says the second Greek character (†) for this simple aspirate (H) does not seem to have been in use till the other was appropriated to express another letter. An ancient Scholiast, cited by M. de Villoison, says that when the H became a vowel, it was divided into two letters, the first of which was employed to signify the aspirate, and the second the slender or simple vowel sound. Quintilian and other old grammarians seem to have held the same opinion; so that there can be no doubt but that these marks were so employed in the manuscripts of their times. There is, however, no instance of the in any ancient manuscript now extant, or in any manuscript anterior to the ninth century, though the occurs upon the medals of Tarentum, Heraclea, and Lesbos, and also on the Heraclean tables, and an earthern vase published with them by Mazochi, who has conjectured, with much ingenuity and probability, that these two notes were first employed in opposition to each other, to signify the thick and slender enunciation of tone by Aristophanes of Byzantium, the inventor of the accentual marks. The presents notes () and (') are corruptions of them, which were gradually introduced to facilitate writing. (Greek Alphabet, p. 9.)

And again, the ancient scholiasts and grammarians, indeed, who wrote so many ages after the two vowel aspirates had been both dropped from the alphabet, and the one wholly obliterated and disused, finding that which was retained in pronunciation signified, when signified at all, only by the inverted comma (), confounded it with the accentual marks, and established certain whimsical rules of their own for affixing or omitting it. (Greek Alphabet, p. 41.)

x. The excellent Greek Grammar of Moor says, "Spiritus Lenis tantum notat non adhibendum esse Asperum," which is repeated in that of Matthiæ, which on the whole must be regarded as one of the highest authorities in existence, and which says, "the spiritus lenis was an invention of the grammarians. It denotes nothing more than the absence of the spiritus asper. The ancients used this latter, but not the

former." (Remarks, p. 42.) If this account of the Spiritus Lenis be well founded, its own absence is most devoutly to be wished, as it greatly increases the expense and labour of printing Greek Books, and is worse than useless, as it tends to confuse and fatigue the eye. But the whole account of the aspirates is a jumble of contradictions from first to last, and not to be relied on in the smallest degree. In Lanzi's Saggio di Lingua Etrusca, he calls an Oscan I, as well as 1, and the two characters would appear to have precisely the same value, and to differ only as the direction of the writing is from right to left, or from left to right. Thiersch says, originally the rough breathing alone was marked, and even this not always. On the other hand, upon vases of Magna Græcia are seen HPA, HHPAKAEHE; and so ΗΡΑΚΛΕΙΔΑΣ ΗΣΤΙΕΙΩ in an inscription discovered in Calabria. Hence it appears that, by the Italian Greeks, t, the half H, was used as the mark of the aspirate. The grammarians added the other half 4, as a mark of the smooth breathing, and passed through the forms into", after

the twelfth century. (Page 45.) I cannot but express my conviction that the aspirates, as at present used in Greek Books, are equally useless and unmeaning. In "Gruter's Inscriptions" I find what appears to be the Roman name Herennius, written thus ERENNI. If this character was the Roman H, what was ? (Tom. ii. p. 539.)

XI. The mode of writing all the Shemitic languages, is indeed a contracted one; but that contraction does not arise from necessity but from choice; not from the want of vowels, for they have the same vowels and all the vowels of the European languages, as has been shown in this chapter, but from the idea that more is gained by rapid writing than is lost by imperfect expression,- a most fatal error, and perhaps decisive of the degree of civilisation to be attained by the race. Knowledge is power, and experience is the foundation of every thing deserving the name of knowledge. The results of experience cannot be preserved and transmitted, unless they are recorded in writing; and accordingly

we find that savage nations, who possess no mode of writing whatever, continue in the same condition, as to knowledge, century after century, and even from thousand years to thousand years. Hieroglyphics are very imperfect writing, but better than none at all, and they have enabled the Chinese to attain the rudiments of civilisation, but to make no considerable advances. To write the consonants of a language, omitting the greater part of the vowels, is a considerable improvement on hieroglyphics, but falls infinitely short of alphabetical writing as perfected and practised in Europe; and accordingly we find that not one of the Shemitic nations has ever attained a high degree of learning and refinement, and perhaps no nation professing the religion of the Koran at the present day can be compared with the Arabians of Bagdat under the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid, who was contemporary with Charlemagne. Not one literary work of the whole race has ever been generally read in Europe, with the single exception of the Old Testament of the Jews, and that from causes totally independent of its merits as a composition, and chiefly because it is the precursor, and to a very considerable extent the foundation, of the Christian religion.

CHAP. XXXIV.

ON PROSODY.-THE GREEK DRAMA.

"Thence what the lofty grave Tragedians taught
In Chorus or Iambick, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of Fate, and Chance, and Change in human life,
High actions and high passions best describing."

Paradise Regained, book iv.

I. THE subject of Quantity and Accent forms one among a very large class of questions which I have never ceased to regret was not brought before Sancho Panza for adjudication during his government of the island of Barataria, as I now see hardly a chance of its ever being satisfactorily settled. Always shrewd, sagacious, and sententious, I know of no governor of whom mention is made either by history or tradition, whose faculties experienced so prodigious an expansion with an accession of dignity; so much so that he appears to be not merely "a most just judge," but "a second Daniel come to judgment," whose decree admits not of a shadow of doubt, and from whose decision there is no appeal.

Most of the dissertations on Quantity and Accent, on the contrary, have been as unsatisfactory and interminable as the same Sancho Panza telling a story in his very worst vein. "I say, then," quoth Sancho, "that in a certain country town in Estramadura there lived a certain shepherd

-goatherd, I should have said; which goatherd, as the story has it, was called Lope Ruyz; and this Lope Ruyz was in love with a shepherdess, whose name was Toralva; the which shepherdess, whose name was Toralva, was the daughter of a wealthy grazier; and this wealthy grazier "If

thou goest on at this rate," cried Don Quixote, "and makest so many needless repetitions, thou wilt not have told thy story these two days." Fully conscious that I can add little

on this subject to what has been said already, I can only engage in the present chapter to be more influenced by the caution of the knight than the example of the squire.

II. If we were to judge solely from the present state of classical learning in Europe, and more especially in England, we should be obliged to come to the conclusion that there was something in the languages of Greece and Rome different from every other language ever spoken or written by any other race of men—a consequence which it becomes continually more and more difficult to admit, in proportion as our knowledge of languages is extended, and we observe the broad and close analogy which obtains throughout them; for in no languages but the Greek and Latin does the prosody bear anything like such a relation to the whole body of the grammar, and in no other is the difficulty of acquiring an accurate knowledge of the meaning of the words of that language, as nothing, compared with the greater difficulty of remembering the quantity of all the syllables of which those words are composed.

III. I shall, in the first instance, say a few words respecting the prosody of a few of the languages which have been most cultivated, and contain the greatest number of poetical compositions. Sir William Jones, whose authority on this subject few will be disposed to deny, informs us that the modern Persians borrowed their poetical measures from the Arabs, and that those of both nations have much in common with those of the Greeks and Romans. "As to their prosody," says he, "nothing can be more easy and simple; their vowels Elif (a), Vau (o and u), and Ya (i and y) are long by nature; the points which they commonly suppress are naturally short; and every short syllable that ends with a consonant is long by position; but the Persians, like other poets, have many licences; they often add a short vowel which does not properly belong to the word, and they also shorten some long syllables at pleasure by omitting the vowels Elif, Vau, and Ya." (Persian Grammar, Works, vol. v. pp. 300. and 305.).