OK LATIK PRONUNCIATION. 461 



grammatioal structure, and the purity of style concerniog which the old 

 Roman was so sensitive, fell a prey to the barbarism of the times. The 

 best known work of the mediaeval period, the celebrated treatise, " De 

 Imitatione Christi," can hardly be said to have been written in the 

 same language as that in which Cicero, or Horace, or Tacitus expressed 

 their thoughts. The use of Latin as a spoken language, by those who 

 knew nothing of the principles of pronunciation, has tended further to 

 debase it. A certain moribund vitality has indeed been secured for it, 

 but only at the expense of elegance in diction and correctness in ex- 

 pression. One of the consequences has been, that a number of theories 

 of pronunciation have been devised, none of which will stand the test 

 of intelligent scrutiny. 



In the following paper it is' proposed to examine those theories of 

 pronunciation in which the attempt is made to indicate the quantities 

 of syllables by means of accents and vowel sounds. It seems certain 

 that when the Latin language was spoken with classic purity — when 

 Roman arms and Roman literature were achieving their claims to 

 imperishable renown — sound, accent and quantity, all had their share 

 in the pronunciation of every word. Before entering upon the main 

 question, it seems advisable to consider the nature of each of these 

 three elements. From the explanation I propose to give, it will appear 

 that quantity is not to be confounded with sound ; but, on the contrary, 

 is entirely independent of it.- In order to guard against misunderstand- 

 ing, it will be understood that by the term " quantity" is here meant 

 duration of time — those syllables having the same quantity which arc 

 pronounced in the same time. In every language the sounds of wordg 

 depend upon and are limited by (1) the capabilities of the human voice. 

 These evidently vary in different races. For an Englishman of our day 

 it is perhaps impossible to attain a correct pronunciation of the French 

 u, the German or Gaelic guttural ch, or the Spanish/ It may be that 

 the organs of speech have undergone considerable modification in the 

 progress of time, and that here we might encounter a difficulty in 

 acquiring a correct pronunciation of Latin, even if our knowledge of it 

 were otherwise accurate. (2) The sounds of the letters which form 

 the alphabet of the language. (3) Variations of these sounds and the 

 formation of other sounds by diphthongal or consonant combinations. 

 These may be roughly stated as representing all the articulate sounds 

 which the vocal organs of the particular race or nation are able to 

 utter; although in all languages, several sounds are expressed by one 



