Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/437

Rh 13. In cases where the augment falls as in or,  or where, as in  and , the short vowel closes the first part of a composite word, the prolongation of that syllable in Euripides,  though not altogether avoided, is yet exceedingly rare. (R. P. ad Orest. 64).

14. One great cause of the many mistakes about syllabic quantity should seem to be involved in that false position of S. Clarke's (ad Il. B. 537), that a short vowel preceding any two consonants with which a  syllable can be commenced may form a short syllable. Nothing was ever more unluckily asserted, or more pregnant with confusion and error.

15. To the perspicacity and acuteness of Dawes (M. C. pp. 90, 1, 196, 146, 7) we are indebted for the first clear statement of the principal points in this department of prosody : to the deliberate and masterly judgment of Porson (ad Orest. 64, and elsewhere) we owe whatever else  is correctly and certainly known. 16. Some little things, however, may serve to show that an English ear, especially on a sudden appeal, is no very competent judge of Attic correptions, so called.

For instance, in the following lines :

Phœn. 1444.

Alc. 434.

it is not from any practice of our own, certainly, that we should pronounce the words and with precision and facility in that very way.

17. So, too, if and  were on a sudden proposed as to the shortening of the first syllable in each, it might seem to an English ear just as improbable in the noun as in the verb; although in Athenian utterance we know very well the fact was quite otherwise.

Toup (vid. Emendd. Vol. i. 114, 5; iv. 441) maintained in his day (what is now called) the permissiveness of and actually, on that ground, suggested the following as an emendatien of a passage in Sophocles, for or:

Elect. 21, 2 ,

(where, of course, is right enough, being pronounced ). Since Person's delicate correction of that error (u. s. p. 441) no argument has been advanced in its defence. And yet, {{subst:a` priori why should not be permissive, as well as Op., for instance?" The consonants  can begin  a word ; why not commence a separate syllable ? How can  commence a syllable, when notoriously it cannot begin a word?"