X. Rhythm is one of the applications of force and quantity. It may be defined to be the metrical arrangement of speech. It is not mainly dependant on custom or on the genius of any language whatever, but arises from the very manner in which speech is produced, and is as involuntary as the throb or remission of the pulse, or the inhaling and respiration of the breath. In the formation of speech there is a regular action and reaction of the organs which produce it. To form a heavy syllable, or one which has accentual stress upon it, these organs are necessarily placed in a certain position ; and from their very nature it is necessary that, before they form another heavy syllable, they should recover their first position ; hut the time which is occupied in this recovery of their position is not always lost to the purposes of speech, for it may be filled up with one or more syllables, which have no stress, and ,which are therefore very properly denominated light; if it is not filled up in this way it is a pause or rest. To illustrate this, let us take the words— One, two, three, four, five.
These mongallables, if distinctly and deliberately pronounced, have two peculiarities ; each has the organic stress or emphasis, and each has a pause after it. Let these pauses be filled up with the light syllable and ; and then the two lines, namely :— will be of exactly the same length as to time in music, or rhythm In speech, the syllable and occupying no more time than what necessarily intervenes between the syllables under organic emphasis.
This alternate action and reaction of the organs of speech was called by the Greeks by the significant terms Thesis and Ands ; the former denoting the setting down of a syllable, as the setting down of the foot in walking; the latter denoting the raising of it sip, like the lifting of the foot from the ground ; the former producing the heavy syllables, the latter the light ones.
The weight of syllables, or in other words, the stress with which they are enunciated, must be carefully distinguished from their quantity, since the weight or stress with which the syllable is uttered does not always correspond to the relative time which the utterance requires. Thus in the word pentire, the syllable pen is the heavier, but it is not longer than the syllable sire. So also in the word inward, there is an equality of time in the two syllables, but not of weight. In banish, banner, banter, the first syllable is heavy but short ; in paper, taper, raposr, it is both heavy and long; and the same observation applies to misery, middle, mistress, compared with miser, miser, mitre.
Those emphatical divisions into which, from the very nature of the organs, all speech naturally falls, are called by writers on this subject cadences.* Every full spoken cadence consists of a heavy syllable, and of one or more light ones, but pauses may be substituted to make up the time which any of these syllables would occupy. Measure, or metre, therefore in speech naturally distributes itself into two kinds : common measure, which, according to Mr. Steele, is the allotment of two crotchets or their equivalents to each cadence; and triple measure, which is the allotment of three crotchets or their equivalents to each cadence ; emphasis however will sometimes prolong the duration of a cadence beyond the allotted time, just as an ad libitum is allowed in solos in music. Without entering further into minute distinctions or exceptions, the following may serve as specimens of each kind. This mark § indicates a short pause, this Il a longer, and this a still longer one:—