Note 39 — THE PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK, &c.

“Our composition of classical verses is almost entirely mechanical. When a boy composes such a verse as Insignemque canas Neptunum vertice cano, how is he guided to the proper collocation of the words? Not by his ear, certainly, for that would be struck precisely in the same manner if he wrote it Insignemque cano Neptunum vertice canas; no, he learns from books that the first of cano (I sing) is short, and the first of canus (hoary) is long. Having so used them, their respective quantity is stored up as a fact in his memory, and by degrees he remembers them so well, that when he sees either of them used in a wrong place, he thinks it offends his ear, while in truth it only offends his understanding. But I apprehend a Roman boy’s process of composition would be quite different. Having been used from his cradle to hear the first syllable of canus take up about twice as much time as that of cano, such a verse as Insignemque cano Neptunum vertice canas, would really hurt his ear, because in the second foot the thesis would be complete before the syllable was expressed, and he would have a time or σημεῖον too much; and in the sixth he could not fill up the time of the arsis without giving to the syllable a drawling sound which would be both unusual and offensive.”—Pennington, p. 249. So long as such an absurd system of writing verses, whether Latin or Greek—from the understanding and not from the ear—is practised, the boys who refuse to have anything to do with prosody shew a great deal more sense than the masters who inculcate it.