274 PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON THE 



comparative excellence of accentual systems may depend, we find that they may 

 be reduced to the four following heads : — 



1. Significance. 3. Variety. 



2. Euphony. 4. Convenience. 



And first, that Significance must be a main point in all accentual systems, 

 is manifest from the very nature of accent. For why should a man give pre- 

 dominance to one syllable in a word more than to another, unless that he means 

 to call special attention to the significance of that syllable ? Nay, it may often 

 be essential to the effect intended to be produced by the word, that its most sig- 

 nificant syllable should be emphasised — as when Lord Derby lately said that the 

 adoption of the Prussian system of making every citizen a soldier, would not 

 be a progression but a retrogression. No doubt, in order to express such an 

 accentual contrast as this, the English language departs from its usual fashion 

 of accenting these words ; but this only proves that the English method of 

 accentuation in this case is a mere fashion, founded on no natural law, and 

 which accordingly must yield to the higher law of emphatic significance, when 

 nature, like murder, will out. And here we may observe that the English, as a 

 merely derivative and mixed language, is by no means a favourable one for ex- 

 hibiting the natural and normal laws of a rational accentuation. Neither, so 

 far as I know, is there any language whose orthoepy presents so many anomalies, 

 and where changes entirely reasonless and arbitrary, require only the stamp of 

 aristocratic or academic whim to give them currency. With regard, however, 

 to the natural preponderance of the contrasting element in compound words, 

 the Saxon part of our language affords obvious examples of its recognition, as, 

 when we say, out' -side and in -side, back'-ivards and for' -wards, up-hill and down'- 

 hill, male and female. So in the names of the Highland clans, as MacBain, 

 MacDonald, MacGrigor, &c.,the emphasis does not lie on the common element, 

 the Mac, but on the distinctive element to which the other is attached ; and in this 

 view our Saxon pronunciation of Macintosh and Maclntyre, affords two very 

 good examples of words where custom and fashion have inverted the natural 

 and significant place of the accent. In the Greek language, this most natural 

 of all accentual laws, operates in all such compounds, as aKapiros, aVcus, o-uVoSos, 

 7rapoSo5, with which we may contrast the English fruitless, childless, where the 

 accent is on the root, and not where it ought naturally to be on the contrasting 

 element of the compound. In the same category with this I am inclined to 

 place the accent on the augment in Greek, as in erv\\ta, reru/x/xat; for it is the 

 augment here manifestly that contains the element of past time which is dis- 

 tinctive of the tense, being equivalent in effect — whatever its original meaning 

 may have been — to / did strike, as opposed to / am striking. The same desire 

 to call attention to the distinctive element may have determined the Greeks to 



