Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/819

 the right placing of emphasis, in the utterance of sentences. If no emphasis be used, discourse becomes vapid and inane; if no accent, words can hardly be recognized as English.

"Emphasis, besides its other offices, is the great regulator of quantity. Though the quantity of our syllable is fixed, in words separately pronounced, yet it is mutable, when [the] words are [ar]ranged in[to] sentences; the long being changed into short, the short into long, according to the importance of the words with regard to meaning: and, as it is by emphasis only, that the meaning can be pointed out, emphasis must be the regulator of the quantity."&mdash;L. Murray's Gram., p. 246. [474]  This doctrine, though true in its main intent, and especially applicable to the poetic quantity of monosyllables, (the class of words most frequently used in English poetry,) is, perhaps, rather too strongly stated by Murray; because it agrees not with other statements of his, concerning the power of accent over quantity; and because the effect of accent, as a "regulator of quantity," may, on the whole, be as great as that of emphasis. Sheridan contradicts himself yet more pointedly on this subject; and his discrepancies may have been the efficients of Murray's. "The quantity of our syllables is perpetually varying with the sense, and is for the most part regulated by ."&mdash;Sheridan's Rhetorical Gram., p. 65. Again: "It is by the chiefly that the quantity of our syllables is regulated."&mdash;Sheridan's Lectures on Elocution, p. 57. See Chap. IV, Sec. 2d, Obs. 1; and marginal note on Obs. 8. Some writers erroneously confound emphasis with accent; especially those who make accent, and not quantity, the foundation of verse. Contrary to common usage, and to his own definition of accent, Wells takes it upon him to say, "The term accent is also applied, in poetry, to the stress laid on monosyllabic words; as, "'Content is wealth, the riches of the mind.'&mdash;Dryden.'&mdash;Wells's School Grammar, p. 185." It does not appear that stress laid on monosyllables is any more fitly termed accent, when it occurs in the reading of poetry, than when in the utterance of prose. Churchill, who makes no such distinction, thinks accent essential alike to emphasis and to the quantity of a long vowel, and yet, as regards monosyllables, dependent on them both! His words are these: "Monosyllables are sometimes accented, sometimes not. This depends chiefly on their being more or less emphatic; and on the vowel sound being long or short. We cannot give emphasis to any word, or it's [its] proper duration to a long vowel, without accenting it."&mdash;Churchill's New Gram., p. 182.  "Emphasis changes, not only the quantity of words and syllables, but also, in particular cases, the sent of the accent. This is demonstrable from the following examples: 'He shall increase, but I shall decrease.' 'There is a difference between giving and forgiving.' 'In this species of composition, plausibility is much more essential than probability.' In these examples, the emphasis requires the accent to be placed on syllables to which it does not commonly belong."&mdash;Ib., p. 247.

In order to know what words are to be made emphatic, the speaker or reader must give constant heed to the sense of what he utters; his only sure guide, in this matter, being a just conception of the force and spirit of the sentiment which he is about to pronounce. He must also guard against the error of multiplying emphatic words too much; for, to overdo in this way, defeats the very purpose for which emphasis is used. To manage this stress with exact propriety, is therefore one of the surest evidences both of a quick understanding, and of a delicate and just taste.

ARTICLE II.&mdash;OF PAUSES.
Pauses are cessations in utterance, which serve equally to relieve the speaker, and to render language intelligible and pleasing.

Pauses are of three kinds: first, distinctive or sentential pauses,&mdash;such as form the divisions required by the sense; secondly, emphatic or rhetorical pauses,&mdash;such as particularly call the hearer's attention to something which has been, or is about to be, uttered; and lastly, poetical or harmonic pauses,&mdash;such as are peculiar to the utterance of metrical compositions.

The duration of the distinctive pauses should be proportionate to the degree of connexion between the parts of the discourse. The shortest are long enough for the taking of some breath; and it is proper, thus to relieve the voice at every stop, if needful. This we may do, slightly at a comma, more leisurely at a semicolon, still more so at a colon, and completely at a period.

Pauses, whether in reading or in public discourse, ought always to be formed after the manner in which we naturally form them in ordinary, sensible conversation; and not after the stiff, artificial manner which many acquire at school, by a mere mechanical attention to the common punctuation.

Forced, unintentional pauses, which accidentally divide words that ought to be spoken in close connexion, are always disagreeable; and, whether they arise from exhaustion of breath, from a habit of faltering, or from unacquaintance with the text, they are errors of a kind utterly incompatible with graceful elocution.