orce_, 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