Again, the languages which are acknowledged to be derived from the Latin, such as that of the Troubadours, the Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and one portion of the English, by their shortened forma, confirm our views. And this will be found to be specially the case with the French. To those who may express their surprise that the French should thus take precedence in our argument of the Belli', the answer is, that the French is probably derived from the Latin mono completely than even the Italian ; for the Celtic, Teutonic, and !boric languages spoken in France before the Roman conquest of that country were of too foreign a character to mix with the language of conquerors or to supply the place of it in the intercourse of the provincials with their masters ; whereas• in Italy there already existed dialects which were intelligible to those who came from Rome, and for that very reason were not supplanted by that particular form of the Italian lan guage which happened to prevail in the metropolitan city. In the same way tho authorised dialect of our own tongue Is more likely to become the current language of Calcutta than of Yorkshire. Add to this that the language now called Italian belongs to Tuscany, not to Rome.
Lastly, we find much to strengthen our present argument in the abbreviated forms of writing which were in use among the Romans, and are still found in manuscripts. Thus the word consul is written cos, because the n was not pronounced before a, as Diomedes expressly tells us. (Putsch.; I28.) Again, tho word modo not un frequently occupies such a position in the verses of Terence as to seem to require a mono syllabic pronunciation, such indeed as seems also more consistent with its enclitic character. This very word enters into the composition of the Latin quomodo, which again in the languages derived from Latin assumes various forms : in the Romance, coin; in Spanish, come; in Italian, coins ; and in French, comme. To this we now add the fact that the Romans themselves represented the simple word by the abbre. viation ma. Again, • n • is tho manuscript mode of denoting the con junction enim, a word which must often be pronounced like ca to fulfil the conditions of Terence's metro. We may observe of this word, as of mode, that an enclitic should not attract the attention of the ear. A third example shall be a third enclitic, namely, quident. Bentley himself observed the trouble caused by this word m the verses of Terence (' Andr.,' i. 3, 20), and his remedy is to drop the final on, which however still leaves the verse encumbered with a superabundance of syllables. We contend that this also is commonly a monosyllable, and on the following grounds :—First, the metre of Terence requires it. Secondly, if itidem has a reduced form, item, analogy will give us quern for guidon. Thirdly, the Romans, like the French, did not pronounce the vowel u after q (otherwise such words—aqua, or 'algae, for instance—would have had the first syllable long), and they also disguised the final m, as Quintilian implies in the passage to which wo have already referred. Thus we have arrived at a sound he. Now the
Greek language has a word of precisely the same power and character "ye, which we strongly suspect to be the very same word; so that, il our suspicions be right, equidem and eye ye are of one origin, as well as of one meaning. Lastly, there are reasons still remaining which demand a monosyllabic pronunciation for quidem. We have already called it an enclitic, and it appears beyond dispute in that character in the words equidem, siquidem, quandoquidem. Now an enclitic should in its nature sacrifice itself to give tone to the word which precedes it, Yet if we believe the ordinary teachers of Latin prosody, equidem, though a corruption from egoquidens, or egridem, has the first syllable short. Again, qua ndo by itself has the final o common, to take the most unfavourable view; for in the poets of the Augustan age it would be difficult to find a single example where o is short; and iii quandoque, quandocunque, the vowel is always long. But add guidon, and they say quandoquidem has the same vowel always. short. . So also si In siquidem, according to their views, loses its length the moment the enclitic attaches itself to it. If our views be right, the true pronun ciation of these three words may be represented by something like eke, quandake, :Ike; the last corresponding to the Greek cry.. We will here observe, in passing, that our pronunciation of quidem suggests a correction of a corrupt passage in Persius, Sat. i. 10 :— "Littera. Per me quidem tint omnia protinus alba." The current reading is equidem; and, relying upon one error, the editors have allowed the same equidem to stand with dubites in Sat. v. 45, when the context, as well as grammar, requires dubitem. It may also be noticed that Ritschl, in his Parergon: says that the employ ment of quidem as a monosyllable is a very ordinary occurrence.
But to return to the subject before us. It is not uncommon with critics to Imagine to themselves that the laws of Greek and Latin verse are based upon principles essentially different from those of modern languages ; the former depending, they say, upon the length of sylla bles, the latter upon accent. This distinction we believe to be wholly without foundation. We rely little upon the fact that Priscian's treatise headed De Aecentibus' is only a schoolboy-like scanning of the first lines in the lEneid,' because, as has been already said, that writer's authority is not of great weight in what concerns the spoken tongue ; and in fact, for the same reason, there is little dependence to be placed upon the dogmas of the other so-called grammarians, such as Diomedes. Our views upon this subject are rather derived from the perusal of Terence and Plautus themselves, and are confirmed to a con siderable extent by the hexameters of Virgil and the lyrics of Horace. They also seem to be supported by the general principles of language. We will endeavour briefly to state the results at which we think we have fairly arrived.