Chapter 3

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 ina 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accent—unless it be identified with the musical accent or rhythmical beat—is apt to be overwhelmed altogether and superseded.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 thespoken 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 ofview 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 elocutionalprinciples, 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.

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

I take notice of these two wordscanoandTrojǽ, only because they are the only two in which the musical accent of this lineclashes 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 ofcano, 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 Latinverse 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 entirelymechanical;” 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. Thethird 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.

Before concluding these observations, I have one or two remarks to make onmodern Greek, which have a vital connexion with the state of the argument. The reader will observe that I have from the beginning spoken of Greek as a living language, having had a continuous uninterrupted existence, though under various and well-marked modifications, from the days of Cadmus and his earth-sown brood to the present hour. Now the vulgar notion is, that Romaic, as it used to be called, though the present Greeks have with a just pride, I understand, rejected the epithet, is not only a different dialect of the Greek, from that spoken by Plato and Demosthenes, but a different language altogether, in the same way that Italian and Spanish are languages formed on Latin indeed, but with an organic type altogether their own. In this view Greek becomes a dead language; and the mass of scholastic and academical men who teach it habitually as such, without any regardto its existing state, will receive a justification of which they are not slow to make use. But this vulgar notion, like many others, has grown out of pedantic prejudice, and is supported by sheer ignorance. How such a notion should have got abroad is easy enough to explain. I mentioned already, that the English scholars—who have been allowed to give the law on such subjects—have so completely disfigured the classical features of Greek speech, that when they happen to meet Greeks, or to travel in Greece and attempt conversation, they can make no more of the answer they receive, than they can of the twitter of swallows, or the language of any other bird. Again, at Oxford and Cambridge, as is well known, the majority confine themselves to a very limited range even of strictly classical Greek, so that a man may well have received high honours for working up his Æschylus and his Aristotle, and yet be quite unfit to make out the meaning of a plain modern Greek book when he sees it; but the fact is, I have good reason to believe, there is not one among a hundred of their scholars that ever saw such a thing. Thirdly, we must consider under what a system of prim classical prudery these gentlemen are often brought up. They are taught to believe, and have been taught here also in Scotland publicly,that after a certain golden age of Attic or Atticizing purity, the limits of which are very arbitrarily fixed, a race of Greek writers succeeded who “increased immensely the vocabulary of the language, while they injured its simplicity and debased its beauty;” 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 “classical.” Men who think that the vocabulary of the Hellenic language should have been finally closed at the time of Polybius, and who pass a philologic interdict against any phrase or idiom introduced after that period, will not be very likely to look with peculiar favour on the prose of Perrhæbus, or the poetry of Soutzos. But by a large-minded philologist all this prudery is disregarded. He knows that grammarians can as little cause a language to be corrupted and to die, by any dainty squeamishness of theirs, as they with their meagre art can create a single word, or manufacture one verse of a poem. Looking at the language of Homer and Plato as a real historical phenomenon, and not as a mere record in grammatical books, 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 vitality. A language lives as long as a peoplelives—a distinct and tangible social totality—speaking it, nor has it the power to die at any point, where grammarians may choose to draw a line, and say that its authors are no longer classical. What “classical” means is hard to say; but as a matter of fact many persons will read the Byzantine historians with much more pleasure than Xenophon’s Hellenics, and not be able to explain intelligibly why the Greek of the one should not be considered as good as the Greek of the other. Greek certainly was not a dead language in any sense at the taking of Constantinople in the year 1453. If it is dead, it has died since that date; but the facts to those who will examine them, prove that it is not dead. No doubt, under the oppressive atmosphere of Turkish and Venetian domination, the stout old tree began to droop visibly, and became encrusted with leprous scabs, and to shew livid blotches, which were not pleasant to behold; but such a strong central vitality had God planted in that noble organism, that, with the returning breeze of freedom, and the spread of intelligence since the great year 1789, the inward power of healthy life began again to act powerfully, and the Turkish and Venetian disfigurement dropt off speedily like a mere skin-disease as it was; and smooth Greek soundedglibly again, not only in the pulpit, which was the strong refuge of its prolonged vitality, but in the forum and from the throne. Those who doubt what I say in this matter, had best go to Athens and see; meanwhile, for the sake of those to whom the subject may be altogether new,—and from the general pedantic narrowness of our academical Greek I fear there may be many such—I shall set down a passage from Perrhæbus, and another from a common Greek newspaper, from which the fact will be abundantly evident that the language of Homer is not dead, but lives, and that in a state of purity, to which, considering the extraordinary duration of its literary existence—2500 years at least,—there is no parallel perhaps on the face of the globe, in Europe certainly not.

“Κατὰ τὸ 1820 διατρίβων εἰς τὴν Σπάρτην ὁ Πεῤῥαιβὸς ἐπὶ ἡγεμονίας τοῦ Πέτρου Μαυρομιχάλη, διέβη εἰς Κωνσταντινούπολιν, κἀκεῖθεν εἰς Δακίαν, Βασσαραβίαν καὶ Ὀδησσὸν, ὅπου εὗρε τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον Ὑψηλάντην καὶ Γεώργιον Καντακοζηνὸν, φέροντας τὰ πρῶτα τῆς Ἑταιρείας, καὶ μὲ ἀπερίγραπτον ἔνθουσιασμὸν ἐτοιμαζομένους διὰ νὰ κινηθῶσι κατὰ τοῦ Σουλτάνου. Τὸν αὐτὸν σχεδὸν ἐνθουσιασμὸν ἔβλεπέ τις οὐ μόνον κατ’ ἐκεῖνα τὰ μέρη, ἀλλὰ καθ’ ὅλην τὴν Ἑλλάδα, τόσον εἰς σημαντικοὺς, ὅσον καὶ παντὸς ἐπαγγέλματος Ἕλληνας κατοικοῦντας εἰς πόλεις, χώρας καὶ χωρία. Δὲν συστέλλομαι νὰ ὁμολογήσω, ὅτι ἤμην ἐναντίος τοῦ τοιούτου κινήματος κατὰ τοῦ Σουλτάνου· ὄχι διότι δὲν ἐπεθύμουν τὴν ἐλευθερίαν τοῦ Ἔθνους μου, ἀλλὰ διότι μ’ ἐφαίνετο ἄωρον τὸ κίνημα, μὲ τὸ νὰ ἦσαν ἀπειροπόλεμοι οἱ Ἕλληνες, καὶ οἱ πλεῖστοι ἄοπλοι, ὁ δὲ κίνδυνος μέγας.”[40]

