duration of time. It must carefully be distinguished from accent or syllabic emphasis. It may have four degrees.

1. The length of the shortest quantity is equal to the time of pronouncing the word is or it, or the syllable si in possible, or ti in critical. Thus, in the words from, and, of, in the following line :—

From the knaves, and the fools, and the fops of the time.

2. The length of the short quantity is equal to the time of pronouncing such syllables as those in italics in the following lines:

Soft is the strain, when zephyr gent-ly blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother num-bers flows;
But when loud sur-ges lash the sound-ing shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the tor-rent

roar.

3. The length of the long quantity is equal to the time of pronouncing such syllables as those in italics in the following line :

These are thy glo-rious works, Pa-rent of Good!

4. The length of the longest quantity is equal to the time of pronouncing such words, as aim, fame, mood, roam, or the syllables in Italics in the following line:

How the sweet moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

This accident of speech is closely connected with accent in the prosody of our language, and is often confounded with it. Accent, however, is nothing more than the stress or emphasis given to syllables. It is of three kinds, viz., primary, secondary, and tertiary; or, it may be expressed in another way, by considering each syllable in a word as either feeble, accented, or emphatic. The accented syllable of a word is generally given with more precise articulation, and more exactness in regard to the quality of sound, than the unaccented.

"The general tendency of English speech," says Walker, "with regard to the seat of the accent, is to the penultimate of dyssyllables, and to the antepenultimate of polysyllables."* The love of Englishmen for the antepenultimate is shown in the following words, though contrary to classic taste and accentuation: indécorous for indecorous; inímical for inimícal; imprimis for imprimis; indicative and óptative for indicátive and optátive.

"It is likewise a tendency of English speech to distinguish nouns from verbs by a difference of accent, and where such distinction is attempted, the accent always tends to a high seat in nouns, and a low seat in verbs." Hence, in the following, the penultimate is preferable to the antepenulti

* Antè, p. 14.

mate. contem'plate, confis'cate, exti'rpate, demo'nstrate, deva'state, &c.

The secondary accent is readily observable in the words accidental a'daman"tine, a"griculture, o′′ligarchy, &c.

"With regard to words terminating in e-an, there can be no doubt, that they are inclined, by the genius of the language, to have the accent on the previous syllable, as, cerulean, marmorean, Cerbérean, Herculean, Epicurean, &c.; but classical custom here intervenes, and accents the majority of them on the penultimate." (Walker.)

In pointing out the feeble, accented, and emphatic syllables, the following will serve as instances: in luminary and occasion, the syllables lu and ca are accented, the rest are feeble :

Cease, then, on trásh thy hopes to bind,
Let nobler views engage the mind.

Here, the syllables trash and no (in nobler) have the emphatic accent. If these words stood alone, the emphatic accent would, of course, not be used, so that this accent depends on the stress required for the delivery of the sentence. Ignorance of where the accent should be placed, occasions the greatest difficulties of pronunciation.

EMPHASIS.

Emphasis, in a general sense, means any degree of force or stress by which syllables, words, or clauses are distinguished from one another. It may be divided into five kinds :

1. Syllabic Emphasis.

2. Organic Emphasis.
3. The Emphasis of Sense.
4. The Emphasis of Force.
5. The Weak Emphasis.

Syllabic Emphasis is that force or stress which is given to some particular syllable of a word, above what is given to any other; thus, in the words father, mother, the syllabic emphasis is on the first syllable; in reply, compose, veracity, it is on the second. The only case in which it is necessary to take notice of syllabic emphasis in reading, is that in which the sense requires it to be transposed.

Accent, as distinct from syllabic emphasis, though often confounded with it, means, the degrees of stress laid on the syllables of words, and is divided into the primary, secondary, and tertiary accent, and has nothing to do with the transposition of emphasis. In a wider sense, accent means the distinguishing tone or expression of voice with which whole sentences are delivered. This latter is named the provincial accent, and constitutes the peculiar song or recitative of each country and province, and,

according to the law of language established in every capital city, it is a stain of rusticity and an object of censure.

As syllabic emphasis relates to the pronunciation of words taken singly, it can have little to do with Elocution, which treats of the pronunciation of words in succession. The only case, therefore, in which it is necessary to take notice of syllabic emphasis in reading, is that in which the sense requires it to be transposed. This happens when two words, which have a sameness in part of their formation, are opposed to each other in sense; as,

What is done, cannot be un-done.

where we naturally place the syllabic emphasis on the first syllable of undone, to distinguish it from done. The same thing happens in words which are not opposed in sense, but which have a sameness of termination; as,

In this species of composition, plausibility is much more essential than probability.

The syllabic emphasis is, in this example, transposed from the third to the first syllable in the words plausibility and probability.

A whole clause receives an increase of meaning, by resigning the emphasis to one single, and often apparently unimportant, word. We say, for instance,

He behaves like a Prince.

where we make the word prince emphatic, but