language which is not more or less tainted with this fallacy. Even where it is perceived and admitted that the two sounds differ in kind, or, in other words, that they are quite distinct sounds, a notion or half notion is still apt to lurk, both in the nomenclature and in the reasoning, that the one is naturally the short sound of the other. The fact is, that, in so far as respects mere length, the sounds in question can hardly be characterised as distinguishable into two sets. At any rate, a syllable, the vowel sound in which is what is called the short a, e, or i, may certainly be made to occupy, and often does occupy, as much time in the enunciation as one in which the vowel sound is what is called the long a, e, or i. Every classical scholar, indeed, is familiar with one form of this fact, in the prolongation of a short vowel in the Greek and Latin by what is called position, or the circumstance of its being followed by two consonants. Even in these ancient languages, however, it is worth noting that, while position makes a short vowel long, or, as we are told, doubles its time, it is not held, at least in prosodical effect, to make a long vowel either twice as long, or any longer at all. But in English, two things are remarkable in connexion with this matter:-1. That, upon any definition or understanding of the terms long and short that can be proposed, what is called a short vowel, or the syllable in which it stands, may be long without position; 2. That such a vowel or syllable may be short with or notwithstanding position. Here again, however, English scholars have almost universally been blinded to the plainest facts in their own language by their classical preconceptions. Because a vowel followed by two consonants is long in Greek and Latin, it has been commonly assumed that it is always long in a similar position in English too. And this unfounded notion has been productive of the greater confusion, inasmuch as it runs directly counter to the other prejudice just adverted to, which holds the sound that a vowel commonly has in this situation to be short. Thus, for example, while the monosyllable win is held to be short, the same combination of letters, retaining precisely the same sound, when it comes to form the first syllable of the word winter, is half regarded as long; and that although it is hardly pretended that any more time is taken to pronounce it in the one case than in the other. In truth, however the matter may stand in Latin, in English some of the syllables that would be accounted long under the rule of position are among the slightest and shortest in the language; such, for instance, as the conjunction and, and the terminations ant and ent. In regard to this point there can be no doubt that the pronunciation of the one language is constructed upon a different principle from that of the other. Whatever may be the true nature of the distinction between what are denominated long and short syllables, which is unquestionably the basis of Latin prosody and Latin verse, it is certain that a vowel standing in position, and the syllable containing that vowel, are uniformly ranked with and treated as belonging prosodically to one of the two classes into which all vowels and syllables are divided,— namely, to that which is described as long. It is possible that by the terms long and short the ancient grammarians may have meant nothing more than accented and unaccented. All that is necessary to be affirmed here is, that accent is, at any rate, the sole principle of English prosody and of English verse. And in English a syllable of which the vowel is in position is by no means necessarily an accented syllable, or one having prosodically the force of such. Mr Guest believes that the e final in Chaucer and other writers of the same age is frequently the e or a of inflection of the original form of the language. Thus, in the opening couplet of the Canterbury Tales,— "Whanne that April with his shoures sote The drought of March had perced to the rote," he holds the e of sote to be the sign of the plural, and the e of rote to be most probably the sign of the dative singular; the common form of the original word for root being rot. Again, he conceives that in the following verse, "Hire gretest othe n'as but by Seint Loy," othe represents the ancient genitive plural atha; so that hire gretest othe means her greatest of oaths. In support of this interpretation he adduces from the Geste of King Horn the expression "Riche menne sones (that is, sons of rich men); from Piers Plowman, that of " poure menne cotes" (poor men's cots); and from Gower's Confessio Amantis, that of "her horse knave" (their horses groom).* Moreover, he looks upon the final e of the adjective as being not only the sign of the plural (as in shoures sote), and the mark of what is called the definite declension, or the form which the adjective takes after the, or this, or that, or a possessive pronoun (as in the gret-e see, and this sik-e man, and hire whit-e voluper-e, that is, her white cap), but the affixed e which in the Original English con *Eng. Rhythms, i. 30-33. verted an adjective into an adverb. Thus, in the line from the Clerke's Tale, in the Canterbury Tales, "And in a cloth of gold that bright-e shone," he regards bright-e as representing, not our present adjective bright, but our adverb brightly. In the superlative, however, he observes, it is not the adverb, but the adjective, that takes the e; in other words, that brightest is brighteste, and that brightliest is brightest.* The full account, then, of that most remarkable among the peculiarities which distinguish the English of Chaucer from that of the present day, the e terminating so many of his words, and always forming a syllable, which has now disappeared altogether from the pronunciation, and in great part from the spelling, of the language, may be comprised in the five following propositions: 1. In words borrowed from the French it is, as pointed out by Tyrwhitt, the e feminine of that language, still universally retained both in French orthography and French prosody, though in English it has ceased to be pronounced, and only continues to be written where its presence is necessary to indicate the sound of a preceding vowel or consonant. 2. In nouns of native origin it is, in many cases, as *Eng. Rhythms, i. 29. The example that Mr Guest gives of this last canon is the following line in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales: "And fro the time that he firste began." But it is evident And so, indeed, the line is printed by Tyrwhitt. that, according to the canon, firste ought to be first. ment is also required by the prosody, if, as is believed to be the case, the final e in Chaucer always (except in hire, and, it may be, two or three other words) makes a distinct syllable when the following word begins with a consonant. also pointed out by Tyrwhitt, the substitute for, or remnant of, the ancient nominative singular termination (which was either e, or a, or u). 3. In other native nouns, according to Mr Guest, it is the e or a of the old dative singular, or genitive plural, or nominative plural in adjectives, or the sign of the definite form of the adjective, or of the adverb as distinguished from the adjective, or of the superlative of the adjective as distinguished from the superlative of the adverb. 4. In the verb, as pointed out by Tyrwhitt, it is the termination, in the stage at which the language had arrived through the decay of the ancient grammatical system, of the first person singular of the present indicative and the first and third persons singular of the perfect, and of one form of the second person plural of the imperative, and one form of the infinitive. 5. In many words of native derivation, howsoever it may have originated—whether from some primitive form, or, as Mr Price conceives, merely in an orthographical expedient-it probably gave the name sound to a preceding vowel, or served to indicate that it had such sound; being itself, however, at the same time a distinct syllable in this as well as in all other cases. The other principal peculiarities that distinguish the grammar of Chaucer's English from that of the English of the present day are the following: The substantive verb to ben (our to be) was inflected in the singular of the present indicative as it still is; but the form throughout the plural was aren or ben. So in the imperfect the plural form was weren. Our to have was to haven, or to han, which in the present was inflected by have, havest or hast, haveth or hath for the singular, and by haven or han for the plural; and |