Ο ΚΟΣΣΟΥΤ ΕΝ ΑΜΕΡΙΚΗ.

“Τήν 6 Δεκεμβρίου εἰσήλθεν ὁ ἀρχηγὸς τῆς Οὐγγαρικῆς δημοκρατίας εἰς τὴν πρωτεύουσαν πόλιν τῶν ἡνωμένων Πολιτειῶν. Ἀπὸ τῆς πρώτης στιγμῆς τῆς ἀφίξεως του ὅλοι οἱ ζωγράφοι παρουσιάσθησαν διὰ νὰ λάβωσι τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ διὰ τῆς ἡλιοτυπίας, ἀλλ’ ὁ Κοσσοὺθ κατ’ οὐδένα πρόπον δὲν ἠθέλησε νὰ δεχθῇ τοῦτο. Ἄλλος τις εὐφυέστερος καλλιτέχνης ἐφεῦρε τὸ μέσον νὰ τὴν λάβῃ ἄκοντος αὐτοῦ. Ἔθεσε τὴν μηχανήν του εἴς τι παράθυρον κατα τὴν διάβασίν του καὶ ἐπροκάλεσε μίαν ἔριν ὲν τῇ ὁδῷ διὰ νὰ σταματήσῃ τὴν τέθριππόν του. Τοιουτοτρόπως δὲ κατώρθωσε νὰ λάβῃ λάθρα οὐχὶ μόνον τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ Μαγυάρου Ἥρωος, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἄλλων τεσσάρων εὑρισκομένων μετ’ αὐτοῦ ἐν τῇ ἁμάξῃ. Ὁ Κοσσοὺθ εὕρισκετο ἐντὸς ἁμάξης ὑπὸ ἕξ καστανοχρόων ἵππων συρομένης ἐφόρει δὲ στολὴν Οὐγγρικὴν, καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ πίλου τοῦ μέλαν πτερόν.”[41]

These are as fair specimens of the current dialect of Greece as I can produce. 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 learning, (as from the works ofŒconomus,) which should make a much nearer approach to the idiom of Xenophon, 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 corruption. But it is evident that a specimen of the first kind would be no more a fair specimen of the average Greek now spoken, than the polished style of George Buchanan was of the average Latin current in his day; and a brigand’s song were just as fair a specimen of the Greek spoken by people of education in modern Athens, as a ballad in the Cumberland or the Craven dialect is of the English of Macaulay’s History, or Wordsworth’s White Doe. With this remark, by way of explanation, let any person who can read common classical Greek without a dictionary, tell me with what face it can be asserted that the above is a specimen of a new language, in the same sense that Italian is a different language from Latin, and Dutch from German. I find nothing inthe extracts given, but such slight variations in verbal form, and in the use of one or two prepositions and pronouns, as the reader of Xenophon will find in far greater abundance when he turns to Homer. The principal syntactic difference observable is the use of νὰ (for ἵνα), with the subjunctive mood, instead of the infinitive, which the modern Greeks have allowed to drop; but this is a usage, borrowed from the Latin I have often thought, of which very frequent examples occur in the New Testament; and besides, a mere new fashion in the syntactical form of a sentence was never dreamt of by any sane grammarian, as the sufficient sign of a new language. In English, for instance, we say,I beg you will accept this, and,I beg you to accept this. Now suppose one of these forms of expression to become obsolete, by a change which mere fashion may effect any day, and the other to become all dominant, could, I ask, any such change as this, or a whole score of such changes, be said to corrupt the English language in such a degree as to constitute a new tongue? Much less could the introduction of a few new words, formed according to the analogy of the language, be said to achieve such a transformation, though an academic purist might indeed refuse to put such words as ἡλιοτυπία (photography), and ἀτμοπλoῖov (a steam-boat), into his lexicon. Aslittle could a philosophical classical scholar be offended by the loss of the optative mood, (used in the New Testament so sparingly,) and the substitution for it of the auxiliary verb θέλω, which, though it is of comparatively rare occurrence, is just as much according to the genius of the Greek language, as the frequent use of the other auxiliary verbto be, both in classical Greek and Latin. Instead of fastening upon such insignificant peculiarities, a catholic-minded scholar will rather be astonished to find thatin three columns of a Greek newspaper of the year 1852, there do not certainly occur three words that are not pure native Greek. In fact the language, so far from being corrupt, as its ignorant detractors assert, is the most uncorrupt language in Europe, perhaps in the world, at the present moment. The Germans boast of their linguistic purity, and sing songs to Hermann who sent the legions of Varus with their lingo so bravely out of the Westphalian swamps; but let any man compare a column of a German newspaper with a column from theΑΘΗΝΑ, or any other ἐφημερίς issued within the girth of King Otho’s dominions, and he will understand that while the Greek language even now is as a perfectly pure vestment, the German in its familiar use is defaced by the ingrained blots of many ages, which no philologic sponge of Adelung orJacob Grimm will ever prevail to wash out. There are reasons for this remarkable phenomenon in the history of language, which to a thoughtful student of the history of the Greek people will readily suggest themselves. I content myself with stating the fact.

