PLACE AND POWER OF ACCENT IN LANGUAGE. 291 



that accents were originally musical marks, and had nothing to do with 

 the pronunciation of the language ; that the best proof of this was the un- 

 rhythmical jar which they produced, when actually applied to the recitation 

 of verse, whether Greek or Latin ; and that therefore the only course left to the 

 scholar of taste was to disregard them altogether, and use only such accent as 

 was manifestly dictated by the march of the metre. While, however, this 

 ingenious scholar found it comparatively easy work to pronounce a dictatorial 

 sentence of eternal exclusion against Greek accents, of which few had any real 

 knowledge, he found himself obstinately met by an obvious objection from the 

 familiar practice of the Latin tongue, which, while it distinctly disowns (except 

 in a very few exceptive cases) all oxytone accentuation, nevertheless, in verse, 

 constantly uses an emphasis, which falls with marked effect on the last syllable 

 of one or more words in the verse. In answering this objection, Voss fell upon 

 an aspect of the case, which, if he had applied it to Greek poetry, might have 

 saved him from the trouble of beating vainly against the strong bulwarks of 

 Alexandrian and Roman and Byzantine tradition in the matter; for he distinctly 

 says that singing is one thing and reading another, and that the Romans may 

 have followed a different law of accentuation with regard to each. " Quare non 

 qiddem multum refragabor, si quis in recitatione Latinorum poematum ultimas 

 syllabas unquam productas fuisse negaverit : sed vero in Cantu id ipsum fieri 

 potuisse si quis contendat, idem etiam merito affirmet et Latinos canere nescivisse."* 

 Close upon the traces of Vossius comes a German, Henry Christian Hennin, 

 whose work entitled " 'EXA^ta-joto? dpOcpSos, Traject ad Rhenum, 1684," with a 

 great flourish of trumpets on its title-page, proclaims itself to prove " Grcecam 

 linguam secundum accentus, ut vulgo ab omnibus hucusque fieri consuerit, pronun- 

 ciandam non esse." The inspiration of this book — for it is full of fervour and 

 emphasis, and a sort of lofty protestation — manifestly is the same as that of 

 Voss' treatise ; a certain school of scholars with whom the writer had been 

 familiar, or it may be all the scholars of his time and place had got into a habit 

 of sacrificing the rhythmical recitation of Greek poetry to the traditional accen- 

 tuation of Greek prose, a usurpation, no doubt, of a most gross kind, and which 

 it was obvious to think could best be got rid of by not only dethroning the 

 usurper and telling him to keep to his proper place, but by killing him outright, 

 and casting him down among the dead men with a triple volley of curse and 

 execration. It was a procedure akin to that in political history, when democracy 

 dethrones despotism, and acts ten times more despotically than the tyrant whom 

 it overthrew. In conducting his indictment against the accents, the author com- 

 mits in the outset the very transparent blunder of confounding the marks of the 

 accents in printed books, with the living accents in the mouth of the people who 

 spoke the Greek language. These marks, whether present or absent in books, 



* Deviribus rhythmi, p. 44. N.B. — By productas in this passage he evidently means accented. 



