Mr, Davis on the Poetry of the Chinese. 395 



nobody is particularly concerned in correcting, will sometimes pass current 

 for a surprising length of time. — Perhaps the circumstance of every word 

 filling the same space in the page, has assisted to perpetuate the notion. It 

 is the business of tiie present treatise, however, to state all that can fairly 

 be said in favour of its subject ; and, with the concurrent opinion of Dr. 

 Morrison, we will endeavour to produce facts, and institute comparisons, 

 which may tend to prove that a considerable portion of the Chinese words 

 are not absolutelij monosyllabic. 



Some of these, if expressed by the powers of the English alphabet, are 

 written hecie, keuen, heue, leaou — every vowel being distinctly pronounced, — 

 and others cannot be properly expressed, except with the direct use of the 

 diaeresis, as leen, t'hi'en, kec, &c. Now, with respect to the latter of these, 

 if the necessity for using such a mark were not, of itself, sufficient to prove 

 that they are something more tlian mere monosyllables, the metrical 

 examples of another language might serve to settle the point. 



" Their^Mjrf bodies half dissolv'd in light" — 

 " Lilie some gauntlion in his gloomy lair." 



Any person who has been in the habit of hearing the Chinese pronounce 

 their own language, knows that leen, see?!, &c. are quite as dissyllabic .is 

 /ion, Jliiid, and such other words, wherein no consonant intervenes between 

 the two syllables. Similar examples, however, are by no means so abundant 

 in our harsh modern languages, especially those of Germanic extraction, as 

 in Latin and Greek, where almost every line of poetry teems with such vowel 

 sounds ; and where (at least in the latter) we constantly meet with three suc- 

 cessive vowels, forming as many separate syllables — the very circumstance 

 which constitutes the ground of its superior melody. 



But let it be objected, and let us admit for a moment (what in fact is not 

 true), that in Chinese every word is pronounced in the same time, and there- 

 fore the above distinction signifies little. Does it, with reference to a sister 

 art, make no difference in music, whether two or three notes be struck in 

 the same measured time — or only one? What but something very similar 

 to this was the Greek and Roman practice, as far as we can understand it, 

 of making two short syllables exactly equivalent to a long one, and pro- 

 nouncing them in the same time. That such matters are not totally inditl 

 Cerent, might be proved by the trite example from Virgil — the well-known 

 verse, descriptive of an eager and restless horse, which derives its imitative 



