be contrived, which will more evidently or more extensively confound accent
with emphasis, than does this! In English verse, on an average, about three
quarters of the words are monosyllables, which, according to Walker, "have
no accent," certainly none distinguishable from emphasis; hence, in fact,
our syllables are no more "divided into _accented_ and _unaccented_" as
Sheridan and Murray would have them, than into _emphasized_ and
_unemphasized_, as some others have thought to class them. Nor is this
confounding of accent with emphasis at all lessened or palliated by
teaching with Wells, in its justification, that, "The term _accent_ is also
applied, in poetry, to _the_ stress laid on monosyllabic words."--_Wells's
School Gram._, p. 185; 113th Ed., Sec.273. What better is this, than to apply
the term _emphasis_ to the accenting of syllables in poetry, or to all the
stress in question, as is virtually done in the following citation? "In
English, verse is regulated by the _emphasis_, as there should be one
_emphatic_ syllable in every foot; for it is by the interchange of
_emphatick_ and _non-emphatick_ syllables, that verse grateful to the ear
is formed."--_Thomas Coar's E. Gram._, p. 196. In Latin poetry, the longer
words predominate, so that, in Virgil's verse, not one word in five is a
monosyllable; hence accent, if our use of it were adjusted to the Latin
quantities, might have much more to do with Latin verse than with English.
With the following lines of Shakspeare, for example, accent has, properly
speaking, no connexion;

"Good friend, thou hast no cause to say so yet;
But thou shalt have; and creep time ne'er so slow,
Yet it shall come, for me to do thee good.
I had a thing to say,--But let it go."--_King John_, Act iii, Sc. 3.

OBS. 9.--T. O. Churchill, after stating that the Greek and Latin rhythms
are composed of syllables long and short, sets ours in contrast with them
thus: "These terms are commonly employed also in speaking of English verse,
though it is marked, _not by long and short_, but by accented and
unaccented syllables; the accented syllables being _accounted_ long; the
unaccented, short."--_Churchill's New Gram._, p. 183. This, though far from
being right, is very different from the doctrine of Murray or Sheridan;
because, in practice, or the scansion of verses, it comes to the _same
results_ as to suppose all our feet to be "formed by quantity." To
_account_ syllables long or s