These things being so, the natural observation that will occur to every one, as bearing on our present inquiry, is, that as the Greek is manifestly a living language, and never was dead, but only suffering for a season under a cutaneous disease now thrown off, those who speak that language are entitled to a decisive voice in the question how their language is to be pronounced,and this on the mere ground that they are alive and speak it; and to their decision we must bow on the sole ground of living authority and possessory right. For every living language exercises this despotic authority over those who learn it; and it is not in the nature of things that one should escape from such a sovereignty. No doubt there may be certain exceptions to which, for certain special philological purposes, this general rule of obedience is liable; but the rule remains. Such an exception, for instance, in the literature of our existing English language, is the peculiar accentuation of many words that occur in Shakspeare, and evenin Milton, different from that now used, whereby their rhythm limps to our ear in the places where such words occur. Such exceptions, also, are the dissyllabic words in Chaucer, that are now shortened into monosyllables, and yet must be read as dissyllables by all those who will enjoy the original harmony of the poet’s rhythm. In Greek, as I have already observed, the whole quantitative value of the language has had its poles inverted; in which practice we cannot possibly follow the living users of the tongue, because we learn the language not to speak with them, as a main object, (though this also has its uses seldom thought of by schoolmasters,[42]) but to read the works of their ancient poets, the rhythmical value of whose works their living speech disowns. This is a sweeping exceptionto that dominancy of usage which Horace recognises as supreme in language; but philological necessity compels; and the modern Athenians must even submit in such points to receive laws from learned foreigners. But with all this large exceptive liberty, we dare not disown the rule. We must follow the authority of their living dictation, so far as the object we have in view allows; and if we are philosophical students of the language, our object never can be resolutely to ignore all knowledge of the elocutional genius and habits of the living people who speak it. It must be borne in mind also, with how much greater ease a living language can be acquired than a dead one; so that were it only for the sake of the speedy mastery of the ancient dialect, a thorough practical familiarity with the spoken tongue ought first to be cultivated. The present practice, indeed, of teaching Greek in our schools and colleges, altogether as a dead language, can be regarded only as a great scholastic mistake; and it may be confidently affirmed by any person who has reflected on the method of nature in teaching languages, that more Greek will be learned by three months’ well-directed study at Athens, where it is spoken, than by three years’ devotion to the language under the influence of our common scholastic and academic appliances in this country.

I am now led, in the last place, to observe, that whatever may be thought of Itacism and of accents, as the dominant norm for the teaching of Greek in this country, one thing is plain, that no scholar of large and catholic views can, after what has been said and proved in this paper, content himself with teaching Greek according to the present arbitrary and anti-classical fashiononly. The living dialect also must be taught with all its peculiarities, 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 Phormion; but for strictly philological uses also, and that of more kinds than one. The transcribers of the MSS., for one thing, in the Middle Ages, all wrote with their ear under the habitual influence of the pronunciation which now prevails; and were accordingly constantly liable to make mistakes that reveal themselves at once to those who are acquainted with that pronunciation, but will only slowly be gathered by those whose ears have not been trained in the same way. But what is of more consequence for Hellenic philologers to note accurately is, that the spoken dialect of the Greek tongue, though modern in name and form, is nowise altogether modern in substance: but like the conglomeratestrata of the geologists, contains imbedded very valuable fragments of the oldest language of the country. Of this it were easy to adduce proofs from so common a book as Passow’s Greek-German Dictionary, where occasional reference is made to the modern dialect in illustration of the ancient; from which source, I presume, with much else that is of first-rate excellence in lexicography, such references have passed into the English work of Liddell and Scott. But on this head I shall content myself with simply directing the student’s attention to the fact, and appending below the testimony of Professor Ross of Halle—a man who has travelled much in Greece, can write the language with perfect fluency, and is entitled, if any man in Europe is, to speak with the voice of authority on such a point.[43]

I have now finished all that I had to say on this subject, which has proved perhaps more fertile of speculative suggestion and of practical direction than the title at first promised. What I have said will at least serve the purpose for which it was immediately intended, that of justifying my conduct should I find it expedient to introduce any decided innovations in the practice of teaching Greek in our metropolitan University. 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 overlooked, and to question the soundness of the established routine of classical inculcation in some points, whatever disagreeable labour I may have gone through in clearing the learned rubbish from so perplexed a path will not have been without its reward. Any sympathizing reader who may communicate with me, wishing that I should explain, reconsider, or modify any statement here made, will find me, I hope, as willing to listen as to speak, and not more zealous for victory than for truth.

EDINBURGH: T. CONSTABLE,PRINTER TO HER MAJESTY.

