who decides does so at his peril.
On one occasion Eldon from the Bench corrected Erskine for saying
'c['u]r[)a]tor'. 'Cur[=a]tor, Mr. Erskine, cur[=a]tor.' 'I am glad',
was the reply, 'to be set right by so eminent a sen[=a]tor and so
eloquent an or[=a]tor as your Lordship.' Neither eminent lawyer knew
much about it, but each was so far right that he stuck to the custom
of his country. On other grounds Erskine might be thought to have
committed himself to 't['e]st[)a]tor', if not quite to the 'testy
tricks' of Sally in Mrs. Gaskell's 'Ruth'.

STEMS IN -ERO AND -URO. Adjectives of this type keep the Latin stress,
which thus falls on the ultima, and shorten or obscure the penultimate
vowel, as 'mature', 'obscure', 'severe', 'sincere', but of course
'[=a]ustere'. Of like form though of other origin is 'secure'.
Nouns take an early stress, as '['a]perture', 's['e]pulture',
'l['i]terature', 't['e]mperature', unless two mutes obstruct, as in
'conj['e]cture'. Of the disyllables 'nature' keeps a long penultima,
while 'figure' has it short, not because of the Latin quantity, but
because of the French.

The lonely word 'mediocre' lengthens its first vowel by the 'alias'
rule and also stresses it. Whether the penultima has more than a
secondary stress is a matter of dispute.

STEMS IN -ARI. These words have the stress on the antepenultima,
which they shorten, as in 'secular' or keep short as in 'jocular',
'familiar', but of course 'pec[=u]liar'.

_ON CERTAIN GREEK WORDS._

It will have been seen that Greek words are usually treated as Latin.
Thus 'crisis' lengthens the penultima under the 'apex' rule, while
'critical' has it short under the general rule of polysyllables.
Other examples of lengthening are 'bathos', 'pathos', while the long
quantity is of course kept in 'colon' and 'crasis'. For the 'alias'
rule we may quote '[=a]theist', 'cryptog[=a]mia', 'h[=o]meopathy',
'heterog[=e]neous', 'pandem[=o]nium', while the normal shortenings
are found in 'an[)o]nymous', 'eph[)e]meral', 'pand[)e]monium',
'[)e]r[)e]mite'. Ignorance of English usage has made some editors
flounder on a line of Pope's:

Yes, or we must renounce the Stagirite.

The birthplace of Aristotle was of course Stag[=i]ra or, as it is now
fashionable to transcribe it, Stageira, as Pope doubtless knew, but
the editors who accuse him of a false quantity in Greek are on the
contrary themselves guilty of one in English. The penultima in English
is short wh