2 so that pronouncing a word like 1 the accent on the penult1 is the easiest way to make the student remember that the final syllable of that word is long4 ,but some one will still press the question1 ,how am ,i to read ,homer8 how ,sophocles8 ,is it not manifest1 that if ,i read according to the spoken accent1 and not according to the quantitative metre1 though ,i may preserve myself1 by decent care1 from grossly violating quantity1 ,i shall certainly fail to bring out anything that the ear of the most harshly-modulated ,hottentot or ,cherokee could recognise as rhythm8 ,now what has been said hitherto of the compatibility of accent and quantity relates only to words taken separately1 or as they occur in the loose succession of unfettered speech--a purely elocutional matter3 of the musical element of rhythm nothing has been said4 ,that this must modify the singing or recitation of measured verses to a considerable extent1 so as to make it different from the oratorical declamation of prose1 is evident2 but that there is no such incomprehensible mystery in the matter1 as some people imagine1 ,i hope ,i shall be able to make plain in a very few words4 ,the poetry of the ancients differed from the mass of that now written in nothing more than in this1 that it was considered as a living element of the existing music1 and exercised in subjection to the laws of that divine art4 ,now the singing of words in music has the effect of bringing out more prominently the mass of vocal sound in the words1 or what the prosodians in their technical style call quantity1 while the spoken accent--unless it be identified with the musical accent or rhythmical beat--is apt to be overwhelmed altogether and superseded4 ,that this must be the case the very nature of the thing shows2 but we have a distinct testimony of an ancient musical writer to this effect1 which will be useful to those who in all matters are constitutionally apt to depend more on authority than on reason4#ch ,this explains why1 in the ancient treatises on poetical measures1 we find not a word said about the spoken accent4 ,if the full musical value of each foot1 7or bar1 as we call it17 in point of vowel-fulness1 according to an established sequence be given1 the poet is considered to have done his duty to the musician2 the rhythmical beat1 or musical accent1 accompanies the measured succession of bars1 as with us1 but the spoken accent is disregarded4 ,of all this in our elocutional poetry we do1 and must1 in the nature of things1 do the very reverse4 ,poetry composed primarily for recitation must follow the laws of spoken speech2 and the spoken accent being the most prominent element in that speech1 becomes of course the great regulator of poetical rhythm4 ,quantity1 as the secondary element of spoken speech1 though the principal thing in music1 is not indeed neglected altogether1 but left to the free disposal of the poet1 so that the technical structure of his verse is in no wise bound by it4 ,the musician then comes in1 and finding that he has no liberty in the matter of the spoken accent1 7the public ear being altogether formed on that17 exercises his large discretion in the matter of quantity1 drawing out1 without ceremony1 a spoken quaver into a sung minim1 or cutting short a spoken minim into a sung quaver4 ,now this license1 familiar as it is to us1 would have strangely startled1 and appeared almost ludicrous to a ,greek ear2 and by the same effect of mere custom1 we have to explain the fact1 that the practice of composing poetry1 without any reference to the spoken accent1 practised by the ancients1 appears to us so extraordinary4 ,in our attempts to explain it1 we have sometimes altogether lost out of view the fact1 that music and conversational speech1 though kindred arts1 and arts in the ancient practice of poetry indissolubly wedded1 have each their own distinctive tendencies and laws1 to which full effect cannot easily be given while they act together2 and every such case of joint action must accordingly be1 to a certain extent--like the harmonious practice of connubial life--a compromise4 ,my conclusion1 therefore1 with regard to the reading of ,homer and ,sophocles is1 in the first place1 that they were never intended to be read in our sense of the word1 that they are not constructed on reading principles1 and that1 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 constructed4 ,with regard to the strictly lyrical parts of poetry1 as ,pindar and the tragic choruses1 ,i have no hesitation in saying1 that the only proper way to obtain a full perception of their rhythmical beauty1 is to sing or chant them to any extemporized melody1 7which would be much more readily done were not music so unworthily neglected in our higher schools27 while with regard to the dialogic parts of the drama1 which were declaimed and not sung by the ancients themselves1 the teacher must take care to accustom his pupils to a deep and mellow fulness of vocalization1 and a deliberate stateliness of verbal procession1 as much as possible the reverse of that hasty trip with which we are accustomed to read the dialogue of our