Footnotes:[1]Ego sonorum causam tueor ex edicto possessorio, et ut prætor, interdixi de possessione.[2]An Essay on the Pronunciation of the Greek Language. ByG. T. Pennington, M.A., late Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. London: Murray. 1844. This is the work that I recommend to the English student who wishes to understand the subject in detail, without wading through the confounding mass of pertinent and impertinent matter that the learned eloquence of more than three centuries has heaped up.[3]Sylloge scriptorum qui de linguæ Græcæ vera et recta pronuntiatione Commentarios reliquerunt; ediditHavercampus.Ludg. Bat., 1740. Vol. ii. p. 220[4]Joh. Rudolfi Wetstenii:pro Græca et genuina linguæ Græcæ pronuntiatione Orationes Apologeticæ. Basil; 1686, p. 27. The whole passage is quoted in the prefixed mottoes.[5]See the opinions ofScaliger,Salmasius, and some others, quoted byWetsten.[6]Wetstenrefers to a work byAldus Manutiusde potestate literarum, which I have not seen.[7]“Audici M. Rutgerum Reschium professorem Linguæ Græcæ in collegio Baslidiano apud Lovanienses, meum piæ memoriæ præceptorem, narrantem, se habitasse in Liliensi pædagogeo una cum Erasmo, eo superius, se inferius cubiculum obtinente. Henricum autum Glareanum Parisiis Lovanium venisse, atque ab Erasmo in collegium vocatum fuisse ad prandium: quo cum venisset, quid novi adferret interrogatum dixisse (quod in itinere commentus erat, quod sciret Erasmum plus satis rerum novarum studiosum ac mire credulum) quosdam in Græcia natos Lutetiam venisse, viros ad miraculum doctos; qui longe aliam Græci sermonis pronunciationem usurparent, quam quæ vulgo in hisce partibus recepta esset: Eos nempe sonare proVita Beta,proiiita Eta,proai, ai,prooi, oi,et sic in cæteris. Quo audito Erasmum paulo post conscripsisse dialogum de recta Latini Græcique sermonis pronunciatione, ut videretur hujus rei ipse incentor, et obtulisse Petro Alostensi Typographo imprimendum: Qui cum forte aliis occupatus renueret, aut certe se tam cito excudere quam volebat non posse diceret, misisse libellum Basileam ad Frobenium, a quo max impressus in lucem prodiit. Verum Erasmum cognita fraude, nunquam ea pronunciandi ratione postea usum, nec amicis, quibuscum familiariter vivebat, ut eam observarent, præcepisse. In ejus rei fidem exhibuit Rutgerus ipsius Erasmi manu scriptam in gratiam Damiani a Gœs Hispani pronunciationis formulam, in nullo diversam ab ea, qua passim docti et indocti in hac lingua utuntur.” The voucher for the story isVossius, from whoseAristarchus, lib. 1, c. 28, Wetsten quotes it.[8]Havercamp, vol. ii. p 174.[9]Ueber die Aus-sprache des Griechischen.Leipzig, 1825.De Sonis literarum Græcarum;auctoreGustavo Seyffarthio. Lipsiæ, 1824.[10]“If we find a word pronounced in a given manner in the time of Athenæus, we are warranted, in the absence of proof, in supposing it to have been pronounced in the same way in the time of Homer; and what prevailed in Homer’s time may be presumed to have continued till the age of Athenæus.”—Pennington, p. 7. This is too strong. Considering the immense interval of time and progress of culture betweenHomerandAthenæus, and considering the tendency to change inherent in human nature, I can see no presumption that the pronunciation of the language should have remained through so many centuries unchanged.[11]“I cannot help thinking that if this treatise of Dionysius had been in early times made a text-book in schools, no controversy would ever have arisen upon the pronunciation of the Greek letters,” (except the diphthongs,) “or upon the nature of quantity.”—Pennington.[12]“Vulgus antiquæ pronuntiationis tenacissimus est.”—Wetsten.Compare the observations of Professor L. Ross, below, on the antique element in modern Greek.[13]Pluto Cratylus, sec. 74, Bekker.[14]Aristophanes, Lysist. 86.[15]What he says about the tongue performing no part in the formation of the vowels is manifestly false, as any one may convince himself by pronouncing the three sounds,au,ai,ee, successively, with open mouth before a mirror. He will thus observe a gradual elevation and advance of the tongue, as the sound to be emitted becomes more slender.[16]This limitation must be carefully borne in mind; for after Athens ceased to be a capital, being overwhelmed by Alexandria, it still remained a sort of literary metropolis, giving, or affecting to give, the law in matters of taste, long after its authority had ceased practically to bind large masses of those whose usage fashioned the existing language.[17]In some English schools a small concession has been made to common sense, and to sound principles of teaching, by confining the long slender sound ofato the long α, while the short α is pronounced like the shortainbat. Now, as changes are not easily made in England, especially among schoolmasters, who are a stiff-necked generation everywhere, it would have been worth while when they were moving, to kick the barbarous Englishaout of the scholastic world altogether. But their conservatism was too strong for this; besides, the ears of many were so gross that they would not have distinguished, or would have sworn that they could not distinguish, a longafrom a short one, without giving the former the sound of an entirely distinct vowel! There is no limit to the nonsense that men will talk in defence of an inveterate absurdity.[18]The following passage fromMitford(Pennington, p. 37) may stand here as an instructive lesson, how blindly prejudice many sometimes speak: “Strong national partiality only, and determined habit, could lead to the imagination cherished by the French critics, that the Greek υ was a sound so unpleasant, produced by a position of the lips so ungraceful as the Frenchu.”—History, book ii. sec. iii., note.Scaliger(Opuscula: Paris, 1610, p. 131) says rightly, “Est obscurissimus sonus in Græca vocali υ, quæ ita pronuntianda est ut proxime accedat ad iota.”[19]“Utut sit, id saltem nacti sumus interpretum S. sc. singularum atque omnium auctoritate ut constetaimature atque optimis adeo Græcorum temporibus simplici vocalierespondisse.”—Seyffarth, p. 101. See also the Stanza fromCallimachus, where ναίχι echoes to ἔχει, Epig. xxx. 5, (andSextus Empiricusadv.Grammat. c. 5.)[20]“Quâ potestate literæeifuerint eâ Græcorum ætate in quam veteres Sc. s. interpretes incidunt ex plurimis iisque variis verbis in singulas linguas conversis adeo clarum est ut nulla fere restet causa de eâ dubitare.”—Seyffarth.The Old Testament translators, in fact, use it as regularly forHirekandYod, as they doaiforTzere,Segol, andSheva.[21]With regard to this sort of evidence arising from wrong spelt words, it is manifest that a single example proves nothing. When Aunt Chloe, for instance, in the American novel, says, “I’mclaron’t,” this is no proof that the Americans pronounce theeainclearlikea; the only conclusion is, that certain vulgar people in America pronounce it so, and a word with a different vocalization must be written in order to express their peculiar method of utterance. But when mistakes of this kind occur extensively, and in quarters where there is no reason to suspect anything particularly vulgar, they authorize a conclusion as general as the fact, especially where no evidence exists pointing in a different direction.[22]Thierschuses the passage as a proof of the antiquity of the modern slender sound.—Sprachlehre, § 16, 5.[23]Godofredi Hermanide emendenda ratione Græcæ grammaticæ, Lib. i. c. 2, quoted at length byLiscov, p. 21.