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The Grammar of English Grammars · Chapter 703Footnotes: (15)

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[449] In Murray's sixth chapter of Punctuation, from which this example, and eleven others that follow it, are taken, there is scarcely a single sentence that does not contain many errors; and yet the whole is literally copied in Ingersoll's Grammar, p. 293; in Fisk's, p. 159; in Abel Flint's, 116; and probably in some others. I have not always been careful to subjoin the great number of references which might be given for blunders selected from this hackneyed literature of the schools. For corrections, or improvements, see the Key.

[450] This example, or L. Murray's miserable modification of it, traced through the grammars of Alden, Alger, Bullions, Comly, Cooper, Flint, Hiley, Ingersoll, Jaudon, Merchant, Russell, Smith, and others, will be found to have a dozen different forms—all of them no less faulty than the original—all of them obscure, untrue, inconsistent, and almost incorrigible. It is plain, that "a comma," or one comma, cannot divide more than two "simple members;" and these, surely, cannot be connected by more than one relative, or by more than one "comparative;" if it be allowable to call than, as, or so, by this questionable name. Of the multitude of errors into which these pretended critics have so blindly fallen, I shall have space and time to point out only a very small part: this text, too justly, may be taken as a pretty fair sample of their scholarship!

[451] The "idea" which is here spoken of, Dr. Blair discovers in a passage of Addison's Spectator. It is, in fact, as here "brought out" by the critic, a bald and downright absurdity. Dr. Campbell has criticised, under the name of marvellous nonsense, a different display of the same "idea," cited from De Piles's Principles of Painting. The passage ends thus: "In this sense it may be asserted, that in Rubens' pieces, Art is above Nature, and Nature only a copy of that great master's works." Of this the critic says: "When the expression is stript of the absurd meaning, there remains nothing but balderdash."—Philosophy of Rhet., p, 278.

[452] All his rules for the comma, Fisk appears to have taken unjustly from Greenleaf. It is a double shame, for a grammarian to steal what is so badly written!—G. BROWN.

[453] Bad definitions may have other faults than to include or exclude what they should not, but this is their great and peculiar vice. For example: "Person is that property of nouns and pronouns which distinguishes the speaker, the person or thing addressed, and the person or thing spoken of."—Wells's School Gram., 1st Ed., p. 51; 113th Ed., p. 57. See nearly the same words, in Weld's English Gram., p. 67; and in his Abridgement, p. 49. The three persons of verbs are all improperly excluded from this definition; which absurdly takes "person" to be one property that has all the effect of all the persons; so that each person, in its turn, since each cannot have all this effect, is seen to be excluded also: that is, it is not such a property as is described! Again: "An intransitive verb is a verb which does not have a noun or pronoun for its object."—Wells, 1st Ed., p. 76. According to Dr. Johnson, "does not have," is not a scholarly phrase; but the adoption of a puerile expression is a trifling fault, compared with that of including here all passive verbs, and some transitives, which the author meant to exclude; to say nothing of the inconsistency of excluding here the two classes of verbs which he absurdly calls "intransitive," though he finds them "followed by objectives depending upon them!"—Id., p. 145. Weld imitates these errors too, on pp. 70 and 153.

[454] S. R. Hall thinks it necessary to recognize "four distinctions" of "the distinction occasioned by sex." In general, the other authors here quoted, suppose that we have only "three distinctions" of "the distinction of sex." And, as no philosopher has yet discovered more than two sexes, some have thence stoutly argued, that it is absurd to speak of more than two genders. Lily makes it out, that in Latin there are seven: yet, with no great consistency, he will have a gender to be a or the distinction of sex. "GENUS est sexus discretio. Et sunt genera numero septem."—Lilii Gram., p. 10. That is, "GENDER is the distinction of sex. And the genders are seven in number." Ruddiman says, "GENUS est, discrimen nominis secundum sexum, vel ejus in structurâ grammaticâ imitatio. Genera nominum sunt tria."—Ruddimanni Gram., p. 4. That is, "GENDER is the diversity of the noun according to sex, or [it is] the imitation of it in grammatical structure. The genders of nouns are three." These old definitions are no better than the newer ones cited above. All of them are miserable failures, full of faults and absurdities. Both the nature and the cause of their defects are in some degree explained near the close of the tenth chapter of my Introduction. Their most prominent errors are these: 1. They all assume, that gender, taken as one thing, is in fact two, three, or more, genders, 2. Nearly all of them seem to say or imply, that words differ from one an other in sex, like animals. 3. Many of them expressly confine gender, or the genders, to nouns only. 4. Many of them confessedly exclude the neuter gender, though their authors afterwards admit this gender. 5. That of Dr. Webster supposes, that words differing in gender never have the same "termination." The absurdity of this may be shown by a multitude of examples: as, man and woman, male and female, father and mother, brother and sister. This is better, but still not free from some other faults which I have mentioned. For the correction of all this great batch of errors, I shall simply substitute in the Key one short definition, which appears to me to be exempt from each of these inaccuracies.

