_d_,
ru_g_ge_d_, lo_ck_. In _all such syllables_ the sound cannot be lengthened:
they are necessarily and invariably _short_. If another consonant
intervenes between the vowel and mute, as re_nd_, so_ft_, fla_sk_, the
syllable is rendered _somewhat longer_. The other species of syllables
called _common_, are such as terminate in a half-vowel or aspirate. For
instance, in the words ru_n_, swi_m_, cru_sh_, pu_rl_, the concluding sound
can be continued or shortened, as we please. This scheme of quantity," it
is added, "is founded on fact and experience."--_Bicknell's Gram._, Part
ii, p. 109. But is it not a _fact_, that such words as _cuttest, stopping,
rapid, rugged_, are _trochees_, in verse? and is not _unlock_ an _iambus_?
And what becomes of syllables that end with vowels or liquids and are not
accented?

[491] I do not say the mere absence of stress is _never_ called _accent_;
for it is, plainly, the doctrine of some authors that the English accent
differs not at all in its nature from the accent of the ancient Greeks or
Romans, which was distinguished as being of three sorts, _acute, grave,
inflex_; that "the stronger breathing, or higher sound," which
distinguishes one syllable of a word from or above the rest, is _the acute
accent_ only; that "the softer breathing, or lower sound," which belongs to
an _unacuted_ (or _unaccented_) syllable, is _the grave accent_; and that a
combination of these two sounds, or "breathings," upon one syllable,
constitutes the _inflex or circumflex accent_. Such, I think, is the
teaching of Rev. William Barnes; who further says, "English verse is
constructed upon sundry orders of _acute and grave accents_ and matchings
of rhymes, while the poetic language of the Romans and Greeks is formed
upon rules of the sundry clusterings of _long and short
syllables_."--_Philological Grammar_, p. 263. This scheme is not wholly
consistent, because the author explains accent or accents as being
applicable only to "words of two or more syllables;" and it is plain, that
the accent which includes the three sorts above, must needs be "some other
thing than what we call accent," if this includes only the acute.

[492] Sheridan used the same comparison, "To illustrate the difference
between the accent of the ancients and that of _ours_" [our tongue]. Our
accent he supposed, with Nares and others, to have "no reference to
_inflections_ of the voice."--See _Art of Reading_, p. 75; _Lectures on
Elocution_,