[24]On revisal it strikes me I have given the enemies of Itacism an unfair advantage by not stating, that, while in any other language the attenuation of so many different sounds into one, might have proved a very grievous evil, there is such a richness of the full sound of α (which the English have effaced) and ω in Greek, that the blemish rarely offends. I have to mention also, that, while a certain prominence even of this slender sound seems necessary to the phonetic character of Greek, as distinguished from Latin, I have no objection, in reading Homer and the elder poets, (were it only for the sake of the often quotedπολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης!) to pronounce οι, asboyin English, and η, as we do it in Scotland; just as in reading Chaucer we may be forced to adopt some of the peculiarities of the pronunciation of his day. But in the common use of the prose language, I think it safer to stick by the tradition of so many centuries, than to venture on patches of classical restoration, where it is impossible to revive a consistent whole. I may say also, that if υ be pronounced uniformly like the Frenchu, the itacism will be diminished by one letter, while the difference between that and the modern Greek pronunciation is so slight, that a Scotchman so speaking in Athens will be generally understood, whereas our broad Scotchu(oo) besides being entirely without classical authority, recedes so far from the actual pronunciation of the Greeks, as to be a serious bar in the way of intelligibility.[25]Corpe’s Neo-Hellenic Greek Grammar. London, 1851. See also a notice of this work in theAthenæumfor last year, where I am happy to observe that the opinions advocated in this paper are supported.[26]Greek Grammar. 1851, sect. 44, 45.Donaldson(Greek Grammar, p. 17) says, ‘The accent is the sharp or elevated sound with which one of the last three syllables of a Greek word isregularlypronounced. This “regularly” is as significant as Mr.Jelf’s “ought.”’[27]Of course I except ProfessorMassonof Belfast, whose complete mastery of the living dialect of Greece is the object of admiration to all who know him.[28]Classical Museum, vol. i. p. 338.[29]There is also a greateremphasisorstressgiven to the accented syllable, as is manifest from the pronunciation of the modern Greeks, and from the striking fact that in the modern dialect, the unaccented syllable has sometimes been dropt, while the accented constitutes the whole modern word, asδὲνforοὐδὲν, μᾶςforἡμᾶς.[30]Quinctil., lib. i. c. 5;Diomed.de Oratione, ii.;Putsch.i. 426.[31]Jelf, in the Preface to his Grammar, calls the doctrine of accent “a difficult branch of scholarship.” The difficulty is altogether an artificial one, made by scholastic men who will insist on teaching by the eye only and the understanding, what has no meaning at all except when addressed to the ear. The doctrine of accentuation in English has no peculiar difficulty, plainly because men learn it in the natural way by hearing.[32]“Si quis igitur vestrum ad accuratam Græcarum literarum scientiam aspirat, is probabilem sibi accentuum rationem quam maturrime comparet, in propositoque perstet scurrarum dicacitate et stultorum derisione immotus,” ad Med. 1, apudJelf, vol. i. p. 37. I wonder if Porson himself pronounced according to the accents. If he did not, he is just another instance of that extraordinary incapacity of apprehending a large principle that is so characteristic of the English mind.[33]I may insert here the whole of the passage ofBoissonade, from which the words in one of the prefixed mottoes are taken. “Nisi quod maxime cupio, in omnibus academiis nostris, gymnasiis et scholis hodierna Græcorum pronuntiatio recipiatur. Nam cum prorsus perierit antiqua pronuntiandi ratio qua Demosthenes, et Sophocles, vel ipsi Alexandrini sub Ptolemæis utebantur, et fere ridiculum sit unumquemque populum ad suæ linguæ sonos, atque etiam ad libitum, Græcorum quos legit librorum pronuntiationem efformare, id saltem boni, admissa neotericorum pronuntiatione, lucrabimur, non solum ut Gallus homo et Germanus Anglum intelligant Græce loquentem et ab illo Græce ipsi loquentes intelligantur, sed id etiam ut cum Græcis doctis et scholastica institutione politis confabulemur verbis antiquorum et facillime, si velimus, hodiernæ linguæ cognitionem ac usum assequamur.”—Herodian, Epimerisni,Boissonade.London, 1819. Prefat.[34]History of the University of Cambridge, Section vii.[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 forMánchéster” 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.[36]See the essay on this subject in the second volume of the Greek works of ProfessorRangabeof 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.[38]Δεῖ τὴν φωνὴν ἐν τῷ μελῳδεῖν τὰς μὲν ἐπιτάσεις τε καὶ ἀνέσεις ἀφανεῖς ποίεισθαι—Aristoxenus, apudPennington, p. 226.[39]“Our composition of classical verses is almost entirely mechanical. When a boy composes such a verse asInsignemque 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 itInsignemque cano Neptunum vertice canas; no, he learns from books that the first ofcano(I sing) is short, and the first ofcanus(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 ofcanustake up about twice as much time as that ofcano, such a verse asInsignemque 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.[40]“Ἀπομνημονεύματα Πολεμικὰ, διαφόρων μαχῶν συγκροτηθεισῶν μεταξὺ Ἑλλήνων καὶ Ὀθωμάνων κατά τε τὸ Σούλιον καὶ Ἀνατολικὴν Ελλάδα ἀπὸ τοῦ 1820 μέχρι τοῦ 1829 ἔτους. Συγγραφέντα παρὰ τοῦ Συνταγματαρχοῦ Χριστοφόρου Πεῤῥαίβου τοῦ ἐξ Ὀλύμπου τῆς Θετταλίας, καὶ διῃρήμενκ εἰς τόμους δύω. Ἐν Ἀθήναις, ἐκ τῆς Τυπογραφίας Ἀνδρέου Κορόμηλα, Ὁδός Ἓρμου, Ἀριθ. 215. 1836.”[41]“Αθηνα, Decemb. 31, 1851.”[42]Perhaps some classical young gentleman at Oxford or Cambridge may be moved by the consideration brought forward in the following passage:—“I was much delighted with this really Grecian ball, at which I was the only foreigner. The Grecian fair I have ever found peculiarly agreeable in society. They are not in the smallest degree tainted with the artificial refinements and affectations of more civilised life, while they have all its graces and fascinations; and I cannot help thinking that as some one thought it worth while to learn ancient Greek at the age of seventy, for the sole purpose of reading the Iliad, so it is well worthy the pains of learning modern Greek atanyage, for the pleasure of conversing, in her own tongue, with a young and cultivated Greek beauty.”—Wanderings in Greece, byGeorge Cochran, Esq. London, 1837.[43]In a paper on the Comparison of the Forms of the Nominative Case in certain Latin and Greek Nouns, (Zeitschrift für die Alterthums-Wissenschaft. 9ͭͤͬ Jahrgang, No. 49,) Professor Ross writes to ProfessorBerghof Marburg, as follows:—“My views are founded chiefly on the observation of the dialect used by the common people of Greece, among whom and with whom I lived so long. This dialect, indeed, now spoken by the Greek shepherds and sailors, and which, of course, is not to be learnt from books, but from actual intercourse with the people, the majority of philologists are apt to hold cheap, but it has been to me a mine of rich instruction, and I have no hesitation in saying that, at all events, in reference to the non-Attic dialects of the Greek tongue, to Latin, Oscan, and even Etruscan, more may be got from this source than from the many bulky commentaries of the grammarians of the Middle Ages. See what I have said on this point in myReisen auf den Griechischen Inseln, iii. p. 155.”

