(2.) Walker, in his theory, regarded the inflections of the voice as pertaining to accent, and as affording a satisfactory solution of the difficulties in which this subject has been involved; but, as an English orthoepist, he treats of accent in no other sense, than as stress laid on a particular syllable of a word—­a sense implying contrast, and necessarily dividing all syllables into accented and unaccented, except monosyllables.  Having acknowledged our “total ignorance of the nature of the Latin and Greek accent,” he adds:  “The accent of the English language, which is constantly sounding in our ears, and every moment open to investigation, seems as much a mystery as that accent which is removed almost two thousand years from our view.  Obscurity, perplexity, and confusion, run through every treatise on the subject, and nothing could be so hopeless as an attempt to explain it, did not a circumstance present itself, which at once accounts for the confusion, and affords a clew to lead us out of it.  Not one writer on accent has given such a definition of the voice as acquaints us with its essential properties. * * * But let us once divide the voice into its rising and falling inflections, the obscurity vanishes, and accent becomes as intelligible as any other part of language. * * * On the present occasion it will be sufficient to observe, that the stress we call accent is as well understood as is necessary for the pronunciation of single words, which is the object of this treatise.”—­Walker’s Dict., p. 53, Princip. 486, 487, 488.

(3.) Afterwards, on introducing quantity, as an orthoepical topic, he has the following remark:  “In treating this part of pronunciation, it will not be necessary to enter into the nature of that quantity which constitutes poetry; the quantity here considered will be that which relates to words taken singly; and this is nothing more than the length or shortness of the vowels, either as they stand alone, or as they are differently combined with the vowels or consonants.” Ib., p. 62, Princip. 529.  Here is suggested a distinction which has not been so well observed by grammarians and prosodists, or even by Walker himself, as it ought to have been.  So long as the practice continues of denominating certain mere vowel sounds the long and the short, it will be very necessary to notice that these are not the same as the syllabic quantities, long and short, which constitute English verse.

[494] (1.) In the Latin and Greek languages, this is not commonly supposed to be the case; but, on the contrary, the quantity of syllables is professedly adjusted by its own rules independently of what we call accent; and, in our English pronunciation of these languages, the accentuation of all long words is regulated by the quantity of the last syllable but one.  Walker, in the introduction to his Key,