dramatic poetry4 ,the musical accent1 or rhythmical beat1 will1 of course1 in such a method of recitation1 receive a marked prominence2 the long quantity will never be slurred2 and with regard to the spoken accent1 what ,i say is this1 the ear of the student must first be trained in reading prose never to omit the accent1 and accustomed to feel1 by the living iteration of the ear1 that both accent and quantity are an essential part of the word4 ,this many schoolmasters will not do1 because it requires science1 and will take a little trouble2 but let such pass4 ,those who do so train the young classical ear1 will find that in turning to poetry1 and keeping time with their foot as they read any metre1 the attentive scholar will not only readily follow the given rhythm1 and appreciate the position of the musical accent1 7very few human beings being altogether destitute of the rhythmical principle17 but will be able also to preserve the spoken accent in those places where the flow of the rhythm does not altogether overpower it4 ,what ,i mean is this4 ,in the line1 for instance1 ' 1 the second of the ,iliad1 the boy who has been properly trained to put the accent on the penult of 1 preserving the long quantity of the final syllable1 will1 even though he retains that accent in the rhythmical declamation of the line1 find no impediment to the rhythmical progress of the verse1 but rather an agreeable variety1 and an antidote against monotony2 and though1 on account of the strong effect which the rhythm always exercises on the closing word of the line1 it will be difficult to give the full effect to the spoken accent on the antepenultimate of 1 while the closing musical accent lies on the penult1 nevertheless1 a person who has been accustomed always to pronounce this word in prose with its proper accent and quantity1 will bring out the first syllable of the word much more distinctly than is done in the sing-song of a merely rhythmical recitation1 and will not spoil the verse1 but rather improve it4 ,and if any person asks me how ,i prove that the ancients read ,homer this way1 ,i might content myself by giving a ,scotch answer1 and asking1 ,how do you prove that they read it your way8 ,but1 in fact1 there is no possibility of their having read it otherwise2 for having once introduced the habit of reading compositions1 constructed originally on musical1 not elocutional principles1 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 composition1 as a rhythmical work of art1 depended2 that is to say1 they allowed the musical principle of quantitative rhythm to prevail over the elocutional principle of accent1 so far only as to produce harmony1 not so far as to fatigue with monotony4 #ch --,,aristoxenus1 apud ,,pennington1 p4 #bbf4 ,the reader will observe that ,i am not theorizing in all this1 but speaking from experience2 and therefore ,i speak with confidence4 ,for ten years ,i read the ,latin poets in ,aberdeen1 and ,i found no difficulty in reading them so as to combine the living effect of both accent and quantity1 and teaching the student both by the ear alone4 ,the first line of ,virgil1 to take an example1 in respect of accent and quantity1 may be read three ways4 ,either rma virmque cn ,trj qui prmus ab ris ,or1 444 cn ,trje 444 ,or1 444 cn- ,trj 444 ,i take notice of these two words ,,cano and ,,troj1 only because they are the only two in which the musical accent of this line clashes with the spoken accent1 the rules of which1 though not marked in ,latin books as in ,greek1 were preserved by the living tradition of the ,roman ,catholic ,church1 and the accentual ,latin poetry of their ,service1 and are observed by our schoolmasters as faithfully 7without knowing it1 many of them7 as they violate the accent of the ,greek4 ,now1 of these three ways of reading a ,latin hexameter1 the second is the only one which proceeds upon the principle of the quantitative rhythm exclusively1 observing the spoken accent only where it happens to coincide with it1 7as happens here in four bars of the six27 while the first1 which is the vulgar ,english way1 asserts the dominancy of the spoken accent in all the six cases2 and yet1 as the clash only takes place in two cases1 preserves1 without effort1 7as ,i have just said with regard to ,homer17 the flow of the musical rhythm4 ,with that grossness of ear1 however1 which ,erasmus and his learned ,bear noticed in the learned of his day1 they fall with respect to ,latin1 plump into the extreme error practised by the modern ,greeks1 and cannot accentuate the first syllable of ,,cano1 without lengthening it1 while the final syllable of the same word is generally deprived of its natural amount of sound1 a strange error for a people to make with whom ,latin verse making 7,i shall not say with what propriety7 forms so prominent a part of school-discipline2 but there is no end to their absurdities1 no limit to their contradictions2 the fact being1 as one of themselves has distinctly stated1#ci that the 8composition of classical verses with them is almost entirely ,,mechanical20 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 ,bull4 ,but to finish4 ,the third method of recitation is1 ,i think1 the correct one4 ,it violates neither quantity nor accent1 but makes the one play with an agreeable variety over the other1 as we see the iridescent colours in a gown of shot silk4 ,i think ,i have now answered the question satisfactorily--,how is ,homer to be read8 ,if anything remains unclear1 ,i shall be happy to communicate personally with any person who has an ear4 #ci 8,our composition of classical verses is almost entirely mechanical4 ,when a boy composes such a verse as ,insignemque canas ,neptunum vertice cano1 how is he guided to the proper collocation of the words8 ,not by his ear1 certainly1 for that would be struck precisely in the same manner if he wrote it ,insignemque cano ,neptunum vertice canas2 no1 he learns from books that the first of cano 7,i sing7 is short1 and the first of canus 7hoary7 is long4 ,having so used them1 their respective quantity is stored up as a fact in his memory1 and by degrees he remembers them so well1 that when he sees either of them used in a wrong place1 he thinks it offends his ear1 while in truth it only offends his understanding4 ,but ,i apprehend a ,roman boy's process of composition would be quite different4 ,having been used from his cradle to hear the first syllable of canus take up about twice as much time as that of cano1 such a verse as ,insignemque cano ,neptunum vertice canas1 would really hurt his ear1 because in the second foot the thesis would be complete before the syllable was expressed1 and he would have a time or too much2 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 offensive40--,,pennington1 p4 #bdi4 ,so long as such an absurd system of writing verses1 whether ,latin or ,greek--from the understanding and not from the ear--is practised1 the boys who refuse to have anything to do with prosody shew a great deal more sense than the masters who inculcate it4 ,before concluding these observations1 ,i have one or two remarks to make on ,,modern ,,greek1 which have a vital connexion with the state of the argument4 ,the reader will observe that ,i have from the beginning spoken of ,greek as a living language1 having had a continuous uninterrupted existence1 though under various and well-marked modifications1 from the days of ,cadmus and his earth-sown brood to the present hour4 ,now the vulgar notion is1 that ,romaic1 as it used to be called1 though the present ,greeks have with a just pride1 ,i understand1 rejected the epithet1 is not only a different dialect of the ,greek1 from that spoken by ,plato and ,demosthenes1 but a different language altogether1 in the same way that ,italian and ,spanish are languages formed on ,latin indeed1 but with an organic type altogether their own4 ,in this view ,greek becomes a dead language2 and the mass of scholastic and academical men who teach it habitually as such1 without any regard to its existing state1 will receive a justification of which they are not slow to make use4 ,but this vulgar notion1 like many others1 has grown out of pedantic prejudice1 and is supported by sheer ignorance4 ,how such a notion should have got abroad is easy enough to explain4 ,i mentioned already1 that the ,english scholars--who have been allowed to give the law on such subjects--have so completely disfigured the classical features of ,greek speech1 that when they happen to meet ,greeks1 or to travel in ,greece and attempt conversation1 they can make no more of the answer they receive1 than they can of the twitter of swallows1 or the language of any other bird4 ,again1 at ,oxford and ,cambridge1 as is well known1 the majority confine themselves to a very limited range even of strictly classical ,greek1 so that a man may well have received high honours for working up his schylus and his ,aristotle1 and yet be quite unfit to make out the meaning of a plain modern ,greek book when he sees it2 but the fact is1 ,i have good reason to believe1 there is not one among a hundred of their scholars that ever saw such a thing4 ,thirdly1 we must consider under what a system of prim classical prudery these gentlemen are often brought up4 ,they are taught to believe1 and have been taught here also in ,scotland publicly1 that after a certain golden age of ,attic or ,atticizing purity1 the limits of which are very arbitrarily fixed1 a race of ,greek writers succeeded who 8increased immensely the vocabulary of the language1 while they injured its simplicity and debased its beauty20 and under the influence of this salutary fear they regard with a strong jealousy whole centuries of the most interesting and instructive authors who do not come under their arbitrary definition of 8classical40 ,men who think that the vocabulary of the ,hellenic language should have been finally closed at the time of ,polybius1 and who pass a philologic interdict against any phrase or idiom introduced after that period1 will not be very likely to look with peculiar favour on the prose of ,perrhbus1 or the poetry of ,soutzos4 ,but by a large-minded philologist all this prudery is disregarded4 ,he knows that grammarians can as little cause a language to be