Footnotes:

[1]Ego sonorum causam tueor ex edicto possessorio, et ut prætor, interdixi de possessione.

[2]An Essay on the Pronunciation of the Greek Language. ByG. T. Pennington, M.A., late Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. London: Murray. 1844. This is the work that I recommend to the English student who wishes to understand the subject in detail, without wading through the confounding mass of pertinent and impertinent matter that the learned eloquence of more than three centuries has heaped up.

[3]Sylloge scriptorum qui de linguæ Græcæ vera et recta pronuntiatione Commentarios reliquerunt; ediditHavercampus.Ludg. Bat., 1740. Vol. ii. p. 220

[4]Joh. Rudolfi Wetstenii:pro Græca et genuina linguæ Græcæ pronuntiatione Orationes Apologeticæ. Basil; 1686, p. 27. The whole passage is quoted in the prefixed mottoes.

[5]See the opinions ofScaliger,Salmasius, and some others, quoted byWetsten.

[6]Wetstenrefers to a work byAldus Manutiusde potestate literarum, which I have not seen.

[7]“Audici M. Rutgerum Reschium professorem Linguæ Græcæ in collegio Baslidiano apud Lovanienses, meum piæ memoriæ præceptorem, narrantem, se habitasse in Liliensi pædagogeo una cum Erasmo, eo superius, se inferius cubiculum obtinente. Henricum autum Glareanum Parisiis Lovanium venisse, atque ab Erasmo in collegium vocatum fuisse ad prandium: quo cum venisset, quid novi adferret interrogatum dixisse (quod in itinere commentus erat, quod sciret Erasmum plus satis rerum novarum studiosum ac mire credulum) quosdam in Græcia natos Lutetiam venisse, viros ad miraculum doctos; qui longe aliam Græci sermonis pronunciationem usurparent, quam quæ vulgo in hisce partibus recepta esset: Eos nempe sonare proVita Beta,proiiita Eta,proai, ai,prooi, oi,et sic in cæteris. Quo audito Erasmum paulo post conscripsisse dialogum de recta Latini Græcique sermonis pronunciatione, ut videretur hujus rei ipse incentor, et obtulisse Petro Alostensi Typographo imprimendum: Qui cum forte aliis occupatus renueret, aut certe se tam cito excudere quam volebat non posse diceret, misisse libellum Basileam ad Frobenium, a quo max impressus in lucem prodiit. Verum Erasmum cognita fraude, nunquam ea pronunciandi ratione postea usum, nec amicis, quibuscum familiariter vivebat, ut eam observarent, præcepisse. In ejus rei fidem exhibuit Rutgerus ipsius Erasmi manu scriptam in gratiam Damiani a Gœs Hispani pronunciationis formulam, in nullo diversam ab ea, qua passim docti et indocti in hac lingua utuntur.” The voucher for the story isVossius, from whoseAristarchus, lib. 1, c. 28, Wetsten quotes it.

[8]Havercamp, vol. ii. p 174.

[9]Ueber die Aus-sprache des Griechischen.Leipzig, 1825.De Sonis literarum Græcarum;auctoreGustavo Seyffarthio. Lipsiæ, 1824.

[10]“If we find a word pronounced in a given manner in the time of Athenæus, we are warranted, in the absence of proof, in supposing it to have been pronounced in the same way in the time of Homer; and what prevailed in Homer’s time may be presumed to have continued till the age of Athenæus.”—Pennington, p. 7. This is too strong. Considering the immense interval of time and progress of culture betweenHomerandAthenæus, and considering the tendency to change inherent in human nature, I can see no presumption that the pronunciation of the language should have remained through so many centuries unchanged.

