musical quantity; but if any one were to attempt to write the first line of the popular song from the Bohemian Girl, "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls," in such a way as to represent the musical time, it is obvious that he must write the first syllable of marble with two aa's, maarble; and our mode of writing would instantly assimilate itself to that of the Greeks and Romans as described, but of which very few specimens remain in existence. We have, however, various species of verse, regulated by fixed and definite laws. Our heroic verse, for instance, consists of ten syllables, and if the words composing a line in that metre happen to contain more, they must by elision, apostrophe, and the narrow resources of the licentia poetica, as practised by English poets, be reduced to that number. For example, our most correct and harmonious versifier, in the very first word of his incomparable translation of the Iliad, was under the necessity of writing and pronouncing Achilles' in the genitive case precisely as he pronounced it in the nominative in the seventh line,

"Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring."

After two Epsilons, however, came to be denoted by the single character Eta, and two Omicrons by the single character Omega, it is probable that convenience caused this mode of writing to be adopted in prose as well as in verse; and in the course of time words written in this way presented the singular anomaly of a syllable with a long writing applied, or rather misapplied, by poetical necessity to denote a short quantity; thus directly falsifying the information, it had been originally invented for the sole purpose of conveying.

XXVI. Valpy says, a long vowel or diphthong is generally shortened at the end, and sometimes at the beginning of a word before a vowel, as očko εv, Homer; πočɛî, Sophocles; n Cŵoi eiμes, Theocritus; and Matthiæ, that long vowels and diphthongs of every kind are shortened by the epic and lyric writers, and by the tragedians in lyric passages; and even that syllables in the same word are used both long and

short in close connection, of which he adduces various examples from Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. Matthiæ makes the following singular admission, which I shall give in his own words:" As it is scarcely credible that poetic licence should have extended to the arbitrary lengthening of syllables to suit the metre, among a people possessed of so fine a sense for harmony and rhythm as is manifest even in the Homeric poems, it is not improbable that in the oldest times the quantity of the vowels, not only (a, t, v,) but also the E and O sounds (ɛ and ŋ, o and w), WAS STILL INDETERMINATE IN ORDINARY PRONUNCIATION; SO THAT THERE WAS NOTHING REMARKABLE IN THE POETS USING THE SAME SYLLABLE SOMETIMES AS LONG AND SOMETIMES

AS SHORT. This is the more conceivable in an age like that of Homer, when the use of writing was very confined, and before the short and long E and O sounds had been denoted by separate letters," (p. 53.)

XXVII. If it were possible that we could recover contemporary copies of the Iliad and Odyssey as sung by the Rhapsodists, together with the tunes to which they recited them, and be able at the same time completely to understand the musical notation, I have not the slightest doubt that the existence of one law at least would be clearly demonstrated; and that is, that a long musical note was invariably accompanied by a long poetical syllable, and a short musical note by a short one; and I believe that in a great variety of instances it is utterly hopeless to endeavour to seek to discover why particular syllables are long or short, from considerations deduced from the nature of language, as the cause was altogether extraneous to language, and depended solely on the musical accompaniment, which has perished for ever. But in every branch of human learning and attainment we shall discover that long and sonorous words abound in the inverse ratio to clear statements and conclusive reasonings; and in none do we meet with more than in prosody, which, like the noise and smoke of pieces of artillery, when they do no execution, at least tend to disguise the defeat, and cover the retreat of a discomfited army. The accomplished editor

DD

of Matthiæ remarks as justly as forcibly in connection with other branches of grammar, in language which it would be equally injustice to abridge, and presumption to alter:-" We are still obliged to have recourse, in the way of explanation, to many gratuitous suppositions and unphilosophical shifts, for which grammarians have invented fine names that serve as circumlocutions to express our ignorance of the real causes and reasons of the peculiarities which we would explain. We meet with a dative case where the laws of construction require a genitive, and it is considered to be a sufficient account of the matter, if we say that it is per schema Colophonium. A word is used in a way that violates the analogy of language; we satisfy ourselves with remarking a catachresis. For unaccountable changes in the form of words, metaplasmus is the panacea. It is scarcely possible to calculate the mischief which has been done to knowledge of all kinds by the invention of technical terms. In the first instance they facilitate the acquisition of a science; but afterwards they have a natural tendency to stop the progress of research and improvements, because men are generally disposed to acquiesce in an established nomenclature, without considering the principles upon which it was originally formed. Thus even the necessary terms of grammar, which we imbibe almost with our mother's milk, become so familiar to our ears, that we are seldom led to investigate, by the philosophy of language, their precise signification, or the justice of that classification of which they are the generic expressions." (Editor's Preface, p. 11.)

