about; 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 ghost. The ghost that frightened
them on the present occasion, and caused them to forswear SPOKEN
ACCENT (for as we have seen they stuck to it on PAPER) was QUANTITY;
concerning which, therefore, we must now inquire, whether it be a
real ghost or only a white sheet. Quantity, they say, cannot stand
before Accent, or rather is swallowed up by it. Like hostile religious
sects, or belligerent medical corporations, they cannot meet without
quarrelling; so the public peace is consulted by getting rid of one of
them, not in the way of violent murder, (for the law does not allow
that,) but by what certain philosophical Chartist-Reformers used to
call “painless extinction.” Therefore they who speak according to
accent, are wont to remove quantity out of the way noiselessly; and
they who speak according to quantity must treat accent in the same way.
This is an old story. The BEAR in Erasmus’ dialogue, (Havercamp, ii.
95,) speaking rare wisdom in a gruff Johnsonian sort of style, says,
“_Sunt quidam adeo_ CRASSI _ut non distinguant accentum a quantitate,
quum sit longe diversa ratio_. =ALIUD EST ENIM ACUTUM ALIUD DIU
TINNIRE: ALIUD INTENDI, ALIUD EXTENDI.= _At eruditos novi qui, quum
pronunciarent illud_ ἀνέχου καὶ ἀπέχου, _mediam syllabam, quoniam tonum
habet acutum, quantum possent producerent, quum sit natura brevis vel
brevissima potius_.” Certain learned men, it appears, in the beginning
of the sixteenth century, could not accent the word ἀνέχου on the
penult, as it ought to be accented, without in the same breath making
that syllable long, which it is not. To avoid this blunder, the
Etonians, Oxonians, and other famous modern teachers, omit the accent
altogether on that syllable and on every syllable—of which the name is
legion—similarly situated in the Greek language, and thus, by removing
the cause, are sure of annihilating the effect. A very obvious, but
surely a very clumsy expedient, and hardly worthy of the subtlety of
the academic mind. A man by running too hard sometimes breaks his
legs; and you forthwith vow to avoid his fate by sitting in your chair
constantly and taking no exercise! Let us see how the case stands here.
The accent, you say, lengthens the syllable. Take any English word
in the first place, (as nonsense is not so transparent in a learned
tongue,) and make the experiment. If a Scotsman says _véesible_, you
will allow, I suppose, that the first syllable of that word is both
long and accented: if an Englishman says _viśible_, ’tis equally clear
that the same syllable is still accented, but it is not now long.
Accent, therefore, in English has no necessary power to lengthen the
sound of the vowel of the syllable on which it is placed; and if some
learned men on the banks of the Rhine, in the days of Erasmus, or on
the banks of the Isis, in our day, cannot accent a syllable without
at the same time lengthening it, this happens merely because, as
the Bear says, they are “ADEO CRASSI;” their ears are gross, and
have lost—by the dust of the libraries, perhaps—the healthy power of
discerning differences of modulation in the living human voice. Not a
few persons have I met with among those who are, or would be scholars,
in this country, who in this way assert that it is impossible to put
the accent on the penult of a Greek word, and at the same time, as the
law of the language requires, make the last syllable long. 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 apprehension; and this, along with the utter neglect of musical
and elocutionary culture so common among our classical devotees, had
rendered them incapable of perceiving, without an act of special
attention, the commonest phenomena of spoken language appealing to
the ear. In the English words _echo_, _primrose_, and many other of
the same description, the accent and quantity stand in that exact
relation which is so characteristic of Greek, as in ἔχω, λόγῳ; while
in the English words _clód-pated_, _hoúsekeeper_, we have that precise
disposal of accent and quantity which occurs in the word ἄνθρωπος, and
which has been so often quoted as a proof that it is impossible to
give effect to accent without violating quantity.[35] A very slight
elocutionary culture would put a stop to such vain talk; but we have,
unfortunately, too many scholars who gather their crude notions on
such subjects from a few phrases current in the schools, without ever
questioning their own ears, the only proper witness of what is right or
wrong in the matter of enunciation. Hence the cumbrous mass of erudite
nonsense on accent and quantity under which our library shelves groan;
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 capable.
“_Vel ab_ ASINIS _licebat hoc discrimen discere_,” continues the
learned Bear, “_qui rudentes corripiunt acutam vocem, imam producunt_.”
