Athenian Elegance delineated; or, a Critical Inquiry into the Principles and Laws of the Grecian Tragic Poetry.

Omnino caussæ prius investigandæ sunt, quam regulæ constituendæ.
HERMANN.

PREFACE.

IN presenting the following treatise to the public, it is not necescary to expatiate on the pleasure to be experienced in, or the advantages to be derived from classical pursuits; nor is it requisite to eulogise the study of that particular portion of classical literature, to which the subsequent pages have reference. We shall content ourselves with one or two remarks, affecting the peculiarities of the work itself.

A careful perusal of the disputations of the learned, on the various points included under the general head of metrical science, convinced the author of the importance of fixing some determinate principles of recitation; of forming, by the application of these principles, a plan of recitation for each species of verse; and of making this plan of recitation the basis of every illustration of elegance; more especially of regarding it as containing the reason of every restriction imposed on the score of metre. These views

were not a little confirmed by the failure of all attempts to arrange, from the materials furnished by the several critics, a clear, precise, and consistent metrical system for Athenian tragedy; and the author was thus likewise compelled either to relinquish the subject altogether, or to enter on one sufficient to call forth all the sagacity and application of Porson or Bentley. Not without hesitation he chose the latter; and with a view to the accomplishment of his object, be has read, studied, and reasoned; and the result of his investigations, as far as relates to Tragic poetry, he here submits to the judgment of the learned reader.

With regard to the execution of the work, the writer has but little to say. He is free to confess, that he has with others his favorite critics, but he is not aware of having been influenced by prejudice in the choice; and it has been his constant study, in the discussion of every topic, to animadvert with candor and impartiality. Nothing, it may be added, is to him more unpleasant, than the perusal of personal sarcasms and reproaches, especially in works of a philological nature; and he trusts, that the animation of debate has not betrayed him into any expressions inconsistent with this declaration. An air of triumphant superiority little befits those who are engaged in the discovery of truth, and who are undeniably indebted, in no inconsiderable degree, to the labors of their less privileged predecessors.

Bristol.

H. W. W.

CHAPTER I.

General principles of recitation; and the Anapæstic verses of the Attie Tragedians.

IT is agreed among prosodians, that quantity, accent, pause, and the several modulations of voice denominated tones, including emphasis, are the figures employed in the recitation of every composition. The first respects the time occupied in the pronunciation of syllables, as being long or short, without determining (if the expression may be allowed) the exact degree of length or shortness. Accent may be defined, the stress of voice comprising both loudness and acuteness, laid on a certain syllable of every word, except a few short unimportant ones, ternied by the Greeks enclitics; and serves to enable the ear rightly to distinguish the words of a sentence from each other, in addition to affording it an agreeable variety. In Greek prose, the mark of accent is placed over the syllable to be accented, and is often of service in pointing out the true signification: under this impression it is likewise continued in poetry, according to the position of the accent in prose. Here we may observe, that in English, accent or syllabic emphasis is of the same importance as quantity was in the languages of Greece and Rome; and it appears, that in the latter, accent was regarded as an object of secondary importance in comparison of quantity, and thus the poet scrupled not to alter its position, from a certain syllable of every word to a certain syllable of every foot. Pauses may be classed under two general heads, vocal and sentential. Not indeed that these distinctions are precisely correct; the vocal pauses enabling the speaker to proceed with propriety in his discourse, and thus assisting the sense, and the sentential being altogether indispensable to continued utterance. The former takes place in prose at the end of every word of importance; but are imperceptible to the hearer, unless particularly attentive to the recitation, on account of their extreme shortness. But let it be carefully observed, that this remark is applicable only to those species of composition which require to be recited deliberately; the vocal pauses may be, in all others, neglected with propriety. The sentential pauses of the Greeks, were the comma, colon, and period, besides some extraordinary ones occasionally employed; all of which, as well as emphasis, or a peculiar intension of voice on certain words to give them prominence, and the other modulations of the voice, contributed to display the true meaning of the speaker in all its fulness and nicety. There is, in the above observations, scarcely one particular that will not command the most ready assent, if we except that which refers to the vocal pauses : and even this can, in our judgment, scarcely be called in question. We ask, how is it that in the case of the word orparià succeeded by a word beginning with a vowel or diphthong, a hiatus occurs,

after the word, (we now speak of prose,) but no hiatus occurs after the penultimate, followed by the vowel a? The remark may be prosecuted to a considerable extent, but the nature of our present subject compels us to rest here.