corrupted and to die1 by any dainty squeamishness of theirs1 as they with their meagre art can create a single word1 or manufacture one verse of a poem4 ,looking at the language of ,homer and ,plato as a real historical phenomenon1 and not as a mere record in grammatical books1 he sees that it went on growing and putting forth fresh buds and blossoms long after nice lexicographers had declared that it ceased to possess vitality4 ,a language lives as long as a people lives--a distinct and tangible social totality--speaking it1 nor has it the power to die at any point1 where grammarians may choose to draw a line1 and say that its authors are no longer classical4 ,what 8classical0 means is hard to say2 but as a matter of fact many persons will read the ,byzantine historians with much more pleasure than ,xenophon's ,hellenics1 and not be able to explain intelligibly why the ,greek of the one should not be considered as good as the ,greek of the other4 ,greek certainly was not a dead language in any sense at the taking of ,constantinople in the year #adec4 ,if it is dead1 it has died since that date2 but the facts to those who will examine them1 prove that it is not dead4 ,no doubt1 under the oppressive atmosphere of ,turkish and ,venetian domination1 the stout old tree began to droop visibly1 and became encrusted with leprous scabs1 and to shew livid blotches1 which were not pleasant to behold2 but such a strong central vitality had ,god planted in that noble organism1 that1 with the returning breeze of freedom1 and the spread of intelligence since the great year #aghi1 the inward power of healthy life began again to act powerfully1 and the ,turkish and ,venetian disfigurement dropt off speedily like a mere skin-disease as it was2 and smooth ,greek sounded glibly again1 not only in the pulpit1 which was the strong refuge of its prolonged vitality1 but in the forum and from the throne4 ,those who doubt what ,i say in this matter1 had best go to ,athens and see2 meanwhile1 for the sake of those to whom the subject may be altogether new1--and from the general pedantic narrowness of our academical ,greek ,i fear there may be many such--,i shall set down a passage from ,perrhbus1 and another from a common ,greek newspaper1 from which the fact will be abundantly evident that the language of ,homer is not dead1 but lives1 and that in a state of purity1 to which1 considering the extraordinary duration of its literary existence--#bejj years at least1--there is no parallel perhaps on the face of the globe1 in ,europe certainly not4 8 #ahbj 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 ' 1 ' 1 1 1 4 1 1 ' 1 1 1 40#dj 4 8 #f 4 1 ' ' 4 4 4 1 ' 4 1 40#da #dj 8 1 #ahbj #ahbi 4 1 4 1 1 1 4 #bae4 #ahcf40 #da 81 ,decemb4 #ca1 #ahea40 ,these are as fair specimens of the current dialect of ,greece as ,i can produce4 ,for it is manifest that while it would be quite easy on the one hand to select a specimen of the living dialect written by mere men of learning1 7as from the works of ,,conomus17 which should make a much nearer approach to the idiom of ,xenophon1 it would be equally open on the other to produce a brigand's song from the mountains of ,acarnania containing a great deal more of the elements of what the admirers of unmixed ,atticism would be entitled to call corruption4 ,but it is evident that a specimen of the first kind would be no more a fair specimen of the average ,greek now spoken1 than the polished style of ,george ,buchanan was of the average ,latin current in his day2 and a brigand's song were just as fair a specimen of the ,greek spoken by people of education in modern ,athens1 as a ballad in the ,cumberland or the ,craven dialect is of the ,english of ,macaulay's ,history1 or ,wordsworth's ,white ,doe4 ,with this remark1 by way of explanation1 let any person who can read common classical ,greek without a dictionary1 tell me with what face it can be asserted that the above is a specimen of a new language1 in the same sense that ,italian is a different language from ,latin1 and ,dutch from ,german4 ,i find nothing in the extracts given1 but such slight variations in verbal form1 and in the use of one or two prepositions and pronouns1 as the reader of ,xenophon will find in far greater abundance when he turns to ,homer4 ,the principal syntactic difference observable is the use of 7for 71 with the subjunctive mood1 instead of the infinitive1 which the modern ,greeks have allowed to drop2 but this is a usage1 borrowed from the ,latin ,i have often thought1 of which very frequent examples occur in the ,new ,testament2 and besides1 a mere new fashion in the syntactical form of a sentence was never dreamt of by any sane grammarian1 as the sufficient sign of a new language4 ,in ,english1 for instance1 we say1 ,i beg you will accept this1 and1 ,i beg you to accept this4 ,now suppose one of these forms of expression to become obsolete1 by a change which mere fashion may effect any day1 and the other to become all dominant1 could1 ,i ask1 any such change as this1 or a whole score of such changes1 be said to corrupt the ,english language in such a degree as to constitute