282.5. EBB to Uvedale Price
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 2.
Hope End.
Jany 1828.
My dear Sir Uvedale,
I cannot consent to be considered your antagonist, even at the flattering price of being called a Bradamante at the same time. I hope I do not wish errare cum Platone, but cum Platone vera sentire is, & ought to be, more satisfactory to my mind than a compliment a Platone! It is therefore incumbant on me to say, that the antagonist sur le Tapis is an ideal one; and that I myself believe length in our language, to be occasioned neither by aggregated consonants nor long vowels—after which acknowledgment, you will give me leave to explain a little further, tho’ as briefly as possible, what I venture to think questionably put in the disputed passage.
May I make Dr Russel your antagonist, for fear of any further misunderstanding? To the question “how is length expressed by the voice?” you reply “by modern accent”,—and he replies “by the distinct articulation of diphthongs[,] long vowels & aggregated consonants”. He does not consider the possibility of expressing the sound of long vowels & diphthongs, in a short time, which possibility is convincingly proved by the occasional practice of the Latins—ex. gr: “Insulæ lonio in magno”,—& the practice of the Greeks, which is too general to make quotation necessary. And not only does the practice take place in a confluence of vowels, as has been confidently pretended: Priscian says “Roles Τουγατηφ dicunt pro Τυγατηφ,—ου conipientes.” Such however being Dr Russel’s view of the case, when you propose to him, for a standard anapoest, colonáde,—and for a standard iambus, alóne or beréft, he will instantly accept them on his own principle, without diminishing in any degree the difference between you. For the accent falls upon the long vowels a, & o, & on the aggregated consonants ft: and only this coincidence occasions your casual agreement; the length, which you attribute to the influence of the accent, being attributed by him to the long vowels & aggregated consonants. If the words in question were accented col’onade, al’one, & ber’eft, he would equally, on his principle, call them anapœst & iambi,—whereas if they were pronounced colonad’, alon’, & beref’, you would equally, on your principle, consider them just standards of those feet. And therefore I may still be permitted to contend, that, tho’ your English examples were to be received as standards in Greek & Latin, the main question would stand as it was before that concession: and I will hazard at the same time, a remark, that your selection of unmixed examples, seems to me rather contrary to the general spirit of yr system.
You make me anxious to explain, that by the long vowel in the syllable lone, I simply meant the open vowel—but I dont understand why you should quarrel with my first expression. The identity of what we call the open vowel, & what the ancients called the long vowel, seems sufficiently & even strikingly apparent. Our manner of writing this long sound, is much less definite & elegant than that adopted by the Greeks after the invention of Simonides,—and is very strongly analogous with the manner of the Latins, before & after the time of Accius. We have several ways of describing the long sound in writing—by doubling the short vowel, .. steer, as the Romans used to do in eemi: but we, by a national peculiarity, may reverse the two last letters & introduce the consonant between the vowels,—which, so situated, will express the long sound as distinctly as in their state of union: ex. gr: here. Or by two combined vowels of different kinds—ea, hear,—as the Romans in aegi: egi: ei, receive,—as the Romans in omneis: ie, the last diphthong reversed, as in believe. By a similar process we have loom,—lone,—and load, like the Latin coago cogo: and we have besides though & low. We are, indeed, often satisfied with doing what the Greeks used to do, & what the Romans after a time submitted to do,—for, not distinguishing the long vowel to the eye, we write real & lo—which last word was written loe: by our ancient moderns. Now o in the syllable lone has the omega sound: and we may surely call the o in fréestŏne a long vowel, when the Greeks did not hesitate about giving their ω in Ουςανὤ εςηφιξε ηαφη, the name of a long vowel. There may be a long vowel in a short syllable. You see how very innocent my meaning was—& now to go on with Lord Monboddo—
I happened to read the part of his Origin of Languages, which refers to the present subject, immediately before I had the pleasure of receiving your book. Therefore his views & his mode of defending them, were fresh in my recollection, and when I came to the disputed passage in your essay, I imagined that I did not quite find what I expected,—a clear confutation of Lord Monboddo’s argument. Indeed, to speak with unreserve,—& in a case like this, it is better to say nothing, than not to say everything,—your representation of his argument was so different from my comprehension of it, that I was a little inclined to suspect you of quoting again, from nearly a sixty years memory. But let Lord Monboddo speak for himself. “If the reader is not convinced by what I have said, of our verse being made by accent & not by quantity, let him take any English verse whether blank or rhyming, long or short, and let him make every accented syllable either long,—such as some syllables which I have allowed to be so in the English language,—or short, as he pleases, and try whether that will alter the measure of the verse, the syllables still continuing to be accented: and if it does not, that, I think, is demonstration that it is not quantity, but accent, which makes our verse.” Lord M’s example is, as you have stated, the first line of Paradise Lost upon which he observes—“Here the accented syllables are man’s, dis, be, and, fruit. Now take any or all of these, & alter them with respect to quantity as you please, & you will not injure the verse. Take for example the first mans & make it moans, which is certainly a longer syllable, or make it mas which is a shorter syllable, and the verse is the same.” Now it is sufficiently clear, that what Lord M is pleased to call his demonstration, is founded on a petitio principii of the cause of length: He does not prove that English verse is unregulated by quantity, but only that it is unregulated by quantity a son façon. However this may be, I cannot help doubting whether your argument respecting the indeterminate nature of monosyllabic accent, meets in any way the tendency of the preceding extract. Your argument is directed against a position founded on the possibility of changing the places of the accents in Milton’s line: and to such a position, the remarks on monosyllablic accents would be entirely appropriate. But of such a position, I find no trace in Lord Monboddo, who, in his metrical experiment, distinctly supposes the continuance of the accents on the usual syllables. I communicate to you with great deference, the impression upon my mind; and submit its correctness to your decision.
I was quite wrong about the parenthesis,—tho’ I feel, thereupon, as little remorse as people generally do for errors by which they gain; my mistake have [sic] caused an explanation very interesting in every way. As to the pyrrhic etymology, it is indebted to you for the most poetical defence that could be thought of; and really Pyrrhus, to whom the origin of the dance is attributed, has an hereditary right to his father’s activity in armour. Since I wrote to you last, I have found out what seems to me a rather strong passage in γαστι of Terentianus’s etymology: it comes from a no less elevated authority than Longinus,—“πυφφιπιοι ιφ τφοπαιοι ιφ διχοφςιοι εις οφχηᾶιηον συνεηπιπτοντες”,—and is thus countenanced by Vopius, who gives at the same time, a view of your side of the question. “Pes pyrrichius aptes duntakal ad celeres motus exprimendos, ayrismod, erant armati saltus corybantium apud guescos, et saliorium apud prmanos: undi etian a mobilitate dictus creditur, quasi totus igneus.”
I am extremely obliged to you for the trouble you were so kind as to take, relative to the distinctions, and am pleased that you should not think it necessary to give yr veto against them. I have tried to trace them, out of Homer; but it wont do. The tragedians confound soul & spirit most unmercifully,—and as to the Latin poets, not even Virgil; tho’ he was as much Homer’s imitator as his inferior,—seems to have an idea on the subject. There is nothing surprising in this: for even if later poetical writers had been in possession of Homer’s notion,—which they probably were not,—or of his philosophical preciseness,—which they certainly were not,—the incrustation of ages, by changing the associations & powers of the necessary words would have rendered those words unfit for expressing the ancient meaning, with any sufficient degree of the ancient exactness.
With all our best regards, believe me,
dear Sir Uvedale,
Your most sincere & grateful
E. B. Barrett.
Publication: None traced.
Source: Author’s copy at Armstrong Browning Library.
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