Very true; a really wise man may learn much from an ass; but they who
conceit themselves to be wise, when they are not, will learn from
nobody. And so I conclude with regard to this whole matter of QUANTITY,
that it is only an imaginary ghost after all; a white sheet which a
single touch of the finger will turn aside, or only a white mist,
perhaps, which, if a brave man will only march up to, he shall not know
that it is there.
[35] When I was at the railway station, SKIPTON, in Yorkshire,
waiting for a train, I heard one of the men call out, “Any person for
_Mánchéster_” with a distinct and well-marked dwelling of the voice
on the second as well as the first syllable. This gave me a very vivid
idea of the manner in which the Greeks must have pronounced ἄνθρωπος,
accenting the first syllable, but dwelling on the second syllable with
a distinct prolongation of the voice.
One thing, however, I will admit—by way of palliation for the enormous
blunders that have been committed in this matter—that in words of two,
three, or more syllables, where the accent is on a syllable naturally
short, while the long syllable is unaccented, a careless speaker may
readily slur over the long syllable so as to make it short, thus
converting an anapæst accented on the first syllable, as
ˏ ˏ
_cĕlăndīne_, into a tribrach with the same accent _cĕlăndĭn_,
a very common vulgarism, as we all know. The unaccented syllable,
indeed, is, in the very nature of things, placed in a position where
it is not so likely to get its fair mass of sound as its accented
neighbour. Thus, except in solemn speaking, the first syllable of
ŌBĒDĬĔNT seldom gets full weight, though it is equally long with its
accented sequent; and the second syllable of EDUCATION is vulgarized
into _edication_, purely from the want of the accent. 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
bad. The modern Greeks, indeed, we know, go a step farther;[36] they
not only in their common conversation fail to give the due prolongation
to their long syllables, when unaccented—making no distinction between
ω and ο—but they actually give _extension_ as well as _intension_
to all their accented syllables, and thus fall into the same sin as
respects quantity that our academicians daily commit against accent.
But there is not the slightest reason why we should imagine it
necessary to imitate them in this idiosyncrasy. To do so would be for
the sake of a superfluous compliment to the living, to cut off one
great necessary organ, whereby the beautiful wisdom of the dead being
made alive again becomes ours. The laws of accent are a most important
element of the oratory of Pericles and Demosthenes; but without
quantity the harmony of Homer’s numbers is unintelligible. There is no
reason why we should sacrifice either the one or the other of these two
great modulating principles of ancient Hellenic speech. The one, so far
from destroying, does, in fact, regulate to a certain extent,[37] and
beautifully vary the other. Quantity without accent were a monotonous
level of dreary sing-song; accent without quantity can be likened
only to a series of sharp parallel ridges, with steep narrow ravines
interposed, but without the amplitude of grassy slope, flowering mead,
and far-stretching fields of yellow-waving corn.
[36] See the essay on this subject in the second volume of the Greek
works of Professor RANGABE of Athens.
[37] Every practical teacher ought to know how much more easily the
doctrine of quantity may be taught with constant reference to accent
than without it; so that pronouncing a word like ἡμέρα, the accent on
the penult, is the easiest way to make the student remember that the
final syllable of that word is long.
But some one will still press the question, _How am I to read Homer?
how Sophocles?_ Is it not manifest, that if I read according to the
spoken accent, and not according to the quantitative metre, though I
may preserve myself, by decent care, from grossly violating quantity,
I shall certainly fail to bring out anything that the ear of the most
harshly-modulated Hottentot or Cherokee could recognise as rhythm?
Now what has been said hitherto of the compatibility of accent and
quantity relates only to words taken separately, or as they occur in
the loose succession of unfettered speech—a purely elocutional matter:
of the musical element of rhythm nothing has been said. That this must
modify the singing or recitation of measured verses to a considerable
extent, so as to make it different from the oratorical declamation of
prose, is evident; but that there is no such incomprehensible mystery
in the matter, as some people imagine, I hope I shall be able to make
plain in a very few words. The poetry of the ancients differed from
the mass of that now written in nothing more than in this, that it was
considered as a living element of the existing music, and exercised in
subjection to the laws of that divine art. Now the singing of words in
music has the effect of bringing out more prominently the mass of vocal
sound in the words, or what the prosodians in their technical style
call quantity, while the spoken accent—unless it be identified with the
musical accent or rhythmical beat—is apt to be overwhelmed altogether
and superseded. That this must be the case the very nature of the thing
shows; but we have a distinct testimony of an ancient musical writer
to this effect, which will be useful to those who in all matters are
constitutionally apt to depend more on authority than on reason.[38]
This explains why, in the ancient treatises on poetical measures, we
find not a word said about the spoken accent. If the full musical value
of each foot, (or bar, as we call it,) in point of vowel-fulness,
according to an established sequence be given, the poet is considered
to have done his duty to the musician; the rhythmical beat, or musical
accent, accompanies the measured succession of bars, as with us, but
the spoken accent is disregarded. Of all this in our elocutional
poetry we do, and must, in the nature of things, do the very reverse.
