34 = * Whether Music is necessary to the Orator ? 
as indispensably connected with my theme, I have dwelt much* 
longer than I could otherwise have desired. Let us now turn to 
a more interesting topic. What were the evident effects pro- 
duced on the Speaker by solfaying the octave ; and accompany- 
ing with his voice, after much perseverance, some ten or a dozen 
y-lselected tunes which he had fancied ?>—-The reverse of improve- 
ment—alternate rant and feebleness without modulation ; some- 
times striking even the octave itself hy a sudden plunge—and at 
other times exhibiting a puerile imbecility, by sinking beyond 
the power of graceful recovery. This total extinction of all mo- 
dulation I was not indeed prepared to expect; but I must cer- — 
tainly take to myself the credit of foreseeing that the articulation 
of his short unemphatic syllables would sustain some injury. It 
did so—and to that extent, that in the recital of poetry, a person 
who had not known the subject must frequently have guessed at 
the meaning by the context. 
For the present, then, I relinquished all hopes of improvement 
by musical expedients. Nothing short of a radical subversion of 
all antecedent oratorical habits, and the substitution of new ha- 
bits in their stead, could to all appearance realize my ultimate 
design—and hence, the delivery of ancient hexameter presented 
itself to my view. 
My consideration now was—By what eligible means could such 
delivery be accomplished, and especially by the Speaker? 1 re- 
collected the beneficial result predicted to practitioners by Messrs. 
de Port Royal, in their excellent Greek Grammar*, and to that 
* As I have mentioned this admirable Grammar, I shall call the reader's 
attention to a remarkable fact which it records—that in ancient practice the 
rv of rtrv@apsy was the accented or highest note of this word; while the @w, 
although a lower note, was (like our long emphatic syllables) sustained 
longer and fuller than any other syllable of the word ; which grave and ma- 
jestic pronunciation has been called by Martian Capella, who lived in the 
fifth century, ‘ the very soul of sounds and the foundation of harmony.” 
Dionysius Thrax’s definition of accents in general as ‘‘ Dissonants of the 
enharmonic voice” is too vague for any rational deduction: he meant, in all 
probability, no more than that such syllables were spoken, not sung;, or, in 
Italian phraseology, were syllabized not vocalized. [For the interpretation 
of these terms see Phil. Magazine for May 1818. ] 
The author of Prosodia Rationalis, who tortures every quotation without 
ceremony, would interpret the words suaacuov sy +H Pageie, which are used 
by Dion. T. inthe same passage—as “ levelling to the grave ;” and this 
for the mere justification of his own (Steele's) doctrine, that the grave ac- 
cent was constituted by a downward slide! If any vbvious meaning can be 
attached to the quoted words, is it not that of levelling a syllable [depriving 
it of its upward slide] in the act of executing the grave? : 
Obscurely as Dionysius Thrax may have written, he is perspicuity itself 
compared with our own Mr. Steele or Mr. Walker, in their ‘‘ Prosodia Ra- 
tionalis,” and <‘ Elements of Elocution.” However, it is very possible that 
D. Thrax understood his subject. 
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