THE vocal part ofl anguage, the great instrument of that noble faculty, which had long remained in undeserved neglect, has of late years begun to experience that attention which its importance merits. The result has been a clearer arrangement of the elements of speech, the acknowledgment of the barbarous but incorrigible capriciousness of our own and some other modern alphabets, and the establishment of just and natural distinctions between the several accidents of vocal language, which had been strangely confounded by the inattention of grammarians. In no instance has this inattention been more conspicuous, than in the disputes which have been agitated respecting the proper mode of pronouncing the Greek language. The different partizans in this question were divided into the advocates for accent, and those for quantity; strangely forgetting that each of these qualities is incident to every word that is uttered; and that, when properly understood, there is not the least inconsistency between the modes of pronunciation which they require. The advocates for quantity however, as they termed themselves, fell into the greatest absurdities; for the whole amount of the reformation which they proposed, and in a great degree accomplished, is that of transfering to the Greek language the rules of Las tin accentuation, while they continued in many instances, equally with their adversaries, to violate the laws of quantity. This subject was so little understood, even by grammarians of the greatest minence, that even Valckenaer, while his learning did not permit him to doubt the genuineness of the Greek accentual marks transmitted to us, yet asserts, that not a single verse of a poet, not a single sentence of an orator, is to be pronounced according to them. In our pre

sent ignorance of the true pronun of antiquity, this rule may peri admitted; as applied to ancient pra it is manifestly erroneous.

The author of the present tract, t we feel ourselves compelled in soLIN spects to differ from him, has, whole, treated his subject with acu and ingenuity. His book is distri into three parts: the first treating on mentary sounds; the second, on ax the third, on prosody; chiefly that es a English language, but illustrated by quent references to those of antiquity, The following is the introduction to first of these divisions.

"1. The vocal and articulate sour

which all human speech is composed, a nature limited to a small number. T lysc a language, therefore, and ascertas elementary sounds, which, by varica binations, constitute the whole of is bulary, would seem to be no very d have yet no perfect analysis of our o undertaking. It is certain, however, thi guage; of which the investigation is pe ed by our very imperfect and irregular ing.

2. Vowels, diphthongs, and coas are names by which sometimes lette meant, and sometimes the sounds of those letters are respectively the ar signs. But, surely, things in their 12 essentially different ought to have diste pellations. For the present, I beg use these names constantly in onese signify not letters, but sounds only, w the elements of speech; and the pr reason of our present uncertainty respe those elements, in our own language, that we have endeavoured to ascerta by tracing the various powers of the which we read, instead of comparing classing the sounds which we hear.

"3. The vowels, in English, are sented sometimes by single letters, ani by two or more letters combined: whether single or combined, the same

rs frequently represent different vowels. ut, however represented, every vowel in r language, except one, is subject to the tinction of long and short, independently the other accidents of tone and emphasis. at, for instance, is a short syllable, and e a long one; and hence the first has n considered as an example of the short, d the second an example of the long vowel So also men and mene, moll and mole, mplify what have been called the short long rouels e and o. Let the words, vever, be compared, not as written charac, but as audible sounds; and if men and ne be alternately pronounced with atten, they will be found to differ in nothing the length of the vowel. So also moll, ng on y lengthened in sound, becomes l; and by the same process, the short lable bum is drawn into balm; bin into

ua, &c.

4. By this simple experiment we shall d, that, however differently represented, by gie letters, or otherwise, the vowels (always ning the vocal sounds) in every word or Table of the same class, in the following list, e constantly the same, excepting only the erence of quantity, which is marked in the al manner.

List of Words classed according to their respective Vowels.

1. Bốt, bōught; coll, call; don, dawn; not, naught; &c. rát, raft;

2. Pan, palm; lp, laugh; Sám, psalin; păpâ; &c.

3. Ben, bane; dell, dale; wren, rain;

&c.

4. Bin, bean; dím, deem; deceive; rědeem, reveal; &c.

5. Nŏ, known; jõrõse, mõrōse ; &c. 6. Book, boon; pull, pōōl; loose, lõse; do, doom; &c.

7. But, bun, done, son, &c. always short. "Of these vowels, the last has been hought peculiar to the English tongue. It s, in one respect, an imperfect vowel, as it is capable of being prolonged, or forming a ong syllable. It is, however, very nearly the ame with the Italian o chinso, which is probly the same with the ancient oxpov; nor loes it differ sensibly from the sound of e the French monosyllables je, me, te, se, que, le, &c. and in the final syllables of the words gloire, victoire, &c. &c. when they occer in poetical composition See, on this subject, a letter from Voltaire, subjoined to the Abbé d'Olivet's Prosodie Françoise."

The author does not appear to us to be quite accurate in several of the sounds which he here classes under the seventh tower; the o in venom, the e in thundérér, the u in but, all seeming, to our ears at least, to be distinguished by shades of perceptible difference, though too minute perhaps for classification.

The analysis of the diphthong I (p. 13),

latter.