XXVIII. I shall close this chapter with a few forcible remarks of Thiersch on the subject of the Greek accents. He says, with regard to reading by accent, the greatest obstacle to this practice appears, when the acute, by the increase of a word, is shifted from its place, and transfers the tone marked by it to a short syllable; so that the pronunciation would oppose the rhythm both of the Roman tongue and of poetry. Can we believe that the Greeks pronounced Socrátes, Demosthenes, Cicéro, (Σωκράτης, Δημοσθένης, Κικέρων), while the Romans certainly said Sócrates, Demósthenes, and

Cícero? Moreover it seems quite impossible to preserve quantity according to this method, as in

Od. i. 2.

Πλάγχθη ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν. where in the first half of the line, indeed, the rhythm of accent coincides with the rhythm of the verse; but in the latter position just as far recedes from it, — giving the tone ptolíethron épersen; whereas the verse requires ptoliéthron epérsen. This difficulty brought even Valcknaer, who was frequently partial in his views and opinions on elementary subjects, to the judgment that, although accents must be retained on account of their usefulness in discriminating the meanings of words, not a single verse of a poet, nor a single sentence of an orator, could be read according to them. (p. 87.) In conclusion, I would observe that as we know what syllables were long, and short in every species of Greek and Roman verse, from the laws of the different metres, which are in fact the musical time or quantity, while the marks (~~) by which that time is at present denoted were in all probability originally so many musical notes, it would be wise to write them long and short as the Greeks and Romans did, which might be easily done, without altering one jot or tittle in our present mode of printing, by merely adding a dot, of the nature of the Hebrew Dagesh, under every syllable that is actually long in the position in which we find it; and if it were done in red ink the eye would immediately be able to find that which it is in search of; and every page of every Greek book printed in this way would be converted into a perpetual Thesaurus. As we know what syllables were long, why not write them long? and as we do not, and in many instances cannot possibly know why they were long, why should we persist in devoting to this branch of grammar more attention than to all the rest put together? If the time now devoted to the study of the quantity of syllables were transferred to the investigation of the accurate meaning of words, I believe that, while little would be lost to the cause of taste, much would be gained to that of solid and valuable knowledge.

CHAP. XXXV.

ON INITIAL ASPIRATES. THE ÆOLIC DIGAMMA.

"There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power

Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit

By voice or hand; and various-measured verse,
Æolian charms, and Dorian lyrick odes,

And his who gave them birth, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own."

Paradise Regained, book iv.

I. ONE of the most perplexing questions, in the whole range of philology, is the origin, nature, use, and application of what is called the Eolic Digamma. The dispute commences in limine; for some deny altogether that it was peculiar to the Æolians; and the term Digamma, while it describes only one of its forms, and it has as many as Proteus, certainly conveys a very false impression of its power, or sound; which, whatever else it may have been, had unquestionably nothing analogous to that of G, in any known language. Marsh, in his Hora Pelasgicæ, observes, "the character which distinguishes the Eolic dialect might properly be called the Pelasgic Digamma. The whole of Greece, as we have already seen, was once called Pelasgia; and that the use of the Digamma was not, in ancient times, confined to a particular race of Greeks, appears from the manner in which Dionysius of Halicarnassus describes it. He speaks in general terms of the Digamma, as of the custom of the ancient Greeks, whence we may consider the Digamma as the pristine character of the Greek language. And again, the difference, therefore, which afterwards subsisted between the Æolic and the other dialects, was not occasioned by an insertion on the part of the Eolians, but an omission on the part of the other Greeks," (p. 50.)

II. If this dispute is ever to be brought to a satisfactory