a new tongue8 ,much less could the introduction of a few new words1 formed according to the analogy of the language1 be said to achieve such a transformation1 though an academic purist might indeed refuse to put such words as 7photography71 and oov 7a steam-boat71 into his lexicon4 ,as little could a philosophical classical scholar be offended by the loss of the optative mood1 7used in the ,new ,testament so sparingly17 and the substitution for it of the auxiliary verb 1 which1 though it is of comparatively rare occurrence1 is just as much according to the genius of the ,greek language1 as the frequent use of the other auxiliary verb to be1 both in classical ,greek and ,latin4 ,instead of fastening upon such insignificant peculiarities1 a catholic-minded scholar will rather be astonished to find that in three columns of a ,greek newspaper of the year #aheb1 there do not certainly occur three words that are not pure native ,greek4 ,in fact the language1 so far from being corrupt1 as its ignorant detractors assert1 is the most uncorrupt language in ,europe1 perhaps in the world1 at the present moment4 ,the ,germans boast of their linguistic purity1 and sing songs to ,hermann who sent the legions of ,varus with their lingo so bravely out of the ,westphalian swamps2 but let any man compare a column of a ,german newspaper with a column from the 1 or any other issued within the girth of ,king ,otho's dominions1 and he will understand that while the ,greek language even now is as a perfectly pure vestment1 the ,german in its familiar use is defaced by the ingrained blots of many ages1 which no philologic sponge of ,adelung or ,jacob ,grimm will ever prevail to wash out4 ,there are reasons for this remarkable phenomenon in the history of language1 which to a thoughtful student of the history of the ,greek people will readily suggest themselves4 ,i content myself with stating the fact4 ,these things being so1 the natural observation that will occur to every one1 as bearing on our present inquiry1 is1 that as the ,greek is manifestly a living language1 and never was dead1 but only suffering for a season under a cutaneous disease now thrown off1 those who speak that language are entitled to a decisive voice in the question how their language is to be pronounced1 and this on the mere ground that they are alive and speak it2 and to their decision we must bow on the sole ground of living authority and possessory right4 ,for every living language exercises this despotic authority over those who learn it2 and it is not in the nature of things that one should escape from such a sovereignty4 ,no doubt there may be certain exceptions to which1 for certain special philological purposes1 this general rule of obedience is liable2 but the rule remains4 ,such an exception1 for instance1 in the literature of our existing ,english language1 is the peculiar accentuation of many words that occur in ,shakspeare1 and even in ,milton1 different from that now used1 whereby their rhythm limps to our ear in the places where such words occur4 ,such exceptions1 also1 are the dissyllabic words in ,chaucer1 that are now shortened into monosyllables1 and yet must be read as dissyllables by all those who will enjoy the original harmony of the poet's rhythm4 ,in ,greek1 as ,i have already observed1 the whole quantitative value of the language has had its poles inverted2 in which practice we cannot possibly follow the living users of the tongue1 because we learn the language not to speak with them1 as a main object1 7though this also has its uses seldom thought of by schoolmasters1#db7 but to read the works of their ancient poets1 the rhythmical value of whose works their living speech disowns4 ,this is a sweeping exception to that dominancy of usage which ,horace recognises as supreme in language2 but philological necessity compels2 and the modern ,athenians must even submit in such points to receive laws from learned foreigners4 ,but with all this large exceptive liberty1 we dare not disown the rule4 ,we must follow the authority of their living dictation1 so far as the object we have in view allows2 and if we are philosophical students of the language1 our object never can be resolutely to ignore all knowledge of the elocutional genius and habits of the living people who speak it4 ,it must be borne in mind also1 with how much greater ease a living language can be acquired than a dead one2 so that were it only for the sake of the speedy mastery of the ancient dialect1 a thorough practical familiarity with the spoken tongue ought first to be cultivated4 ,the present practice1 indeed1 of teaching ,greek in our schools and colleges1 altogether as a dead language1 can be regarded only as a great scholastic mistake2 and it may be confidently affirmed by any person who has reflected on the method of nature in teaching languages1 that more ,greek will be learned by three months' well-directed study at ,athens1 where it is spoken1 than by three years' devotion to the language under the influence of our common scholastic and academic appliances in this country4 #db ,perhaps some classical young gentleman