ble'. Examples are 'miserable', 'admirable', 'intolerable',
'despicable'. The Poet Laureate holds that in these words Milton kept
the long Italian _a_ of the penultimate or secondary stress.

Fall'n Cherube, to be weak is miserable.

In English we have naturalized _-able_ as a suffix and added it to
almost any verb, as 'laughable', 'indescribable', 'desirable'. The
last word may have been taken from French. The form 'des[)i]derable'
occurs from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. Originally
'acceptable' threw the stress back, as in Milton's

So fit, so acceptable, so Divine,

but the double mute has brought it into line with 'delectable'.
Nowadays one sometimes hears 'disp['u]table', 'desp['i]cable', but
these are intolerable vulgarisms.

SUFFIXES IN T[)I]LI AND S[)I]LI. These words mostly lengthen the _i_
and make the usual shortenings, as 'missile', 'sessile', 'textile',
'volatile', but of course 'futile'. Exceptions which I cannot explain
are 'foss[)i]l' and 'fus[)i]le'.

SUFFIX IN [=A]LI. These adjectives shorten the _-a_ and, with
the usual exceptions, the preceding vowels, as 'd['o]ctrinal',
'f['i]lial', 'l['i]beral', 'm['a]rital', 'med['i]cinal', but of course
by the 'alias' rule 'arb[=o]real' (not a classical word in Latin) and
'g[=e]nial'. Words like 'national' and 'rational' were treated like
trisyllables, which they now are. The stress is on the antepenultima
except when heavy consonants bring it on to the penultima, as in
'sepulcral', 'parental', 'triumphal'.

Those who say 'doctr['i]nal' on the ground that the second vowel
is long in Latin commit themselves to 'medic['i]nal', 'nat['u]ral',
'nutr['i]ment', 'instr['u]ment', and, if their own principle be
applied, they make false quantities by the dozen every day of their
lives.

Three words mostly mispronounced are, from their rarity, perhaps
not past rescue. They are 'd['e]canal', 'rurid['e]canal', and
'pr['e]bendal'. There is no more reason for saying 'dec['a]nal' than
for saying 'matr['o]nal' or for saying 'preb['e]ndal' than for saying
'cal['e]ndar'. Of course words like 'tremendous', being imported
whole, keep the original stress. In our case the Latin words came
into existence as _d['e]can['a]lis_, _pr['e]bend['a]lis_, parallel
with _n['a]tur['a]lis_, which gives us 'n['a]tural'. That mostly
wrong-headed man, Burgon of Chichester, was correct in speaking of his
rights or at any rate his claims as 'd['e]canal'.

STEMS IN -LO. Of th