[455] Walker states this differently, and even repeats his remark, thus: "But y preceded by a vowel is never changed: as coy, coyly, gay, gayly."—Walker's Rhyming Dict., p.x. "Y preceded by a vowel is never changed, as boy, boys, I cloy, he cloys, etc."—Ib., p viii. Walker's twelve "Orthographical Aphorisms," which Murray and others republish as their "Rules for Spelling," and which in stead of amending they merely corrupt, happened through some carelessness to contain two which should have been condensed into one. For "words ending with y preceded by a consonant," he has not only the absurd rule or assertion above recited, but an other which is better, with an exception or remark under each, respecting "y preceded by a vowel." The grammarians follow him in his errors, and add to their number: hence the repetition, or similarity, in the absurdities here quoted. By the term "verbal nouns," Walker meant nouns denoting agents, as carrier from carry; but Kirkham understood him to mean "participial nouns," as the carrying. Or rather, he so mistook "that able philologist" Murray; for he probably knew nothing of Walker in the matter; and accordingly changed the word "verbal" to "participial;" thus teaching, through all his hundred editions, except a few of the first, that participial nouns from verbs ending in y preceded by a consonant, are formed by merely "changing the y into i." But he seems to have known, that this is not the way to form the participle; though he did not know, that "coyless" is not a proper English word.

[456] The idea of plurality is not "plurality of idea," any more than the idea of wickedness, or the idea of absurdity, is absurdity or wickedness of idea; yet, behold, how our grammarians copy the blunder, which Lowth (perhaps) first fell into, of putting the one phrase for the other! Even Professor Fowler, (as well as Murray, Kirkham, and others,) talks of having regard "to unity or plurality of idea!"—Fowler's E. Gram., 8vo. 1850, §513,—G. BROWN.

[457] In the Doctor's "New Edition, Revised and Corrected," the text stands thus: "The Present participle of THE ACTIVE VOICE has an active signification; as, James is building the house. In many of these, however, it has," &c. Here the first sentence is but an idle truism; and the phrase, "In many of these," for lack of an antecedent to these, is utter nonsense. What is in "the active voice," ought of course to be active in "signification;" but, in this author's present scheme of the verb, we find "the active voice," in direct violation of his own definition of it, ascribed not only to verbs and participles either neuter or intransitive, but also, as it would seem by this passage, to "many" that are passive!—G. BROWN.

[458] One objection to these passage is, that they are examples of the very construction which they describe as a fault. The first and second sentences ought to have been separated only by a semicolon. This would have made them "members" of one and the same sentence. Can it be supported that one "thought" is sufficient for two periods, or for what one chooses to point as such, but not for two members of the same period?—G. BROWN.

[459] (1.) "Accent is the tone with which one speaks. For, in speaking, the voice of every man is sometimes more grave in the sound, and at other times more acute or shrill."—Beattie's Moral Science, p. 25. "Accent is the tone of the voice with which a syllable is pronounced."—Dr. Adam's Latin and English Gram., p. 266.

(2.) "Accent in a peculiar stress of the voice on some syllable in a word to distinguish it from the others."—Gould's Adam's Lat. Gram., p. 243.

(3.) "The tone by which one syllable is distinguished from another is the accent; which is a greater stress and elevation of voice on that particular syllable."—Bicknell's Eng. Gram., Part II, p. 111.