Poetry composed primarily for recitation must follow the laws of
spoken speech; and the spoken accent being the most prominent element
in that speech, becomes of course the great regulator of poetical
rhythm. Quantity, as the secondary element of spoken speech, though
the principal thing in music, is not indeed neglected altogether, but
left to the free disposal of the poet, so that the technical structure
of his verse is in no wise bound by it. The musician then comes in,
and finding that he has no liberty in the matter of the spoken accent,
(the public ear being altogether formed on that,) exercises his large
discretion in the matter of quantity, drawing out, without ceremony, a
spoken quaver into a sung minim, or cutting short a spoken minim into
a sung quaver. Now this license, familiar as it is to us, would have
strangely startled, and appeared almost ludicrous to a Greek ear; and
by the same effect of mere custom, we have to explain the fact, that
the practice of composing poetry, without any reference to the spoken
accent, practised by the ancients, appears to us so extraordinary. In
our attempts to explain it, we have sometimes altogether lost out of
view the fact, that music and conversational speech, though kindred
arts, and arts in the ancient practice of poetry indissolubly wedded,
have each their own distinctive tendencies and laws, to which full
effect cannot easily be given while they act together; and every such
case of joint action must accordingly be, to a certain extent—like the
harmonious practice of connubial life—a compromise. My conclusion,
therefore, with regard to the reading of Homer and Sophocles is, in
the first place, that they were never intended to be read in our sense
of the word, that they are not constructed on reading principles,
and that, 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
constructed. With regard to the strictly lyrical parts of poetry, as
Pindar and the tragic choruses, I have no hesitation in saying, that
the only proper way to obtain a full perception of their rhythmical
beauty, is to sing or chant them to any extemporized melody, (which
would be much more readily done were not music so unworthily neglected
in our higher schools;) while with regard to the dialogic parts of the
drama, which were declaimed and not sung by the ancients themselves,
the teacher must take care to accustom his pupils to a deep and mellow
fulness of vocalization, and a deliberate stateliness of verbal
procession, as much as possible the reverse of that hasty trip with
which we are accustomed to read the dialogue of our dramatic poetry.
The musical accent, or rhythmical beat, will, of course, in such a
method of recitation, receive a marked prominence; the long quantity
will never be slurred; and with regard to the spoken accent, what I
say is this, the ear of the student must first be trained in reading
prose never to omit the accent, and accustomed to feel, by the living
iteration of the ear, that both accent and quantity are an essential
part of the word. This many schoolmasters will not do, because it
requires science, and will take a little trouble; but let such pass.
Those who do so train the young classical ear, will find that in
turning to poetry, and keeping time with their foot as they read any
metre, the attentive scholar will not only readily follow the given
rhythm, and appreciate the position of the musical accent, (very few
human beings being altogether destitute of the rhythmical principle,)
but will be able also to preserve the spoken accent in those places
where the flow of the rhythm does not altogether overpower it. What I
mean is this. In the line, for instance,
οὐλομένην ἣ μυρἴ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκεν,
the second of the Iliad, the boy who has been properly trained to put
the accent on the penult of οὔλομένην, preserving the long quantity
of the final syllable, will, even though he retains that accent in
the rhythmical declamation of the line, find no impediment to the
rhythmical progress of the verse, but rather an agreeable variety, and
an antidote against monotony; and though, on account of the strong
effect which the rhythm always exercises on the closing word of the
line, it will be difficult to give the full effect to the spoken accent
on the antepenultimate of ἔθηκεν, while the closing musical accent lies
on the penult, nevertheless, a person who has been accustomed always
to pronounce this word in prose with its proper accent and quantity,
will bring out the first syllable of the word much more distinctly
than is done in the sing-song of a merely rhythmical recitation, and
will not spoil the verse, but rather improve it. And if any person
asks me how I prove that the ancients read Homer this way, I might
content myself by giving a Scotch answer, and asking, _How do you prove
that they read it your way?_ But, in fact, there is no possibility
of their having read it otherwise; for having once introduced the
habit of reading compositions, constructed originally on musical, not
elocutional principles, 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 composition,
as a rhythmical work of art, depended; that is to say, they allowed
the musical principle of quantitative rhythm to prevail over the
elocutional principle of accent, so far only as to produce harmony, not
so far as to fatigue with monotony.
