302 PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON THE 



grammarians, that Greek accents contained the two elements of elevation and 

 stress of voice, and are, in fact, practically identical with the accents in English, 

 Italian, German, and other modern languages. And this truth I have carried 

 out in practice for twenty years with increasing profit and satisfaction. In 

 England, however, as was to have been expected, no attention was paid to a 

 Greek argument coming from the north side of the Tweed ; and, accordingly, in 

 the next work, that of Chandler,"- which issued from the Oxford press, we find 

 the whole subject flung back into a grim limbo of despair, and involved in a 

 mantle of impenetrable darkness. In the preface to his work, this author goes so 

 far as to assert that neither Porson nor any other scholar, " while sanctioning 

 the practice of accentuating Greek by their example, has condescended to 

 justify it by sound and conclusive reasons. Porson specially, it is hinted in 

 terms more vigorous than polite, " gave assertion for proof in the matter, 

 actuated partly by his contempt for Wakefield, who happened to entertain a 

 different opinion from his own." Then he goes on to proclaim the utter hope- 

 lessness of being able to arrive at any certainty with regard to the meaning of 

 accents ; it is not even certain that they did not " indicate the length or short- 

 ness of syllables ; " he denounces " the absurdity of those who perpetuate in 

 writing a something to which they never attend in reading, and who persist in 

 ornamenting their Greek with three small scratches, the very meaning of which 

 is doubtful and perhaps unknown," and laments in the most pathetic terms his 

 own evil destiny in having had anything to do with the tangled disorder of 

 " these troublesome appendages." 



" There 's something wrong iri accents — cursed spite 

 That ever I was born to set it right ! " 



In fact, it appears not a little extraordinary that a writer who uses such 

 strong language, should not have followed out consistently the practice of his 

 predecessor Hennlnius, and flung the whole cargo of Byzantine lumber over- 

 board ; for what task can be imagined more irksome and more fruitless than to 

 spend long months of painful inquiry, with fret of brain and vexation of vision, 

 upon every mappik and dagesh of a gospel in which the writer does not believe ? 

 Almost contemporaneously with this remarkable book of Mr Chandler, ap- 

 peared an interesting paper on accent and quantity by Professor Munro of 

 Cambridge.! The occasion of this discourse was a Latin inscription in accentual 

 hexameters from Cirta in Numidia, and supposed by the professor to belong to 

 the third century of our era. In commenting on these verses, of course, the 

 writer was led to explain both what accent meant, and how it came to pass 



* A Practical Introduction to Greek Accentuation. By H. W. Chandler, M.A. Oxford, 1862. 

 t On a Metrical Latin Inscription, copied by Mr Blakeslet, at Cirta. — " Transactions of the 

 Cambridge Philosophical Society," vol. x. part 2. 1861. 