at ,oxford or ,cambridge may be moved by the consideration brought forward in the following passage3--8,i was much delighted with this really ,grecian ball1 at which ,i was the only foreigner4 ,the ,grecian fair ,i have ever found peculiarly agreeable in society4 ,they are not in the smallest degree tainted with the artificial refinements and affectations of more civilised life1 while they have all its graces and fascinations2 and ,i cannot help thinking that as some one thought it worth while to learn ancient ,greek at the age of seventy1 for the sole purpose of reading the ,iliad1 so it is well worthy the pains of learning modern ,greek at any age1 for the pleasure of conversing1 in her own tongue1 with a young and cultivated ,greek beauty40--,wanderings in ,greece1 by ,,george ,,cochran1 ,esq4 ,london1 #ahcg4 ,i am now led1 in the last place1 to observe1 that whatever may be thought of ,itacism and of accents1 as the dominant norm for the teaching of ,greek in this country1 one thing is plain1 that no scholar of large and catholic views can1 after what has been said and proved in this paper1 content himself with teaching ,greek according to the present arbitrary and anti-classical fashion only4 ,the living dialect also must be taught with all its peculiarities1 not only because the heroic exploits of a modern ,admiral ,miaulis are as well worthy of the attention of a ,hellenic student as those of an ancient ,phormion2 but for strictly philological uses also1 and that of more kinds than one4 ,the transcribers of the ,,mss41 for one thing1 in the ,middle ,ages1 all wrote with their ear under the habitual influence of the pronunciation which now prevails2 and were accordingly constantly liable to make mistakes that reveal themselves at once to those who are acquainted with that pronunciation1 but will only slowly be gathered by those whose ears have not been trained in the same way4 ,but what is of more consequence for ,hellenic philologers to note accurately is1 that the spoken dialect of the ,greek tongue1 though modern in name and form1 is nowise altogether modern in substance3 but like the conglomerate strata of the geologists1 contains imbedded very valuable fragments of the oldest language of the country4 ,of this it were easy to adduce proofs from so common a book as ,passow's ,greek-,german ,dictionary1 where occasional reference is made to the modern dialect in illustration of the ancient2 from which source1 ,i presume1 with much else that is of first-rate excellence in lexicography1 such references have passed into the ,english work of ,liddell and ,scott4 ,but on this head ,i shall content myself with simply directing the student's attention to the fact1 and appending below the testimony of ,professor ,ross of ,halle--a man who has travelled much in ,greece1 can write the language with perfect fluency1 and is entitled1 if any man in ,europe is1 to speak with the voice of authority on such a point4#dc #dc ,in a paper on the ,comparison of the ,forms of the ,nominative ,case in certain ,latin and ,greek ,nouns1 7,zeitschrift fr die ,alterthums-,wissenschaft4 #i ,jahrgang1 ,no4 #di17 ,professor ,ross writes to ,professor ,,bergh of ,marburg1 as follows3--8,my views are founded chiefly on the observation of the dialect used by the common people of ,greece1 among whom and with whom ,i lived so long4 ,this dialect1 indeed1 now spoken by the ,greek shepherds and sailors1 and which1 of course1 is not to be learnt from books1 but from actual intercourse with the people1 the majority of philologists are apt to hold cheap1 but it has been to me a mine of rich instruction1 and ,i have no hesitation in saying that1 at all events1 in reference to the non-,attic dialects of the ,greek tongue1 to ,latin1 ,oscan1 and even ,etruscan1 more may be got from this source than from the many bulky commentaries of the grammarians of the ,middle ,ages4 ,see what ,i have said on this point in my ,reisen auf den ,griechischen ,inseln1 iii4 p4 #aee40 ,i have now finished all that ,i had to say on this subject1 which has proved perhaps more fertile of speculative suggestion and of practical direction than the title at first promised4 ,what ,i have said will at least serve the purpose for which it was immediately intended1 that of justifying my conduct should ,i find it expedient to introduce any decided innovations in the practice of teaching ,greek in our metropolitan ,university4 ,and if it should further have the effect of inducing any thoughtful teacher to inquire into a curious branch of philology which he may have hitherto overlooked1 and to question the soundness of the established routine of classical inculcation in some points1 whatever disagreeable labour ,i may have gone through in clearing the learned rubbish from so perplexed a path will not have been without its reward4 ,any sympathizing reader who may communicate with me1 wishing that ,i should explain1 reconsider1 or modify any statement here made1 will find me1 ,i hope1 as willing to listen as to speak1 and not more zealous for victory than for truth4 ,,edinburgh3 ,t4 ,,constable1 ,,printer ,,to ,,her ,,majesty4