[38] Δεῖ τὴν φωνὴν ἐν τῷ μελῳδεῖν τὰς μὲν ἐπιτάσεις τε καὶ ἀνέσεις
ἀφανεῖς ποίεισθαι—ARISTOXENUS, apud PENNINGTON, p. 226.
The reader will observe that I am not theorizing in all this, but
speaking from experience; and therefore I speak with confidence. For
ten years I read the Latin poets in Aberdeen, and I found no difficulty
in reading them so as to combine the living effect of both accent and
quantity, and teaching the student both by the ear alone. The first
line of Virgil, to take an example, in respect of accent and quantity,
may be read three ways. Either
ˏ ˏ
_Árma virúmque cānŏ Trōjæ qui prímus ab óris_
Or,
ˏ
... _cănō Trōjáe_ ...
Or,
ˏ ˏ
... _căn-ō Trōjæ_ ...
I take notice of these two words CANO and TROJǼ, only because they are
the only two in which the musical accent of this line clashes with the
spoken accent, the rules of which, though not marked in Latin books as
in Greek, were preserved by the living tradition of the Roman Catholic
Church, and the accentual Latin poetry of their Service, and are
observed by our schoolmasters as faithfully (without knowing it, many
of them) as they violate the accent of the Greek. Now, of these three
ways of reading a Latin hexameter, the second is the only one which
proceeds upon the principle of the quantitative rhythm exclusively,
observing the spoken accent only where it happens to coincide with it,
(as happens here in four bars of the six;) while the first, which is
the vulgar English way, asserts the dominancy of the spoken accent in
all the six cases; and yet, as the clash only takes place in two cases,
preserves, without effort, (as I have just said with regard to Homer,)
the flow of the musical rhythm. With that grossness of ear, however,
which Erasmus and his learned Bear noticed in the learned of his day,
they fall with respect to Latin, plump into the extreme error practised
by the modern Greeks, and cannot accentuate the first syllable of CANO,
without lengthening it, while the final syllable of the same word is
generally deprived of its natural amount of sound, a strange error for
a people to make with whom Latin verse making (I shall not say with
what propriety) forms so prominent a part of school-discipline; but
there is no end to their absurdities, no limit to their contradictions;
the fact being, as one of themselves has distinctly stated,[39] that
the “composition of classical verses with them is almost entirely
MECHANICAL;” 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 Bull. But to finish. The third method of recitation is, I
think, the correct one. It violates neither quantity nor accent, but
makes the one play with an agreeable variety over the other, as we
see the iridescent colours in a gown of shot silk. I think I have now
answered the question satisfactorily—_How is Homer to be read?_ If
anything remains unclear, I shall be happy to communicate personally
with any person who has an ear.
[39] “Our composition of classical verses is almost entirely
mechanical. When a boy composes such a verse as _Insignemque canas
Neptunum vertice cano_, how is he guided to the proper collocation
of the words? Not by his ear, certainly, for that would be struck
precisely in the same manner if he wrote it _Insignemque cano Neptunum
vertice canas_; no, he learns from books that the first of _cano_ (I
sing) is short, and the first of _canus_ (hoary) is long. Having so
used them, their respective quantity is stored up as a fact in his
memory, and by degrees he remembers them so well, that when he sees
either of them used in a wrong place, he thinks it offends his ear,
while in truth it only offends his understanding. But I apprehend a
Roman boy’s process of composition would be quite different. Having
been used from his cradle to hear the first syllable of _canus_
take up about twice as much time as that of _cano_, such a verse as
_Insignemque cano Neptunum vertice canas_, would really hurt his ear,
because in the second foot the thesis would be complete before the
syllable was expressed, and he would have a time or σημεῖον too much;
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 offensive.”—PENNINGTON, p. 249. So long as such an absurd system
of writing verses, whether Latin or Greek—from the understanding and
not from the ear—is practised, the boys who refuse to have anything
to do with prosody shew a great deal more sense than the masters who
inculcate it.