OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 183 



sounds in passing from age to age, and from country to country. But 

 the place of an accent seldom changes. Greek vowels have been mod- 

 ified, but the Greek accents remain. In the English language, compar- 

 atively few words have changed their accent since the time of Chaucer. 

 The verses of that delightful poet may be easily and intelligently pro- 

 nounced by the English reader of the present day, and the accent of 

 almost every word remains the same as when he wrote. 



" What, then, has the Greek language lost ? It has lost quantity, or 

 the musical proportion of syllables, in its pronunciation ; but it has re- 

 tained the system of accents substantially as they existed in the time 

 of Demosthenes. When the Greek was taught to the Romans in an- 

 tiquity, it was taught by native Greeks, with quantity as well as with 

 accent. When it was taught in Western Europe, after the fall of Con- 

 stantinople, it was taught by native Greeks, without quantity, but with . 

 accent. In the Greek and Latin languages, quantity, though funda- 

 mentally different from accent, was connected with accent and influ- 

 enced by it ; but the relations between these two elements were dif- 

 ferent in these two languages. In the Greek the position and kind of 

 accent were to a great extent controlled by the quantity of the final 

 syllable, namely, the accent could go back no farther than to the pe- 

 nultimate if the final syllable was long, and might go back to the ante- 

 penultimate if the final syllable was short. In the Latin the place of 

 the accent was controlled by the quantity of the penultimate syllable ; if 

 that was long, it was also accented ; if short, the accent went back to the 

 antepenultimate. The coincidence of accent and long quantity in the 

 Latin penultimate has created the strange impression that accent and 

 quantity are identical. For example, in amaverunt, the third person 

 plural of the perfect tense of amo, the e in the penultimate is long ; it is 

 also accented, but it is not long because it is accented, but the reverse, — 

 its musical measure is long, — and the accent is a greater stress of voice 

 only ; the last syllable is equally long, but is not accented ; — and in the 

 word hominibus the accent is on the i of the antepenultimate, while the 

 quantity of that syllable is short. And yet by the English and Ameri- 

 can classical ear, accent and quantity are universally confounded ; and 

 in England and America it is supposed that, by reading Latin with the 

 Latin accent, we are observing the quantity of that language. More 

 strangely still, it is fancied that, by reading the Greek with the Latin 

 accent, we are observing the quantity of the Greek. That is to say, we 