(4.) "Quantity is the Length or Shortness of Syllables; and the Proportion, generally speaking, betwixt a long and [a] short Syllable, is two to one; as in Music, two Quavers to one Crotchet.—Accent is the rising and falling of the Voice, above or under its usual Tone, but an Art of which we have little Use, and know less, in the English Tongue; nor are we like to improve our Knowledge in this Particular, unless the Art of Delivery or Utterance were a little more study'd."—Brightland's Gram., p. 156.

(5.) "ACCENT, s. m. (inflexion de la voix.) Accent, tone, pronunciation."—Nouveau Dictionnaire Universel, 4to, Tome Premier, sous le mot Accent.

"ACCENT, subst. (tone or inflection of the voice.) Accent, ton ou inflexion de voix."—Same Work, Garner's New Universal Dictionary, 4to, under the word Accent.

(6.) "The word accent is derived from the Latin language and signifies the tone of the voice."—Parker and Fox's English Gram., Part III, p. 32.

(7.) "The unity of the word consists in the tone or accent, which binds together the two parts of the composition."—Fowler's E. Gram., §360.

(8.) "The accent of the ancients is the opprobrium of modern criticism. Nothing can show more evidently the fallibility of the human faculties, than the total ignorance we are in at present of the nature of the Latin and Greek accent."—Walker's Principles, No. 486; Dict., p. 53.

(9.) "It is not surprising, that the accent and quantity of the ancients should be so obscure and mysterious, when two such learned men of our own nation as Mr. Foster and Dr. Gaily, differ about the very existence of quantity in our own language."—Walker's Observations on Accent, &c.; Key, p. 311.

(10.) "What these accents are has puzzled the learned so much that they seem neither to understand each other nor themselves."—Walker's Octavo Dict., w. Barytone.

(11.) "The ancients designated the pitch of vocal sounds by the term accent; making three kinds of accents, the acute (é), the grave (è), and the circumflex (ê), which signified severally the rise, the fall, and the turn of the voice, or union of acute and grave on the same syllable."—Sargent's Standard Speaker, p. 18.

[460] "Interrogatio, Græcè Erotema, Accentum quoque transfert; ut, Ter. Siccine ais Parmenó? Voss. Susenbr."—Prat's Latin Grammar, 8vo, Part II, p. 190.

[461] In regard to the admission of a comma before the verb, by the foregoing exception, neither the practice of authors nor the doctrine of punctuators is entirely uniform; but, where a considerable pause is, and must be, made in the reading, I judge it not only allowable, but necessary, to mark it in writing. In W. Day's "Punctuation Reduced to a System," a work of no inconsiderable merit, this principle is disallowed; and even when the adjunct of the nominative is a relative clause, which, by Rule 2d below and its first exception, requires a comma after it but none before it, this author excludes both, putting no comma before the principal verb. The following is an example: "But it frequently happens, that punctuation is not made a prominent exercise in schools; and the brief manner in which the subject is there dismissed has proved insufficient to impress upon the minds of youth a due sense of its importance."—Day's Punctuation, p. 32. A pupil of mine would here have put a comma after the word dismissed. So, in the following examples, after sake, and after dispenses: "The vanity that would accept power for its own sake is the pettiest of human passions."—Ib., p. 75. "The generous delight of beholding the happiness he dispenses is the highest enjoyment of man."—Ib., p, 100.

[462] When several nominatives are connected, some authors and printers put the comma only where the conjunction is omitted. W. Day separates them all, one from an other; but after the last, when this is singular before a plural verb, he inserts no point. Example: "Imagination is one of the principal ingredients which enter into the complex idea of genius; but judgment, memory, understanding, enthusiasm, and sensibility are also included."—Day's Punctuation, p. 52. If the points are to be put where the pauses naturally occur, here should be a comma after sensibility; and, if I mistake not, it would be more consonant with current usage to set one there. John Wilson, however, in a later work, which is for the most part a very good one, prefers the doctrine of Day, as in the following instance: "Reputation, virtue, and happiness depend greatly on the choice of companions."—Wilson's Treatise on Punctuation, p. 30.

