3'82 Mr MUNRO, on A METRICAL 



the last vowel might be either long or short. Again mens, tuus, boves, and many other words 

 might be either dissyllables or monosyllables. 



But I cannot dwell longer on this wide question which has been so fully developed by 

 RitschI, the highest authority on the subject. In one of the last numbers of the Rhenish 

 Museum that scholar gives some hexameters written according to the rules of the dramatic 

 poets probably between 600 and 650 u. c, and interesting in many respects. They generally 

 go by the name of the Praenestinae sortes. Here are one or two of them : 



Non sumus mendacis, quas dixti ; consulis stulte. 

 This verse might have been written by Ennius or Lucretius who ends a line with penden- 

 tibus structas. 



Conrigi vix tandem, quod curvom est, factum crede. 

 Here the I in conrigi is short, as it might be in Plautus. Yet the principle of quantity 

 is not departed from, any more than it is by Virgil or Horace, when they use mihi or ubi 

 ■ long or short at pleasure. 



Qur petis postempus consilium: quod rogas non est. 



Quod petis is simple enough ; consilium has the quantity given to it once by Horace ; 

 rogas with the last syllable short is found in Plautus and Terence, and is no more a vio- 

 lation of quantity than amat, the last syllable of which was originally as long as amas ; 

 and to Plautus and Ennius was still common, long or short indifferently. Here is one more 



instance : 



Est equos perpulcer, sed tu vehl non potes istoc, 



which admits of just the same explanation. 



I have dwelt thus long on this part of my subject, in order to protest against the 

 absurdity of supposing that quantity was any less the principle of the old, than of the 

 Augustan Latin poetry, and of imagining that the accent, then a mere heightening of the 

 intonation, could have determined its laws. 



But in genuine Latin verse was there any coincidence, or any contradiction, intentional or 

 unintentional between the accent and the metrical ictus or arsis, as it is called, of the verse ? 

 Three of the very highest authorities on such a question, Bentley, Hermann and RitschI, have 

 all asserted that the old dramatic poets intentionally sought an agreement between accent and 

 ictus in their iambic and trochaic verses, especially in the middle, the most important part 

 of the verse ; while the learned Augustan poets aimed at nothing of the kind. This assertion 

 with respect to the dramatic writers has recently been denied and in great measure explained 

 away ; and it seems clear that those scholars to some extent mixed up their feeling of the 

 English or German accent or stress with their conception of the Latin accent. But I must 

 say a few words on this subject, as I wish to shew that the influence of the accent is on the 

 contrary more perceptible in the Augustan and later poets, than in the earlier; as indeed I 

 should a priori have rather expected, considering the way in which it finally superseded and 

 extinguished the old quantity. 



The nature of the Latin accent must always be remembered ; that which in contrast to 

 the Greek Quintiliau complains of, its stiffness and monotony (rigor et similitudo) ; the fact 

 that almost every word in the language was barytone, and that, when the penultimate was 



