272 PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON THE 



head (for it is by no means certain that all those authors who have written on 

 this subject did use their ears), when I pronounce such a word as prtm'-rose or 

 el' -bow, it is not at all uncommon for English scholars to say, and obstinately to 

 insist, that the accent on the first syllable of these words is necessarily accom- 

 panied by a prolongation of the vowel. But this is a judgment of the question, 

 not by the living fact of the sound, but by the doctrine of an old book about 

 the sound. And as to what the old book says, we in fact do not know whether 

 length by position meant a habitual prolongation of the vowel sound in common 

 discourse, as in our words gold, told, sold, ghost, most, or only a poetical license ; 

 that is to say, whether the genitive plural of av-qp, of which the penult is short, 

 was really pronounced awndro'ne or dndrbne in prose. I for one am strongly 

 inclined to think that the latter is the true fact of the case ; for, if it had been 

 otherwise, would it not have been a more correct phraseology in the grammarian 

 to say, that a vowel before two consonants is naturally long ? But when they 

 tell us that a vowel which is naturally short becomes long when two consonants 

 follow, this looks rather like an artificial exception than a natural rule. And I 

 am inclined to think that such an exceptional rule was introduced from sheer 

 necessity, like the long o in certain comparatives, such as ao^ajrepos, because, 

 without such a license, really long syllables in sufficient abundance would not 

 have been found in the language for the necessities of the early dactylico- 

 spondaic poetry. As to any inherent natural necessity in the rule, such an idea 

 cannot be entertained for a moment ; for the vowel is then most easily pro- 

 longed — as in the English words pb'-tent, no-tion, na'-tion, pa' -tent, where it is kept 

 separate in spelling from the influence of the succeeding consonant or con- 

 sonants, which, as in por'-tion, rather act by cutting the breath short, and pre- 

 venting the prolongation of the vowel. The influence of the consonant in 

 shortening the vowel will be apparent in comparing the words nom-inal and 

 Leb'-anon with no'-tional and la'-bial; nor does the addition of a second consonant 

 in any perceptible way alter the case. If the first syllable in prim is manifestly 

 short, it is certainly not made long by the addition of the long syllable rose in 

 the noun pi^tm'rdse — a word which, in the relative values of its final and penult 

 syllables, corresponds exactly to a whole host of Greek words which usher in a 

 long final by a short accented penult, as in UXdrcov, the name of the great 

 philosopher of Idealism, in Anglicising which, we, besides attenuating the 

 vowel, elongate the short penult, according to the practice of our own language. 

 It will now be distinctly understood, as a starting-point to the present 

 inquiry, that by accent I mean merely a certain predominance, emphasis, or stress 

 given to one syllable of a word above another, in virtue of a certain greater 

 intensity of force in the articulated breath ; this increased intensity being natu- 

 rally in many cases, but not necessarily in all cases, accompanied by an elevation 

 in the key of the voice. My observations do not include either rhetorical accent, 



