(2.) “Some of our Moderns (especially Mr. Bishe, in his Art of Poetry) and lately Mr. Mattaire, in what he calls, The English Grammar, erroneously use Accent for Quantity, one signifying the Length or Shortness of a Syllable, the other the raising or falling of the Voice in Discourse.”—­Brightland’s Gram., London, 1746, p. 156.

(3.) “Tempus cum accentu a nonnullis male confunditur; quasi idem sit acui et produci.  Cum brevis autem syllaba acuitur, elevatur quidem vox in ea proferenda, sed tempus non augetur.  Sic in voce hominibus acuitur mi; at ni quae sequitur, aequam in efferendo moram postulat.”—­Lily’s Gram., p. 125.  Version:  “By some persons, time is improperly confounded with accent; as if to acute and to lengthen were the same.  But when a short syllable is acuted, the voice indeed is raised in pronouncing it, but the time is not increased.  Thus, in the word hominibus, mi as the acute accent; but ni, which follows, demands equal slowness in the pronunciation.”  To English ears, this can hardly seem a correct representation; for, in pronouncing hominibus, it is not mi, but min, that we accent; and this syllable is manifestly as much longer than the rest, as it is louder.

[490] (1.) “Syllables, with respect to their quantity, are either long, short, or common.”—­Gould’s Adam’s Lat.  Gram., p. 243.  “Some syllables are common; that is, sometimes long, and sometimes short.”—­Adam’s Lat. and Eng.  Gram., p. 252. Common is here put for variable, or not permanently settled in respect to quantity:  in this sense, from which no third species ought to be inferred, our language is, perhaps, more extensively “common” than any other.

(2.) “Most of our Monosyllables either take this Stress or not, according as they are more or less emphatical; and therefore English Words of one Syllable may be considered as common; i.e. either as long or short in certain Situations.  These Situations are chiefly determined by the Pause, or Cesure, of the Verse, and this Pause by the Sense.  And as the English abounds in Monosyllables, there is probably no Language in which the Quantity of Syllables is more regulated by the Sense than in English.”—­W.  Ward’s Gram., Ed. of 1765, p. 156.

(3.) Bicknell’s theory of quantity, for which he refers to Herries, is this:  “The English quantity is divided into long, short, and common.  The longest species of syllables are those that end in a vowel, and are under the accent; as, mo in har_mo_nious, sole in con_sole_, &c.  When a monosyllable, which is unemphatic, ends in a vowel, it is always short; but when the emphasis is placed upon it, it is always long. Short syllables are such as end in any of the six mutes; as cu_t_, sto_p_, ra_p_i_d_, ru_g_ge_d_, lo_ck_.