[11]“I cannot help thinking that if this treatise of Dionysius had been in early times made a text-book in schools, no controversy would ever have arisen upon the pronunciation of the Greek letters,” (except the diphthongs,) “or upon the nature of quantity.”—Pennington.

[12]“Vulgus antiquæ pronuntiationis tenacissimus est.”—Wetsten.Compare the observations of Professor L. Ross, below, on the antique element in modern Greek.

[13]Pluto Cratylus, sec. 74, Bekker.

[14]Aristophanes, Lysist. 86.

[15]What he says about the tongue performing no part in the formation of the vowels is manifestly false, as any one may convince himself by pronouncing the three sounds,au,ai,ee, successively, with open mouth before a mirror. He will thus observe a gradual elevation and advance of the tongue, as the sound to be emitted becomes more slender.

[16]This limitation must be carefully borne in mind; for after Athens ceased to be a capital, being overwhelmed by Alexandria, it still remained a sort of literary metropolis, giving, or affecting to give, the law in matters of taste, long after its authority had ceased practically to bind large masses of those whose usage fashioned the existing language.

[17]In some English schools a small concession has been made to common sense, and to sound principles of teaching, by confining the long slender sound ofato the long α, while the short α is pronounced like the shortainbat. Now, as changes are not easily made in England, especially among schoolmasters, who are a stiff-necked generation everywhere, it would have been worth while when they were moving, to kick the barbarous Englishaout of the scholastic world altogether. But their conservatism was too strong for this; besides, the ears of many were so gross that they would not have distinguished, or would have sworn that they could not distinguish, a longafrom a short one, without giving the former the sound of an entirely distinct vowel! There is no limit to the nonsense that men will talk in defence of an inveterate absurdity.

[18]The following passage fromMitford(Pennington, p. 37) may stand here as an instructive lesson, how blindly prejudice many sometimes speak: “Strong national partiality only, and determined habit, could lead to the imagination cherished by the French critics, that the Greek υ was a sound so unpleasant, produced by a position of the lips so ungraceful as the Frenchu.”—History, book ii. sec. iii., note.Scaliger(Opuscula: Paris, 1610, p. 131) says rightly, “Est obscurissimus sonus in Græca vocali υ, quæ ita pronuntianda est ut proxime accedat ad iota.”

[19]“Utut sit, id saltem nacti sumus interpretum S. sc. singularum atque omnium auctoritate ut constetaimature atque optimis adeo Græcorum temporibus simplici vocalierespondisse.”—Seyffarth, p. 101. See also the Stanza fromCallimachus, where ναίχι echoes to ἔχει, Epig. xxx. 5, (andSextus Empiricusadv.Grammat. c. 5.)

[20]“Quâ potestate literæeifuerint eâ Græcorum ætate in quam veteres Sc. s. interpretes incidunt ex plurimis iisque variis verbis in singulas linguas conversis adeo clarum est ut nulla fere restet causa de eâ dubitare.”—Seyffarth.The Old Testament translators, in fact, use it as regularly forHirekandYod, as they doaiforTzere,Segol, andSheva.

[21]With regard to this sort of evidence arising from wrong spelt words, it is manifest that a single example proves nothing. When Aunt Chloe, for instance, in the American novel, says, “I’mclaron’t,” this is no proof that the Americans pronounce theeainclearlikea; the only conclusion is, that certain vulgar people in America pronounce it so, and a word with a different vocalization must be written in order to express their peculiar method of utterance. But when mistakes of this kind occur extensively, and in quarters where there is no reason to suspect anything particularly vulgar, they authorize a conclusion as general as the fact, especially where no evidence exists pointing in a different direction.

[22]Thierschuses the passage as a proof of the antiquity of the modern slender sound.—Sprachlehre, § 16, 5.

[23]Godofredi Hermanide emendenda ratione Græcæ grammaticæ, Lib. i. c. 2, quoted at length byLiscov, p. 21.

[24]On revisal it strikes me I have given the enemies of Itacism an unfair advantage by not stating, that, while in any other language the attenuation of so many different sounds into one, might have proved a very grievous evil, there is such a richness of the full sound of α (which the English have effaced) and ω in Greek, that the blemish rarely offends. I have to mention also, that, while a certain prominence even of this slender sound seems necessary to the phonetic character of Greek, as distinguished from Latin, I have no objection, in reading Homer and the elder poets, (were it only for the sake of the often quotedπολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης!) to pronounce οι, asboyin English, and η, as we do it in Scotland; just as in reading Chaucer we may be forced to adopt some of the peculiarities of the pronunciation of his day. But in the common use of the prose language, I think it safer to stick by the tradition of so many centuries, than to venture on patches of classical restoration, where it is impossible to revive a consistent whole. I may say also, that if υ be pronounced uniformly like the Frenchu, the itacism will be diminished by one letter, while the difference between that and the modern Greek pronunciation is so slight, that a Scotchman so speaking in Athens will be generally understood, whereas our broad Scotchu(oo) besides being entirely without classical authority, recedes so far from the actual pronunciation of the Greeks, as to be a serious bar in the way of intelligibility.

[25]Corpe’s Neo-Hellenic Greek Grammar. London, 1851. See also a notice of this work in theAthenæumfor last year, where I am happy to observe that the opinions advocated in this paper are supported.

[26]Greek Grammar. 1851, sect. 44, 45.Donaldson(Greek Grammar, p. 17) says, ‘The accent is the sharp or elevated sound with which one of the last three syllables of a Greek word isregularlypronounced. This “regularly” is as significant as Mr.Jelf’s “ought.”’

