are alike competent to appreciate the elements of metre. "Quantity,"
according to his dogmatism, "is a point in the investigation of which the
lumber of mere learning may be dispensed with, if ever in any. _Its
appreciation_" says he, "_is universal_. It appertains to no region, nor
race, nor era in especial. To melody and to harmony the Greeks hearkened
with ears precisely similar to those which we employ, for similar purposes,
at present; and a pendulum at Athens would have vibrated much after the
same fashion as does a pendulum in the city of Penn."--_The Pioneer_, Vol.
i. p. 103. Supposing here not even the oscillations of the same pendulum to
be more uniform than are the nature and just estimation of quantity the
world over, this author soon after expounds his idea of the thing as
follows: "I have already said that all syllables, in metre, are either long
or short. Our usual prosodies maintain that a long syllable is equal, in
its time, to two short ones; this, however, is but an approach to the
truth. It should be here observed that the quantity of an English syllable
_has no dependence upon_ the sound of its vowel or dipthong [diphthong],
but [depends] chiefly upon _accentuation_. Monosyllables are exceedingly
variable, and, for the most part, may be either long or short, to suit the
demand of the rhythm. In polysyllables, the accented _ones_ [say,
_syllables_] are always long, while those which immediately precede or
succeed them, are always short. _Emphasis_ will render any short syllable
long."--_Ibid._, p. 105. In penning the last four sentences, the writer
must have had Brown's Institutes of English Grammar before him, and open at
page 235.

OBS. 14.--Sheridan, in his Rhetorical Grammar, written about 1780, after
asserting that a distinction of accent, and not of quantity, marks the
movement of English verse, proceeds as follows: "From not having examined
the peculiar genius of our tongue, our Prosodians have fallen into a
variety of errors; some having adopted the rules of our neighbours, the
French; and others having had recourse to those of the ancients; though
neither of them, in reality, would square with our tongue, on account of an
essential difference _between them_. [He means, "_between each language and
ours_," and should have said so.] With regard to the French, they measured
verses by the number of syllables whereof they were composed, on account of
a constitutional defect in their tongue, which