476 Cambridge Philosophical Society. 
began to pronounce Greek, not with the modern Greek, but with 
the Latin accent. Jhe reasons were :— 
1. Teachers speaking the modern Greek were no longer required, 
so the tradition was not kept up. 
2. It saved much trouble to pronounce both languages with the 
same accentuation. 
3. The Greek accent perpetually clashes with quantity; the 
Latin much more rarely; never, indeed, in that syllable of which 
the quantity is most marked—the penultima. 
Isaac Vossius (1650-60) advocated the disuse of accentual marks 
altogether, as the invention of a barbarous age to perpetuate a bar- 
barous pronunciation. 
After showing the meaning of the word ‘accent’ as applied to 
modern languages, and discussing the accentuation of the German, 
English, French, &c., he proceeded to say: 
‘There are three methods of emphasizing a syllable:— 
1. By raising the note; 
2. By prolonging the sound ; 
3. By increasing its volume. 
‘«Scaliger, De Causis Lingue Latine, lib. ii. cap. 52, recognizes 
this division when he says that a syllable may be considered of three 
dimensions in sound, having height, length, and breadth. 
«‘ Now in our own language, when we accent a syllable, which 
of these dimensions do we increase? Generally all three, but not 
necessarily ; for when the prayers, for example, are intoned, 2. e. 
read upon one note, the accent is marked by increasing the volume 
of sound (the third method), which involves also a longer time in 
utterance, 7. e. a lengthening of quantity. In speaking, all three 
methods are employed, but one more prominently than the other, 
according to individual peculiarities of the speakers. What we 
blend, the Greeks kept distinct. 
‘«* We cannot understand the Greek system unless we bear this in 
mind. ‘They never confounded accent with quantity. Ineradicable 
habit prevents us from reverting in practice to their method, just as 
they would have been unable to comprehend ours. 
«Tt is clear from Dionysius, De Comp. Verb. lib. xi. cap. 75, that 
the dialogue in tragedy preserved the ordinary accentuation, which 
was disregarded only in choral passages set to music.” 
The practical conclusion was this: that while it would be desirable, 
if possible, to return to the Erasmian system of pronunciation, it 
would be extremely absurd to adopt the barbarous accentuation of 
modern Greek, which has quite lost the old essential distinction 
between accent and quantity. In this respect, as we cannot recover 
practically the ancient method, it is better to keep to our own system 
of the Latin accent, which does not confuse the learner’s notion of 
quantity in verse as the modern Greek does. 
An Athenian boy has the greatest difficulty in comprehending the 
rhythm of Homer or Sophocles. Hence it is not blind prejudice 
(as Professor Blackie asserts) which makes us keep to our old usage, 
but a well-grounded conyiction that we should lose more by changing 
than we should gain. ‘rae 