[27]Of course I except ProfessorMassonof Belfast, whose complete mastery of the living dialect of Greece is the object of admiration to all who know him.

[28]Classical Museum, vol. i. p. 338.

[29]There is also a greateremphasisorstressgiven to the accented syllable, as is manifest from the pronunciation of the modern Greeks, and from the striking fact that in the modern dialect, the unaccented syllable has sometimes been dropt, while the accented constitutes the whole modern word, asδὲνforοὐδὲν, μᾶςforἡμᾶς.

[30]Quinctil., lib. i. c. 5;Diomed.de Oratione, ii.;Putsch.i. 426.

[31]Jelf, in the Preface to his Grammar, calls the doctrine of accent “a difficult branch of scholarship.” The difficulty is altogether an artificial one, made by scholastic men who will insist on teaching by the eye only and the understanding, what has no meaning at all except when addressed to the ear. The doctrine of accentuation in English has no peculiar difficulty, plainly because men learn it in the natural way by hearing.

[32]“Si quis igitur vestrum ad accuratam Græcarum literarum scientiam aspirat, is probabilem sibi accentuum rationem quam maturrime comparet, in propositoque perstet scurrarum dicacitate et stultorum derisione immotus,” ad Med. 1, apudJelf, vol. i. p. 37. I wonder if Porson himself pronounced according to the accents. If he did not, he is just another instance of that extraordinary incapacity of apprehending a large principle that is so characteristic of the English mind.

[33]I may insert here the whole of the passage ofBoissonade, from which the words in one of the prefixed mottoes are taken. “Nisi quod maxime cupio, in omnibus academiis nostris, gymnasiis et scholis hodierna Græcorum pronuntiatio recipiatur. Nam cum prorsus perierit antiqua pronuntiandi ratio qua Demosthenes, et Sophocles, vel ipsi Alexandrini sub Ptolemæis utebantur, et fere ridiculum sit unumquemque populum ad suæ linguæ sonos, atque etiam ad libitum, Græcorum quos legit librorum pronuntiationem efformare, id saltem boni, admissa neotericorum pronuntiatione, lucrabimur, non solum ut Gallus homo et Germanus Anglum intelligant Græce loquentem et ab illo Græce ipsi loquentes intelligantur, sed id etiam ut cum Græcis doctis et scholastica institutione politis confabulemur verbis antiquorum et facillime, si velimus, hodiernæ linguæ cognitionem ac usum assequamur.”—Herodian, Epimerisni,Boissonade.London, 1819. Prefat.

[34]History of the University of Cambridge, Section vii.

[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 forMánchéster” 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.

[36]See the essay on this subject in the second volume of the Greek works of ProfessorRangabeof 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.

[38]Δεῖ τὴν φωνὴν ἐν τῷ μελῳδεῖν τὰς μὲν ἐπιτάσεις τε καὶ ἀνέσεις ἀφανεῖς ποίεισθαι—Aristoxenus, apudPennington, p. 226.

[39]“Our composition of classical verses is almost entirely mechanical. When a boy composes such a verse asInsignemque 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 itInsignemque cano Neptunum vertice canas; no, he learns from books that the first ofcano(I sing) is short, and the first ofcanus(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 ofcanustake up about twice as much time as that ofcano, such a verse asInsignemque 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.

[40]“Ἀπομνημονεύματα Πολεμικὰ, διαφόρων μαχῶν συγκροτηθεισῶν μεταξὺ Ἑλλήνων καὶ Ὀθωμάνων κατά τε τὸ Σούλιον καὶ Ἀνατολικὴν Ελλάδα ἀπὸ τοῦ 1820 μέχρι τοῦ 1829 ἔτους. Συγγραφέντα παρὰ τοῦ Συνταγματαρχοῦ Χριστοφόρου Πεῤῥαίβου τοῦ ἐξ Ὀλύμπου τῆς Θετταλίας, καὶ διῃρήμενκ εἰς τόμους δύω. Ἐν Ἀθήναις, ἐκ τῆς Τυπογραφίας Ἀνδρέου Κορόμηλα, Ὁδός Ἓρμου, Ἀριθ. 215. 1836.”

[41]“Αθηνα, Decemb. 31, 1851.”

[42]Perhaps some classical young gentleman at Oxford or Cambridge may be moved by the consideration brought forward in the following passage:—“I was much delighted with this really Grecian ball, at which I was the only foreigner. The Grecian fair I have ever found peculiarly agreeable in society. They are not in the smallest degree tainted with the artificial refinements and affectations of more civilised life, while they have all its graces and fascinations; and I cannot help thinking that as some one thought it worth while to learn ancient Greek at the age of seventy, for the sole purpose of reading the Iliad, so it is well worthy the pains of learning modern Greek atanyage, for the pleasure of conversing, in her own tongue, with a young and cultivated Greek beauty.”—Wanderings in Greece, byGeorge Cochran, Esq. London, 1837.

[43]In a paper on the Comparison of the Forms of the Nominative Case in certain Latin and Greek Nouns, (Zeitschrift für die Alterthums-Wissenschaft. 9ͭͤͬ Jahrgang, No. 49,) Professor Ross writes to ProfessorBerghof Marburg, as follows:—“My views are founded chiefly on the observation of the dialect used by the common people of Greece, among whom and with whom I lived so long. This dialect, indeed, now spoken by the Greek shepherds and sailors, and which, of course, is not to be learnt from books, but from actual intercourse with the people, the majority of philologists are apt to hold cheap, but it has been to me a mine of rich instruction, and I have no hesitation in saying that, at all events, in reference to the non-Attic dialects of the Greek tongue, to Latin, Oscan, and even Etruscan, more may be got from this source than from the many bulky commentaries of the grammarians of the Middle Ages. See what I have said on this point in myReisen auf den Griechischen Inseln, iii. p. 155.”

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