[Footnote 1:
This opinion, I need not say, is in direct opposition to the conclusion of
Foster and Mitford, and scarcely reconcilable with the apparent meaning of
the authorities from the old critics and grammarians. Foster's opponent was
for rejecting the accents and attending only to the syllabic quantity;--Mr.
C. would, _in prose_, attend to the accents only as indicators of the
quantity, being unable to conceive any practical distinction between time
and tone in common speech. Yet how can we deal with the authority of
Dionysius of Halicarnassus alone, who, on the one hand, discriminates
quantity so exquisitely as to make four degrees of _shortness_ in the
penultimates of _[Greek: --hodos hr odos, tz opos]_ and _[Greek: --stz
ophos]_, and this expressly _[Greek: --eu logois psilois]_, or plain prose,
as well as in verse; and on the other hand declares, according to the
evidently correct interpretation of the passage, that the difference
between music and ordinary speech consists in the number only, and not in
the quality, of tones:--_[Greek: **to Poso diallattousa taes su odais kahi
oznauois, kahi ouchi to Poio_. (Pezhi Sun. c. 11.?]) The extreme
sensibility of the Athenian ear to the accent in prose is, indeed, proved
by numerous anecdotes, one of the most amusing of which, though, perhaps,
not the best authenticated as a fact, is that of Demosthenes in the Speech
for the Crown, asking, "Whether, O Athenians, does Aeschines appear to you
to be the mercenary (_[Greek: **misthothos]_} of Alexander, or his guest or
friend (_[Greek: **xenos]_)?" It is said that he pronounced _[Greek:
**misthothos]_ with a false accent on the antepenultima, as _[Greek:
**misthotos]_, and that upon the audience immediately crying out, by way of
correction, _[Greek: **misthothos]_, with an emphasis, the orator continued
coolly,--_[Greek: **achoueis a legousi]_--"You yourself hear what they
say!" Demosthenes is also said, whether affectedly, or in ignorance, to
have sworn in some speech by _[Greek: Asklaepios]_, throwing the accent
falsely on the antepenultima, and that, upon being interrupted for it, he
declared, in his justification, that the pronunciation was proper, for that
the divinity was _[Greek: aepios]_, mild.
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