[463] Some printers, and likewise some authors, suppose a series of words to require the comma, only where the conjunction is suppressed. This is certainly a great error. It gives us such punctuation as comports neither with the sense of three or more words in the same construction, nor with the pauses which they require in reading. "John, James and Thomas are here," is a sentence which plainly tells John that James and Thomas are here; and which, if read according to this pointing, cannot possibly have any other meaning. Yet this is the way in which the rules of Cooper, Felton, Frost, Webster, and perhaps others, teach us to point it, when we mean to tell somebody else that all three are here! In his pretended "Abridgment of Murray's English Grammar," (a work abounding in small thefts from Brown's Institutes,) Cooper has the following example: "John, James or Joseph intends to accompany me."—Page 120. Here, John being addressed, the punctuation is right; but, to make this noun a nominative to the verb, a comma must be put after each of the others. In Cooper's "Plain and Practical Grammar," the passage is found in this form: "John, James, or Joseph intends to accompany us."—Page 132. This pointing is doubly wrong; because it is adapted to neither sense. If the three nouns have the same construction, the principal pause will be immediately before the verb; and surely a comma is as much required by that pause, as by the second. See the Note on Rule 3d, above.

[464] In punctuation, the grammar here cited is unaccountably defective. This is the more strange, because many of its errors are mere perversions of what was accurately pointed by an other hand. On the page above referred to, Dr. Bullions, in copying from Lennie's syntactical exercises a dozen consecutive lines, has omitted nine needful commas, which Lennie had been careful to insert!

[465] Needless abbreviations, like most that occur in this example, are in bad taste, and ought to be avoided. The great faultiness of this text as a model for learners, compels me to vary the words considerably in suggesting the correction. See the Key.—G. B.

[466] "To be, or not to be?—that's the question."—Hallock's Gram., p. 220. "To be, or not to be, that is the question."—Singer's Shak., ii. 488. "To be, or not to be; that is the Question."—Ward's Gram., p 160. "To be, or not to be, that is the Question."—Brightland's Gram., p 209. "To be, or not to be?"—Mandeville's Course of Reading, p. 141. "To be or not to be! That is the question."—Pinneo's Gram., p. 176. "To be—or not to be—that is the question—"—Burgh's Speaker, p. 179.

[467] In the works of some of our older poets, the apostrophe is sometimes irregularly inserted, and perhaps needlessly, to mark a prosodial synsæresis, or synalepha, where no letter is cut off or left out; as,

"Retire, or taste thy folly', and learn by proof, Hell-born, not to contend with spir'its of Heaven." —Milton, P. L., ii, 686.

In the following example, it seems to denote nothing more than the open or long sound of the preceding vowel e:

"That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour, Even till a lethe'd dulness." —Singer's Shakspeare, Vol. ii, p. 280.

[468] The breve is properly a mark of short quantity, only when it is set over an unaccented syllable or an unemphatic monosyllable, as it often is in the scanning of verses. In the examples above, it marks the close or short power of the vowels; but, under the accent, even this power may become part of a long syllable; as it does in the word rav´en, where the syllable rav, having twice the length of that which follows, must be reckoned long. In poetry, r=av-en and r=a-ven are both trochees, the former syllable in each being long, and the latter short.

[469] 1. The signs of long and short sounds, and especially of the former, have been singularly slow in acquiring appropriate names—or any appellatives suited to their nature, or such as could obtain the sanction of general use. The name breve, from the French brève, (which latter word came, doubtless, originally from the neuter of the Latin adjective brevis, short,) is now pretty generally applied to the one; and the Greek term macron, long, (also originally a neuter adjective,) is perhaps as common as any name for the other. But these are not quite so well adapted to each other, and to the things named, as are the substitutes added above.

