PLACE AND POWER OF ACCENT IN LANGUAGE. 301 



accents in the scholastic practice of their time. An equally emphatic declaration 

 in favour of accents is made by Hermann in his famous work " De emendandd 

 ratione Grammatices Grcecce ; * " but whether these two illustrious scholars 

 contented themselves with publishing an authoritative manifesto on the neces- 

 sity of maintaining accents as an inherited doctrine of genuine Hellenic ortho- 

 doxy, or took any steps to put their views into that practical shape which alone 

 could give them significance to articulate-speaking mortals, I have not been 

 able to learn. Certain it is, however, that the stagnant waters of the schools — 

 in Germany much more apt than in England to deduce practice from principle — 

 began to be moved in this matter ; and, according to information which I 

 have from continental scholars of high reputation, the accents are now pro- 

 nounced in a great number of the best German gymnasia. I myself, some 

 forty years ago, heard Professor Boeckh, in Berlin, reading the Iambic verse of 

 the tragedians with a distinct and well-marked observance both of accent and 

 quantity. The matter appears to have been left pretty much to the arbitration 

 of the scholastic world ; and we may feel perfectly convinced that the natural 

 conservatism of teachers would have resisted all change in this matter, unless it 

 had been incontestably proved that the change carried with it the double 

 advantage of scientific truth and practical convenience. Whilst the matter was 

 thus not only fairly ventilated, but to a large extent embodied in the scholastic 

 practice of Germany, in England not a single step seems to have been taken 

 either to the recognition of the principle or the settlement of the practice of 

 Greek accents. The well-known declaration of Porson, no doubt, in a note to 

 the Medea,t gave the imperial imprimatur to certain traditional marks as a fact 

 on paper, and of course put a stop for ever to the inchoate practice of printing- 

 Greek books without such marks ; but it was a fact which seemed to remain as 

 mysterious as a row of hieroglyphics on an obelisk before the great decipherment 

 of Champollion. In fact, to use Scripture language, notwithstanding the authori- 

 tative dictum of the great Cantab, the doctrine has remained in England up to the 

 present hour a meaningless thing, " having a name to live while it is dead." In 

 Scotland, indeed, a country too much accustomed slavishly to follow English 

 authority in classical matters, twenty years ago I published a short protest 

 against the gross inconsistency and grave practical grievance of inculcating 

 rules about a host of mysterious marks which gave neither ideas to the intellect 

 nor direction to the ear ;J it had become clear to me as sunlight, not only from 

 meditation on the nature of the case, but from an accurate study of the ancient 



* Ch. xiii. De accentu. 



t " Si quis igitur vestrum ad accuratam Grcecarurn litterarum seientiam aspirat, is probabilem 

 sibi accentuura rationem quam rnaturrime comparet in propositoque perstet, scurrarum dicacitate et stul- 

 torum derisione immotus." 



| The Pronunciation of Greek : Accent and Quantity ; a Philological Inquiry. Edinburgh, 

 1852. 



VOL. XXVI. PART II. 4 I 



