276 PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON THE 



accent, as a general principle, should always be on the root syllable, as being 

 the most significant. If man were only a logical animal, this might be all very 

 well as an a priori ideal of a perfect accentual system ; but he is also, if not 

 always at starting, certainly when fairly developed, an sesthetical animal, who 

 may be allowed on occasions to sacrifice the significance of ideas to the luxury 

 of sounds. And if this is true of man generally, it is certainly so a fortiori of 

 the Greeks, whose whole culture grew out of music, and remained in the closest 

 connection with it to the very end of their classical period. Supposing, 

 therefore, that with this most musical and artistic of all peoples a regard to the 

 mere luxury of sound had, in certain cases, determined the position of the accent, 

 let us ask in what way this determination would naturally manifest itself ? The 

 answer is obvious. In richly terminational languages such as the Greek, where 

 the terminations are not insignificant little short vowels or syllables as in the 

 German Gabe, Buche, Briider, &c, but deep, full-rolling, prolonged vowel- 

 syllables such as cov, ot5, ao, acov, and oio, there might exist a very natural 

 tendency to place the accent on these syllables, — not, of course, because there is 

 any necessary connection, as some persons say, between accenting a syllable 

 and lengthening it, but because when a syllable by the presence of a long vowel 

 actually is long, the placing of the accent on it, is the most certain way both to 

 bring out the full length of the vowel, and to ensure the permanence of the full 

 musical value of the syllable, so long as the language lasts. For whatever 

 other syllables of a word may from carelessness, or .haste, or reasonless fashion, 

 be cheated of their natural quantity, the accented syllable will always most 

 stoutly maintain its rights, even if it be a short syllable, much more if it be 

 a long. To illustrate this by a familiar example ; in the famous Homeric line 

 (II. i. 49), in which the twang of Apollo's bow is described : — 



" Seivrj Se Kkayyrj yiver dpyvpeoio yStoto," 



it is manifest both that the euphony of the line lies mainly in the two termi- 

 nations in oio, though these syllables are certainly not the significant ones in the 

 verse ; and further, that this verse is much more beautiful when recited with the 

 rhythmical accent on both the full-sounding penults, than when, according to 

 the prose accentuation, it emphasizes only the 61 of the last word. The coinci- 

 dence of the termination with the accent therefore is favourable to music ; and 

 it is favourable also as a bar to the injury which time is always ready to inflict 

 on final unaccented syllables. Now, with this principle to guide us, we shall have 

 no difficulty in seeing the cause of one peculiar excellence which the ancient 

 Roman critics recognised in the Greek, as contrasted with their own tongue, in 

 respect of the accentual system. For, as the Romans in no word placed the 

 accent on the last syllable, it followed that they could enjoy the rich auricular 

 luxury of a grand terminational unison of accent and quantity, only in the case 



