where would have been the need of such a dístinction as ẞapúтovov, if the whole language had been barytone? How could the term avaßißaoμòc have been applied at all to words of two syllables, if they had invariably the accent on the first? That term implies a transferring of the accent from its usual place to a prior syllable. But where the accent is already on the first syllable, how can any question arise whether it ought to be placed higher? and yet we find whole pages in the grammarians, and particularly in Apollonius, as to the propriety of the avaßißaouòc of words, many of which are disyllables, as περὶ and παρά. The reasons given are subtle, and not always intelligible to a modern scholar. But we need not enter into the merits of the dispute; the fact of the dispute having arisen is enough for the point I am now endeavouring to prove.

It may be worth observing, that many of the passages cited afford a more particular proof than that already given, that the mark (') at the end of a word must stand for an acute; because we find it marked over the last syllable of the very words which the grammarians call oxytones. General reasoning shows that repi must have an acute somewhere, and therefore probably on the last; but this becomes a certainty when we find particular testimony for its being an oxytone, in authors of competent knowledge, not one of whom gives the remotest hint that it is less an oxytone in the middle, than at the end, of a sen.

tence. A great probability too is given to an oxytone pronunciation of some words, from their being used in totally different senses, though spelled in the same manner. Anμoc means people, or fat; lea, spectacle, or goddess; ȧywv, contest, or leading; according to its mark, and therefore probably to its pronunciation. The passage of Homer Όφρα σαώσης

Τρώας καὶ Τρωάς (ΙΙ. Χ. 56.),

in our monotonous manner of reading it, sounds like an unmeaning repetition.

We find many words used in different senses according to their accent, in Ammonius (Пepi Aiapóρwv Aéčewv); and, though he wrote after the second century, he occasionally quotes grammarians of an earlier date; as for instance, Tryphon: Μισητὴ καὶ μισήτη διαφέρει παρὰ τοῖς Αττικοῖς ὡς φησι Τρύφων, ἐν δευτέρῳ περὶ ̓Αττικῆς προσωδίας· ἐὰν μὲν γὰρ ὀξυτονήσωμεν, σημαίνει τὴν ἀξίαν μίσους (καθὰ καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐν τῇ συνηθείᾳ προφερόμεθα)· ἐὰν δὲ βαρυτονήσωμεν, τὴν καταφερῆ πρὸς συνουσίαν. (In voce Μισητή.) Here again the word προφερόμεθα shows, that he means the pronunciation, and not the marking, of the word.

Further, many words have the mark of the circumflex on the last syllable, which ought therefore to be raised in the pronunciation, though we be unable to give it the exact modification of sound which that mark requires. Apollonius says that adverbs ending in OY are circumflexed (περισπάται), which expression always means that

the last syllable has a circumflex, in the same way as ὀξύνεται means that the last syllable has an acute; the instances he gives are, ὑψοῦ, τηλου, ἀγχοῦ, αὐτοῦ. (De Adverb. in Bekker. Anecdot. Græc. p. 587.)

So adverbs in OI, as Μεγαροι, Ισθμοῖ, ἐνταυθοῖ. · (Ibid. p. 588.) ο πλακούς, because it is contracted from πλακόεις, as τυρόεις τυροῦς, σησαμόεις σησαμους. (Athen. xiv. 644.) One of the guests in Athenæus, reproaching the morals of his companion, says, Σὺ δὲ, ὦ σοφιστὰ, ἐν τοῖς καπηλείοις συναναφύρῃ οὐ μετὰ ἑταίρων, ἀλλὰ μετὰ ἑταιρῶν. (xiii. p. 567.) How could any effect, or indeed any meaning, be given to this satire, without laying an accent on the last syllable of the last word? Solon in a scholium on Homer (Il. E. 656), says: Ὁ μὲν ̓Αρίσταρχος τὸ ἁμαρτῇ χωρὶς τοῦ Ι γράφει καὶ ὀξύνει. Οἱ δὲ περὶ Ἡρωδιανὸν περισπώσι, καὶ προσγράφουσι. (Valckn. Animadversion. ad Ammonium. p. 241.) Here the only point in difference between these great critics and grammarians was the kind of accent to be laid on the last syllable; but to lay it on the middle syllable, as we do, did not occur to either of them.

Plutarch, in his life of Theseus, has the following passage: Καὶ σὺν αὐτοῖς Ερμον, ἄνδρα τῶν Αθήνησιν εὐπατριδῶν· ἀφ ̓ οὗ καὶ τόπον Ερμοῦ καλεῖν οἰκίαν τοὺς πυθοπολίτας· οὐκ ὀρθῶς τὴν δευτέραν συλλαβὴν περισπώντας καὶ τὴν δόξαν ἐπὶ θεὸν ἀπὸ ἥρωος μετατιθέντας. How is any sense to be made of this passage, but by supposing that the genitive

of Epuoc had the accent on the first syllable, and the genitive of Epunc, Mercury, on the second?

There are, in the first ten verses of the manuscript of Theophilus, eighty-two words of more than one syllable, of which eleven have an acute, and thirteen a circumflex on the last; this exactly agreeing with what Quinctilian says of the variety of the Greek accent, as contrasted with the monotony of the Latin, in which "Ultima syllaba nec acuta unquam excitatur, nec flexa circumducitur," makes it in the highest degree improbable that all these marks on the last syllable should be wrong at any rate, it is impossible that our accentuation of the Greek language in general can be right, inasmuch as we make every polysyllable a barytone, and elaborately introduce into Greek that very monotony which Quinctilian observes with regret to be inseparable from the Latin.

Having thus shown that many polysyllables are accented on the last syllable, I have a right, on the authority of the manuscript of Theophilus, confirmed as it is by the two others, and by the Oxford and Leipsic editions, to assume that Tool is one of those words, till it can be shown, either that the monotonous accentuation which Quinctilian deprecated, is the true one, or that, though there be oxytones among the polysyllables, oλλol is not one of them. Why the Greeks should lay the accent on the las syllable of πολλοί, and on the first of λόγοις,

I will endeavour to explain when I sufficiently understand why the English say hollow and bestów. It was so because usage would have it so language in all its bearings is very arbitrary, and can seldom be explained by the eternal fitness of things. For the same reason that we lay the accent on the second syllable of Too, we shall of course lay it on the second of repi, and all other words marked in the same

manner.

DISYLLABLES.

8. We see that the accentuation of the oxytones, if not entirely arbitrary, depends upan various rules, many of them subtle, and some of them disputed. The rules for the accents of barytone words are more simple and regular. A disyllable barytone, since it must have an accent, must of course have that accent on its first syllable. In what cases this accent is to be an acute, and in what a circumflex, it is of little importance to inquire, until we know how to make the proper distinction between them in pronunciation it is enough for our present purpose to know, that the first syllable of ex and of Snuoc must be raised, because we find a mark on it. I have considered the question to be one of choice, which of the two syllables of the word is to be raised. This may be the fittest place to observe, that to raise both, though not physically impossible, would be against the analogy of all