402 Mr MONRO, ON A METRICAL LATIN INSCRIPTION AT CIRTA. 



that rich variety of beautiful rhythm has passfed irrecoverably away. Only a few weeks ago 

 I read a pamphlet by a noble lord, in which he proposes to restore to our language the 

 prosody of the ancients by the help of the two universities who under the sanction of a royal 

 commission shall appoint syndicates composed either of resident or non-resident members, who 

 shall authoritatively determine what syllables shall be short or long or common. 



Alas ! when the world was younger, the cowherds and milkmaids of Ariana executed that 

 task with a marvellous precision, and constructed glorious forms of language, to be afterwards 

 developed into Indian Vedas and Greek Iliads and Latin jEneids. But that faculty has long 

 been lost ; and neither noble lords, nor royal commissions, nor universities, no nor syndicates, 

 resident or non-resident, can now bring back, Quod fugiens semel hora vexit. But what 

 this university can do, and long has done, is to encourage and enforce a study of that ancient 

 prosody, without the knowledge of which not only the poetry of Homer, Sophocles and 

 Virgil, but in an almost equal measure the prose of Plato and Demosthenes and Cicero and 

 Livy would be "robbed of all its power and beauty. 