2. These signs are explained in our grammars under various names, and often very unfit ones, to say the least; and, in many instances, their use is, in some way, awkwardly stated, without any attempt to name them, or more than one, if either. The Rev. T. Smith names them "Long (=), and Short (~)."—Smith's Murray, p. 72. Churchill calls them "The long = and the short ~."—New Gram., p. 170. Gould calls them "a horizontal line" and "a curved line."—Gould's Adam's Gram., p. 3. Coar says, "Quantity is distinguished by the characters of - long, and ~ short."—Eng. Gram., p. 197. But, in speaking of the signs, he calls them, "A long syllable =," and "A short syllable ~."—Gram., pp. 222 and 228. S. S. Greene calls them "the long sound," and "the breve or short sound."—Gram., p. 257. W. Allen says, "The long-syllable mark, (=) and the breve, or short-syllable mark, (~) denote the quantity of words poetically employed."—Gram., p. 215. Some call them "the Long Accent," and "the Short Accent;" as does Guy's Gram., p. 95. This naming seems to confound accent with quantity. By some, the Macron is improperly called "a Dash;" as by Lennie, p. 137; by Bullions, p. 157; by Hiley, p. 123; by Butler, p. 215. Some call it "a small dash;" as does Well's, p. 183; so Hiley, p. 117. By some it is absurdly named "Hyphen;" as by Buchanan, p. 162; by Alden, p. 165; by Chandler, 183; by Parker and Fox, iii, 36; by Jaudon, 193. Sanborn calls it "the hyphen, or macron."—Analyt. Gr., p. 279. Many, who name it not, introduce it to their readers by a "this =," or "thus ~;" as do Alger, Blair, Dr. Adam, Comly, Cooper, Ingersoll, L. Murray, Sanders, Wright, and others!

[470] "As soon as language proceeds, from mere articulation, to coherency, and connection, accent becomes the guide of the voice. It is founded upon an obscure perception of symmetry, and proportion, between the different sounds that are uttered."—Noehden's Grammar of the German Language, p. 66.

[471] According to Johnson, Walker, Webster, Worcester, and perhaps all other lexicographers, Quantity, in grammar, is—"The measure of time in pronouncing a syllable." And, to this main idea, are conformed, so far as I know, all the different definitions ever given of it by grammarians and critics, except that which appeared in Asa Humphrey's English Prosody, published in 1847. In this work—the most elaborate and the most comprehensive, though not the most accurate or consistent treatise we have on the subject—Time and Quantity are explained separately, as being "two distinct things;" and the latter is supposed not to have regard to duration, but solely to the amount of sound given to each syllable.

This is not only a fanciful distinction, but a radical innovation—and one which, in any view, has little to recommend it. The author's explanations of both time and quantity—of their characteristics, differences, and subdivisions—of their relations to each other, to poetic numbers, to emphasis and cadence, or to accent and non-accent—as well as his derivation and history of "these technical terms, time and quantity"—are hardly just or clear enough to be satisfactory. According to his theory, "Poetic numbers are composed of long and short syllables alternately;" (page 5;) but the difference or proportion between the times of these classes of syllables he holds to be indeterminable, "because their lengths are various." He began with destroying the proper distinction of quantity, or time, as being either long or short, by the useless recognition of an indefinite number of "intermediate lengths;" saying of our syllables at large, "some are LONG, some SHORT, and some are of INTERMEDIATE LENGTHS; as, mat, not, con, &c. are short sounds; mate, note, cone, and grave are long. Some of our diphthongal sounds are LONGER STILL; as, voice, noise, sound, bound, &c. OTHERS are seen to be of INTERMEDIATE lengths."—Humphrey's Prosody, p. 4.

On a scheme like this, it must evidently be impossible to determine, with any certainty, either what syllables are long and what short, or what is the difference or ratio between any two of the innumerable "lengths" of that time, or quantity, which is long, short, variously intermediate, or longer still, and again variously intermediate! No marvel then that the ingenious author scans some lines in a manner peculiar to himself.