From vowels the author

as composed of the seventh, very rapidly. melted into the fourth of the precedin. vowel sounds, is not to us satisfactoryg It appears rather to result from the combination of the second and fourth, the former element passing rapidly into the passes to diphthongs and triphthongs; of the former of which he enumerates eighteen, of the latter three, in our language. Under the former of these heads, the question respecting the power of the characters w and is largely treated, and their vowel sound is very satisfactorily maintained.

The distinction between the sounds of the word that, as emphatic or unemphatic, gives occasion to a grammatical disquisition on the force and propriety of that word when employed as a relative. Its necessity, as subservient to any discriminations of sense, we do not perceive; to its use for the purposes of euphony and variety, we are ready to subscribe.

Accent is the subject of the second part of this work; by which term the author understands not emphasis, but intonation, some mode of which accompanies hypothesis which he adopts, is that of Mr. every syllable that we pronounce. The Steele, explained in a work entitled 'Prosodia rationalis,' not, we believe, generally known, but in many respects deserving of attention.

The use of the Greek accentual marks our anonymous author gives up, as wholly The exact power, once lost, cannot cerlost, and incapable of being retrieved. tainly be restored. Two circumstances, however, seem strongly to imply that they were intended to denote the emphatic syllables of words; one, their application only to single syllables in each word; and the other, the uniformity of that application to a particular syllable.

The slides of Mr. Steele and our author are perpetually varying, with the variation of circumstances and connection in which the words to which they are applied occur.

The remaining subject of this little volume is English prosody. The meaning of the word prosody is simply accent, and in this sense it was originally employed. It has however been gradually deflected by custom from that signification, and is now used to denote the laws by which syllables are arranged in metrical compositions.

The author first shews that the English, like the ancient languages, and in all

probability, like every other language that has ever been spoken, possesses distinctions of quantity in the syllables of which it is constructed. For practical purposes this distinction is denoted with sufficient accuracy by the ratio of two to one, and the ear of every one will enable him to decide that it exists in our own language.

Rhythmus, the Greek writers tell us, has its essence in arsis and thesis, or in plain words, in time-beating. What circumstance then is to determine the pulsations which distinguish it? Not the mere quantity of the syllables, answers our anonymous author, for verses occur in Greek, and may occur in other languages, composed altogether of syllables of equal length, and which therefore contain no indication of the rhythmus to which they are intended to be subject. The division of the words may however afford some indication; and it is at all events to be remembered, that the occurrence of these verses is so rare, that it is scarcely admissible to build any theory of prosody upon them. To such verses may be applied the observation of Herman, isti ommes numeri, quum certis formis careant, in singulis poetarum locis adnotandi sunt. De metr. Græc. p. 370.

If the principle of rhythmus is not to be found in quantity, it can only depend, our author argues, on emphatic impulse. It is therefore manifest,' he concludes, that what has been hitherto commonly considered as a great defect, and a striking mark of inferiority, and even barbarism, in modern languages, has at all times been alike inherent in every language, namely, that in our versification, the rhythmus depends on emphatic impulse.' To establish more fully the similarity between the ancient and modern systems of metre, he endeavours to show that the distinctions of short and long syllables were far from being so accurate as is commonly imagined. The ancient writers indeed tell us that of short syllables, some were shorter, of long syllables, some longer, than others. But the circumstance from which our author principally argues, is the law by which a short syllable in position is considered as a long 'It were absurd,' he says, to suppose that any real augmentation was ever effected by the simple collision of mute

one.

consonants. But this statement does appear to us to be accurate. Even Dic sius, in his examples of os, polos, Tork, and popes, allows that some addition of time accrues in consequence of the acctmulation of consonants, though not sulcient to change the denomination of the syllable. But if this change results from consonants preceding a short vowel, it will certainly result in a greater degre from their arrangement after that vowe.. in consequence of the greater effort with which, in that situation, they must be cttered. Every one must be sensible that the syllable ex is properly long, the ennciation of the consonant requiring a least an equal tone with that of the vo The first four letters of the word are the same with those of the word oußpos, yet who does not perceive the greater length of time, which, from the difference of their arrangement, is requi site in the latter case for their utterance This subject is well illustrated by M. Mitford, in his inquiry into the prin ples of harmony in language. p. 41.

The great difference which subsists be tween the ancient and modern metri. systems, appears to us perfectly obv In the ancient languages, not only are and short syllables distinguished wat sufficient accuracy from each other, the laws by which they are arranged is the several species of verse are clearly as certained, and the licences which in cer tain cases are admitted, are confired within determinate bounds, while the s tuation of the accent (or emphatic sylla ble) remains in most instances, nearly a matter of indifference. On the other hand, in modern versification, though long and short syllables may be e distinguished from each other, yet no rais can be devised for their regular recur rence; while the emphatic syllables po sess their determinate place in every verse. with the admission of a few known liberties. In other words, the modern rhythmical ictus is coincident with the emph tic syllables, and determines their po tion; in the ancient languages, the rhyth mical ictus is commonly independant c the syllabic emphasis; and the only unformity observable in the versification of those languages, is in the employment and arrangement of syllables according t their quantity.