hort, 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, f