With respect to the Greek and Roman accents, there has been no less dispute about their antiquity and their use, than concerning those of the Hebrews. It is the opinion of Vossius, and other learned grammarians, that they are a comparatively modern invention; and that the most ancient Greek accents were a few musical notes for poetry, invented by Aristophanes the grammarian, about the time of Ptolemy Philopater, and which were very different from those afterwards introduced. (Vos. de accent. Gr.ec.) Montfaucon, while lie allows Aris tophanes to have been the inventor of prosody, and of the marks by which the accents are now distinguished, asserts, that the Greek language was by no means des titute of accents before his time. (Pa/cogranh. Grcc. p. 3.) W•tslecn, Gesner, lord Monboddo, and others, have contended for the high antiquity of the Greek ac cents, and endeavoured to point out their specific use. It is not, however, contended, that the ancient Greeks used ac«ims in their common writings, or books, but only in their schools. No Greek inscriptions have either accent, spirit, apostiophus, or ;017-0: subscribed, till 170 years after Christ. Michaelis apprehended, that they do not occur in any copies of the New Testament still extant, which are :antecedent to the eighth century, and :pit seldom in those which arc: mule modern ; that they were not written by the apostles, but were probably added by Euthalius in the year 458. 11 is translato!, howe “!r, Mr Marsh, has discovered both accents marks of aspiration, in several more ancient MSS. which he mentions ; particularly the Vatican, and the Clam montane. The Alexandrian, Cambridge, and four other MSS. are IA ithout accents. Translat. of Illichael. In trod. vol. ii. p. 894.
The Greeks called their accents cr TCYle, and the Romans called them accentus ; terms which seem to show that their effect was musical, or consisted in a variation of the tone of the voice, in respect of acuteness and gravity. This also appears from the three species or varieties of the ancient accents; the acute, whose office, it is said, was to raise the voice to a greater height in the musical scale ; the grave, whose office it was to depress it; and the ctrcunjlex, which first carried the voice from grave to acute, and then from acute to grave. The management of these accents was reduced to rule by the ancients, and formed a prin cipal object of attention with all public speakers. There were academics instituted for the management of the voice, at which those destined for the bar or the stage attended, and received instructions from persons called .pwvarxo‘, or regulators of the voice. Roscius, the cele brated actor, had an academy of this kind ; and happened to have a law-suit with one of his pupils, in which Cicero pleaded his cause. Both Cicero and Quinctilian relate the story of Canis Gracchus, when he was declaiming in public, having a musician, or tibicen, stationed behind him, in order to regulate the tones of his voice by a pipe or flute. His employment, says Cicero, was not only to appease the passion of his master, but, upon certain oc casions, to stir it up: Qui instaret celeriter rum sonum, quo illune (Hit r,n2i.sston excitaret, aut a contentione revo caret.
Many passages might be cited from Cicero, Quincti lian, Boethius, and Plutarch, in order to prove, that not only musicians and actors, but even orators, had a nota tion, by which the inflexions of voice peculiar to their several professions of singing, declaiming, and ha ranguing, in public, were ascertained. This, in the case of haranguing, we may suppose to have been very much of the nature of the ancient accents. M. Duclos (Encyc. art. Declam. des .Inciens) has denied the possibility of this, on the principle, that the intervals are too minute to be accurately marked or ascertained. The possibility of it, however, has been completely proved by the inge nious Mr Steele, who was able to imitate, upon a violon cello, the exact tone of the voice in declamation, as it naturally passes from grave to acute, and from acute to grave ; and to express it in writing'. \Vith a finger on
the fourth string of a violoncello, and a corresponding motion of the bow, he imitated the precise tones of speech, by rapidly sliding the finger up and down the string, so as to produce a continued transition of the sound from acute to grave, or the contrary. (Prosodia Rationalis.) This kind of musical tone is very different from any succession of notes in the diatonic, chromatic, or even enharmonic scales ; for these all consist of inter vals, or sudden starts front tone to tone. But the music of declamation is a continual and insensible gliding up wards or downwards, without any sudden transition of tone. It is, however, perfectly of notation, and on principles altogether analogous to our common method of writing music, as was shown by Mr Steele, who, to denote this kind of melody, inscribed in the stave *If five lines, instead of crotchets and quavers, a set of right lines obliquely ascending or descending through a space, corresponding to the musical interval, through which the voice naturally glides in speaking.
These sliding notes, or marks of declamation, when taken out of the stave, are the exact representatives of the ancient accents; and, if their relative posi,ion, as to acuteness and gravity, be retained, they may, even in this situation, be sounded truly by the voice with a little practice. Mr Steele had made considerable proficiency himself in analysing and recording the melody of speech, and could repeat a sentence, which he had committed to paper with the accented tones, nearly as correctly as if it had been set to music. Ilis success, in this way, made him so sanguine, as to cherish the expectation of " transmitting to posterity the types of modern elocution, as accurately as we have received the musical compo sitions of Corelli." The investigations of this ingenious author have, we think, clearly established, that there is a musical accen tuation in all pleasing declamation; and that this accen tuation may be very accurately expressed by notes or characters; yet, after all, we cannot help thinking, that the office of the Greek accents, which have descended to us, was considerably different from this. The accents of declamation must vary considerably on the different words and syllables, according to the nature of the sub ject, otherwise the expression cannot be just or pleasing. It is pretty clearly shown by Mr Steele, that, when we utter the interjection oh: under the strong impression of wonder or surprise, we use a circumflex musical slide, first ascending, and then descending, through no less an interval than a whole octave, thus, oh But the same in terjection is employed as indicative of many other feel ings of the mind, such as affection, sorrow, compassion, &c.; and on each occasion the musical accent will be different, or the expression cannot be just. When it denotes sorrow, the tone of the voice continues all the while nearly at the same pitch ; for it is the natural cha racter of grief to be monotonous. Unquestionably, the declamation of the Greeks had analogous properties, or it must have had a defect unknown to any living lan guage ; it must have been completely destitute of senti mental expression, as inanimate as writing, and as mo notonous as the cant of a parish clerk. Yet the Greek accentual marks are invariably attached to particular syllables, whether the subject be serious or gay, rheto rical or didactic ; and whether the sentence be in the form of a simple proposition, a command, an insinua tion, or an interrogation. The inference appears to us unavoidable, that the Greek accents are not rhetorical marks, expressive of sentiment ; but grammatical signs, indicative of emphasis, quantity, or signification; and this conclusion is greatly strengthened by the compara tively modern date which is, with probability, assigned to these characters.