[472] It was the doctrine of Sheridan, and perhaps of our old lexicographers in general, that no English word can have more than one full accent; but, in some modern dictionaries, as Bolles's, and Worcester's, many words are marked as if they had two; and a few are given by Bolles's as having three. Sheridan erroneously affirmed, that "every word has an accent," even "all monosyllables, the particles alone excepted."—Lecture on Elocution, pp. 61 and 71. And again, yet more erroneously: "The essence of English words consisting in accent, as that of syllables in articulation; we know that there are as many syllables as we hear articulate sounds, and as many words as we hear accents."— Ib., p. 70. Yet he had said before, in the same lecture: "The longer polysyllables, have frequently two accents, but one is so much stronger than the other, as to shew that it is but one word; and the inferior accent is always less forcible, than any accent that is the single one in a word."—Ib., p. 31. Wells defines accent as if it might lie on many syllables of a word; but, in his examples, he places it on no more than one: "Accent is the stress which is laid on one or more syllables of a word, in pronunciation; as, re_ver_berate, under_take_."—Wells's School Gram., p. 185. According to this loose definition, he might as well have accented at least one other syllable in each of these examples; for there seems, certainly, to be some little stress on ate and un. For sundry other definitions of accent, see Chap. IV, Section 2d, of Versification; and the marginal note referring to Obs. 1st on Prosody.

[473] According to Dr. Rush, Emphasis is—"a stress of voice on one or more words of a sentence, distinguishing them by intensity or peculiarity of meaning."—Philosophy of the Voice, p. 282. Again, he defines thus: "Accent is the fixed but inexpressive distinction of syllables by quantity and stress: alike both in place and nature, whether the words are pronounced singly from the columns of a vocabulary, or connectedly in the series of discourse. Emphasis may be defined to be the expressive but occasional distinction of a syllable, and consequently of the whole word, by one or more of the specific modes of time, quality, force, or pitch."—Ibid.

[474] 1. 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 EMPHASIS."—Sheridan's Rhetorical Gram., p. 65. Again: "It is by the ACCENT chiefly that the quantity of our syllables is regulated."—Sheridan's Lectures on Elocution, p. 57. See Chap. IV, Sec. 2d, Obs. 1; and marginal note on Obs. 8.

2. 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.'—Dryden." —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."—Churchill's New Gram., p. 182.

[475] Not only are these inflections denoted occasionally by the accentual marks, but they are sometimes expressly identified with accents, being called by that name. This practice, however, is plainly objectionable. It confounds things known to be different,—mere stress with elevation or depression,—and may lead to the supposition, that to accent a syllable, is to inflect the voice upon it. Such indeed has been the guess of many concerning the nature of Greek and Latin accents, but of the English accent, the common idea is, that it is only a greater force distinguishing some one syllable of a word from the rest. Walker, however, in the strange account he gives in his Key, of "what we mean by the accent and quantity of our own language," charges this current opinion with error, dissenting from Sheridan and Nares, who held it; and, having asserted, that, "in speaking, the voice is continually sliding upwards or downwards," proceeds to contradict himself thus: "As high and low, loud and soft, forcible and feeble, are comparative terms, words of one syllable pronounced alone, and without relation to other words or syllables, cannot be said to have any ACCENT. The only distinction to which such words are liable, is an elevation or depression of voice, when we compare the beginning with the end of the word or syllable. Thus a monosyllable, considered singly, rises from a lower to a higher tone in the question Nó? which may therefore be called the acute ACCENT: and falls from a higher to a lower tone upon the same word in the answer Nò, which may therefore be called the grave [ACCENT]."—Walker's Key, p. 316. Thus he tells of different accents on "a monosyllable," which, by his own showing, "cannot be said to have any accent"! and others read and copy the text with as little suspicion of its inconsistency! See Worcester's Universal and Critical Dictionary, p. 934.

[476] In Humphrey's English Prosody, cadence is taken for the reverse of accent, and is obviously identified or confounded with short quantity, or what the author inclines to call "small quantity." He defines it as follows: "Cadence is the reverse or counterpart to accent; a falling or depression of voice on syllables unaccented: and by which the sound is shortened and depressed."—P. 3. This is not exactly what is generally understood by the word cadence. Lord Kames also contrasts cadence with accent; but, by the latter term, he seems to have meant something different from our ordinary accent. "Sometimes to humour the sense," says he, "and sometimes the melody, a particular syllable is sounded in a higher tone; and this is termed accenting a syllable, or gracing it with an accent. Opposed to the accent, is the cadence, which I have not mentioned as one of the requisites of verse, because it is entirely regulated by the sense, and hath no peculiar relation to verse."—Elements of Criticism, Vol. ii, p. 78.