as applied to Zoological and Botanical Terms. 485 



rules of metre. Oar senses here are regulated by our expe- 

 rience. 



Let a classical scholar hear the first line of the Eclogues 

 read — 



Patulse tu Tityre, &e., 



and he will be shocked. He will also believe that the shock 

 fell on his ear. Yet his ear was unhurt. No sense was offended. 

 The thing which was shocked was his knowledge of the rules of 

 prosody — nothing more. To English ears there is no such a 

 thing as quantity — not even in hexameters and pentameters. 

 There is no such thing as quantity except so far as it is accentual 

 also. Hence come the following phsenomena — no less true 

 than strange^ — viz. (1) that any classical metre written accord- 

 ing to the rules of quantity gives (within certain narrow limits) 

 a regular recurrence of accents ; and (2) that, setting aside such 

 shocks as affect our knowledge of the rules of prosody, verses 

 written according to their accents only give metrical results. 

 English hexameters (such as they are) are thus written. 



In the inferences from these remarks there are two assump- 

 tions: 1st, that the. old-fashioned mode of pronunciation be 

 adhered to ; 2nd, that when we pronounce Greek and Latin 

 words as they are pronounced in the recitation of Greek and 

 Latin poetry, we are as accurate as we need be. It is by means 

 of these two assumptions that we pronounce Tityre and patultB 

 alike ; and I argue that we are free to do so. As far as the ear 

 is concerned, the a is as long as the i, on the strength of the 

 double t which is supposed to come after it. It does not indeed 

 so come ; but if it did, the sound would be the same, the quan- 

 tity different (for is not patula -pYonounced pattule ?). It would 

 be a quantity, however, to the eye only. 



This pronunciation, however, may be said to be exploded ; for 

 do not most men under fifty draw the distinction which is here 

 said to be neglected ? Do not the majority make, or fancy they 

 make, a distinction between the two words just quoted ? They 

 may or they may not. It is only certain that, subject to the 

 test just indicated, it is immaterial what they do. Nine-tenths 

 of the best modern Latin verses were written under the old 

 system — a system based not upon our ear, but on our knowledge 

 of certain rules. 



Now it is assumed that the accuracy sufficient for English 

 Latin is all the accuracy required. Ask for more, and you get 

 into complex and difficult questions respecting the pronunciation 

 of a dead language. Do what we will, we cannot, on one side, 

 pronounce the Latin like the ancient Romans. Do what we will, 

 so long as we keep our accents right, we cannot (speaking Latin 



