ms as a rest and short
interval between two syllables than an articulate letter; nor indeed can
we conceive upon what other ground it was subject to elision before a
vowel in verse, since we cannot suppose that the nice ears of Rome would
have submitted to a capricious rule of poetry for which Greece presented
no analogy.[485]

A decisive proof, in my opinion, of the deviation which took place,
through the rapidity of ordinary elocution, from the strict laws of
enunciation, may be found in the metre of Terence. His verses, which are
absolutely refractory to the common laws of prosody, may be readily
scanned by the application of this principle. Thus, in the first act of
the Heautontimorumenos, a part selected at random, I have found, I.
Vowels contracted or dropped so as to shorten the word by a syllable; in
_rei_, _via_, _diutius_, _ei_, _solius_, _eam_, _unius_, _suam_,
_divitias_, _senex_, _voluptatem_, _illius_, _semel_; II. The
proceleusmatic foot, or four short syllables, instead of the dactyl;
scen. i. v. 59, 73, 76, 88, 109; scen. ii. v. 36; III. The elision of
_s_ in words ending with _us_ or _is_ short, and sometimes even of the
whole syllable, before the next word beginning with a vowel; in scen. i.
v. 30, 81, 98, 101, 116, 119; scen. ii. v. 28. IV. The first syllable
of _ille_ is repeatedly shortened, and indeed nothing is more usual in
Terence than this licence; whence we may collect how ready this word was
for abbreviation into the French and Italian articles. V. The last
letter of _apud_ is cut off, scen. i. v. 120; and scen. ii. v. 8. VI.
_Hodie_ is used as a pyrrhichius, in scen. ii. v. 11. VII. Lastly, there
is a clear instance of a short syllable, the antepenultimate of
_impulerim_, lengthened on account of the accent at the 113th verse of
the first scene.

[Sidenote: Its corruption by the populace,]

[Sidenote: and the provincials.]

These licences are in all probability chiefly colloquial, and would not
have been adopted in public harangues, to which the precepts of
rhetorical writers commonly relate. But if the more elegant language of
the Romans, since such we must suppose to have been copied by Terence
for his higher characters, differed so much in ordinary discourse from
their orthography, it is probable that the vulgar went into much greater
deviations. The popular pronunciation errs generally, we might say
perhaps invariably, by abbreviation of words, and by liquefying
consonants, as is n