464 OS LATIN PRONUNCIATION. 



whetter these marks of quantity were present or not, a long syllalale 

 occupied twice the time of a short one in enunciation. So sensitive 

 were the ears even of the common people to this element of speech 

 that, as Cicero tell us (De Orat. c. 50) : " If the smallest offence he 

 given by an actor so that any sound is made too short by contraction 

 or too long by extension whole theatres burst into exclamations." 



To enable us to pronounce a word as the Latins did, therefore, it 

 will be necessary for us to discover the proper mode of expressing in 

 its enunciation the sound, accent and quantity of every syllable — a 

 problem we cannot hope to solve with any approach to exactness. It 

 is obviously impossible to, construct a set of rules for the guidance of 

 future generations in the pronunciation of any language. Such a 

 system of Orthoepy would require a language invariable for all time ; 

 for its canons, to be available, must be illustrated by examples taken 

 from the language it is framed to teach — a condition of stability which 

 can no more be fulfilled in language, than its opposite quality, perpetual 

 motion, can be devised in the department of mechanics. How signally 

 such a set of rules must fail of its object will be evident if we consider 

 that the proper application of the directions of the early Grammarians 

 is involved in the greatest mystery. The only possible means, it seems 

 to me, of devising approximately intelligible rules for the pronunciation 

 of any language would be found in some mechanical method of expres- 

 sing the element of speech — an expedient only practicable when man 

 succeeds in inventing an adequate instrument. It would be useless 

 now for the most acute theorist to strive to pronounce the Latin tongue 

 as it flowed from the lips of Cicero. The most we can hope to accom- 

 plish is to frame, for our own times, a system by which one or more of 

 the elements of pronunciation may be, in some degree, expressed or 

 inferred. The rules in any such system would of course vary with the 

 object proposed and the conventions on which the means for effecting 

 that object are founded. The mode of indicating the first element 

 should find clear and unambiguous expression in every system. The 

 precise meaning of any Latin we may have occasion to use can be 

 adequately conveyed to others in speech only by a consistent and 

 established set of sounds. The most important element to us is quan- 

 tity ) but any attempt to express it intelligibly in speech is extremely 

 difl&cult, inasmuch as it finds no place in the vocalization of any modern 

 language. -Moreover this difficulty is further complicated by the 

 attempt to confound sound with quantity, and to present them to the 



