304 PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON THE 



Italian, and \ir\vw aeiSe 6ed in a modern Greek mouth, are equally remote from 

 the accent and quantity given to the words by Homer or Demosthenes." 



It will be observed that this passage touches exactly on the same absurdity 

 which, sixty years earlier, had roused the sprightly indignation of the author of 

 " Metron Ariston," and the grave episcopal censure of Dr Horsley. 



In the "Cambridge Journal of Philology," vol. i., for 1868, appeared an 

 article on the English pronunciation of Greek, by W. G. Clark, then public 

 orator, Cambridge. Mr Clark is a scholar particularly well entitled to 

 speak on this subject, both from his general accomplishments, which are far 

 from being confined to the ordinary routine of an English classical scholar, and 

 specially from his having travelled in Greece, and taken note of the actual 

 accents of the language, as at present spoken by the people. In theory, Mr 

 Clark entirely agrees with Professor Munro, that the ancient Greek accent 

 consisted merely in the elevation of the tone, while the accent of the modern 

 Greek includes " a stress precisely like our own, which is given by prolonging 

 the sound, as well as by raising the note." When it falls upon a syllable it 

 lengthens the vowel except before a double consonant. Thus Xoyos is pro- 

 nounced Xvyos, 6Vo? iovos, and so forth. With regard to scholastic practice, Mi- 

 Clark is of opinion that, while our English Greek vocalisation is altogether 

 anomalous and indefensible, and must be abandoned, the present system of 

 reading Greek with Latin accents should not be touched, because the modern 

 system of accentuation is widely different from the ancient, and its adoption 

 could only tend " to confuse such ideas as we at present possess of the rhythm 

 of ancient Greek verse." And again, "It is impossible in practice to recur to 

 the ancient system of accentuation, supposing that we have ascertained it in 

 theory. Here and there a person may be found with such an exquisite ear, 

 and such plastic organs of speech, as to be able to reproduce the ancient dis- 

 tinction between the length and tone of syllables accented and unaccented, and 

 many not so gifted may fancy that they reproduce it when they do nothing of 

 the kind. For the mass of boys and men, pupils as well as teachers, the dis- 

 tinction is practically impossible." So Mr Clark leaves us, so far as action is 

 concerned, in a plight little better than that in which we were left by Chandler, 

 — not enveloped, indeed, in impermeable mystery, but clogged with impracticable 

 fetters, and groaning under a yoke of grammatical tradition which neither we 

 nor our fathers were able to bear. 



A strange and a grateful contrast to the general current of English scholar- 

 ship on this subject is presented by Mr Geldart, of Balliol College, Oxford, in 

 his interesting and ingenious book, entitled " The Modern Greek Language in 

 its Eelation to Ancient Greek; Oxford, 1870." In the third chapter of this 

 work, the author states views with regard to accent and quantity which lift 

 him completely out of what has always appeared to me the sort of enchanted 



