Society for Pure English Tract 4 | Page 3

of Quintilian. In the earliest Latin the usage had been other, the stress coming as early in the word as was possible. Down to the days of Terence and probably somewhat later the old rule still held good of quadrisyllables with the scansion of _m[)u]l[)i][)e]r[)i]s_ or _m[)u]l[)i][)e]r[=e]s_, but in other words had given way to the later Quintilian rule, that all words with a long unit as penultimate had the stress on the vowel in that unit, while words of more than two syllables with a short penultimate had the stress on the antepenultimate. I say 'unit' because here, as in scansion, what counts is not the syllable, but the vowel plus all the consonants that come between it and the next vowel. Thus _inférnus_, where the penultimate vowel is short, no less than _suprémus_, where it is long, has the stress on the penultima. In _volucris_, where the penultimate unit was short, as it was in prose and could be in verse, the stress was on the _o_, but when ucr made a long unit the stress comes on the _u_, though of course the vowel remains short. In polysyllables there was a secondary stress on the alternate vowels. Ignorance of this usage has made a present-day critic falsely accuse Shakespeare of a false quantity in the line
Coríolánus in Coríoli.
It may be safely said that from the Reformation to the nineteenth century no Englishman pronounced the last word otherwise than I have written it. The author of the Pronouncing Dictionary attached to the 'Dictionary of Gardening' unfortunately instructs us to say _gládiolus_ on the ground that the i is short. The ground alleged, though true, is irrelevant, and, although Terence would have pronounced it _gládiolus_, Quintilian, like Cicero, would have said _gladíolus_. Mr. Myles quotes Pliny for the word, but Pliny would no more have thought of saying _gládiolus_ than we should now think of saying 'laboúr' except when we are reading Chaucer.
We need not here discuss the dubious exceptions to this rule, such as words with an enclitic attached, e.g. _prim[)a]que_ in which some authorities put the stress on the vowel which precedes the enclitic, or such clipt words as 'illuc', where the stress may at one time have fallen on the last vowel. In any case no English word is concerned.
In very long words the due alternation of stressed and unstressed vowels was not easy to maintain. There was no difficulty in such a combination as _hónoríficábilí_ or as _tudínitátibús_, but with the halves put together there would be a tendency to say _hónoríficabilitúdinitátibus_. Thus there ought not to be much difficulty in saying _Cónstantínopólitáni_, whether you keep the long antepenultima or shorten it after the English way; but he who forced the reluctant word to end an hexameter must have had 'Constantinóple' in his mind, and therefore said _Constántinópolitáni_ with two false stresses. The result was an illicit lengthening of the second o. His other false quantity, the shortening of the second _i_, was due to the English pronunciation, the influence of such words as 'metropol[)i]tan', and, as old schoolmasters used to put it, a neglect of the Gradus. Even when the stress falls on this antepenultimate _i_, it is short in English speech. Doubtless Milton shortened it in 'Areopagitica', just as English usage made him lengthen the initial vowel of the word.
Probably very few of the Englishmen who used the traditional pronunciation of Latin knew that they gave many different sounds to each of the symbols or letters. Words which have been transported bodily into English will provide examples under each head. It will be understood that in the traditional pronunciation of Latin these words were spoken exactly as they are spoken in the English of the present day. For the sake of simplicity it may be allowed us to ignore some distinctions rightly made by phoneticians. Thus the long initial vowel of alias is not really the same as the long initial vowel of _area_, but the two will be treated as identical. It will thus be possible to write of only three kinds of vowels, long, short, and obscure.
The letter or symbol a stood for two long sounds, heard in the first syllables of alias and of _larva_, for the short sound heard in the first syllable of _stamina_, and for the obscure sound heard in the last syllable of each of these last two words in English.
The letter e stood for the long sounds heard in genus and in _verbum_, for the short sound heard in _item_, and for the obscure sound heard in cancer. When it ended a word it had, if short, the sound of a short _i_, as in _pro lege_, _rege_, _grege_, as also in unstressed syllables in such words as precentor and regalia.
The letter i stood for