The general question, in what manner was the poetry of the ancient Greeks recited?' may accordingly be considered as resolving itself into the more particular one, with what modifications are these remarks to be applied to poetry?' And in reference to those kinds of poetry which are in themselves dignified and weighty, particularly the epic and tragic, we unhesitatingly advance the following doctrine, grounded in maxims the most clear and evident. It can scarcely be argued, that the ancient Greeks recited these species of poetry in the same manner as prose: this would be, in a language like the Greek, to render poetry a mere succession of long and short syllables in a prescribed order; and poetry of this description could not be equal to finished prose. Equally ridiculous is the hypothesis, that the Greeks in the recitation of their poetry attended solely to the feet; no Homeric or Athenian audience would have tolerated for a moment the monotonous drawl of scanning, or have listened to an orderly succession of long and short syllables, often unintelligible, and never conveying any of those nice and forcible distinctions of meaning peculiarly characteristic of the writings of that polished people. Metrical beauty was doubtless made to consist with excellence of idea and of expression: the several figures above enumerated were doubtless so employed, as to distinguish both the true meaning and the true prosodial character of each verse, without giving an undue prominence to either. And this could best be done, we conceive, by employing emphasis, tones, and the sentential pauses, in behalf of the sense, but using accent and the vocal pauses according to the dictates of the metre. The former figures could not be otherwise employed with any degree of consistency; and it was necessary to accent the verses as composed of feet, and to regulate the vocal pauses by the particular nature of each kind of verse, in order to make the proper distinction between poetry and prose. Quantity, as before observed, was the most essential particular in Greek poetry, and had an equal bearing on the meaning and the numbers of a verse. With respect to the vocal pauses, which may in these cases be styled with greater propriety metrical pauses, as being under the direction of the metre, they were made after the feet or dipodes, according as the species was recited by feet or dipodes; but it may be considered, that the pause after a foot or dipode ending in the middle of a word, was equal to that at the termination of an important word in prose, but that the pause after a foot or dipode ending with a word, was about double the former in length. In Heroic poetry, the cæsural pause, which appears to have been equal to the common vocal pause, took place after the first

and emphatic syllable of the dactyl or spondee when it terminated a word; and in those kinds of verse which were recited by dipodes, it is more than probable that the less metrical pause, corresponding in a sense to the one just named, was made after the first foot of a dipode terminating with a word. Recited correctly in all these respects, as they undoubtedly were by the ancient bards and actors, the Grecian Epic and Tragic poetry must have displayed to the Grecian ear, both a rich exuberance of variety, and a beautiful and engaging uniformity; and we shall not, we hope, be accused of arrogance by our readers, if we claim for this basis of our metrical doctrine, the meed of superior rationality and consistency.

We have now to apply these general principles to the anapæstic verses of the Attic tragedians. These verses were composed of anapæsts, dactyls, and spondees --; and allowed, in cases of necessity, of a proceleusmatic. They were employed both in the choruses of the tragedies, and in separate systems of dimeters or verses containing four feet, with one or more monometers occasionally intermixed, and closed by a parœmiac or dimeter catalectic. Some critics have objected to the term dimeter being applied to anapæstic verses composed of four feet, arguing that the anapast, being equal in the time of pronunciation to the dactyl, has the same right as the latter foot, to be considered a metre of itself. But a moment's reflection will convince us of the propriety of the common designation: for it cannot be questioned, that a foot constituted a metre in those verses which were read by feet, but two feet in those which were read by dipodes; and the names assigned to the two kinds of verse, serve to show us that the dactylic is of the former, and the anapæstic of the latter description. Accordingly, after each dipode, either the greater vocal pause designated thus, or the less thus, occurred, as the dipode terminated at the end, or in the middle of a word; also, the less occurred after the first foot of each dipode when it ended with a word. The anapæst, according to the general rule for the accentuation of feet, which mentions the long syllable of the foot as that which receives the accent, and the principal foot of the verse as determining the accent of those which have in this respect no decisive character, unquestionably received the accent, or more properly the metrical accent, on the last syllable; the dactyl evidently on the first: the proper method of accenting the spondee is a matter of doubt. In dactylic verses, the dactyl is the only foot to influence the accent of the spondee; and thus the spondee was in these invariably accented on the former syllable. Trochaic admitted trochees, dactyls, anapæsts, tribrachs, and spondees; but the anapæst being an unimportant foot, and never occurring but at the end of a dipode, the accent of the trochee was followed by the tribrach and spou

dee. Iambic also, though they allowed of a dactyl in the first and third place, yet by refusing to admit the spondee in the second and fourth, annihilated all its pretensions to direct the position of the accent on the latter foot; and it need not be added, that to give the tribrach following the dactyl in the first place the accent of that foot, would be to outrage the most evident principles of metrical beauty. In anapæstic verses, on the contrary, the dactyl is admitted as a very important foot, some verses being entirely composed of dactyls and spondees; and this circumstance may produce a hesitation, whether the accent of this foot or of the anapæst should be ascribed to the spondee. The learned Dunbar of Edinburgh affirms without any qualification, (An. Maj. tom. 3. part 2. p. 233.) that in anapæstics the anapæst has the ictus metricus on the last syllable, the dactyl and spondee on the first. But we scruple not to say, that this doctrine is both inconsistent with the general rule for the accentuation of feet, and decidedly militates against the elegance of the metre. And to attribute universally to the spondee the ictus of the anapæst, is to disregard all those striking circumstances above alluded to, and will be attended by an injury to the sense equal to that resulting from the position advocated by Professor Dunbar. The truth lies, we conceive, between these two contradictory opinions. As has been already remarked, the anapæstic systems of the Grecian Tragic writers were recited in two dipodes; and these dipodes were anapæstic, dactylic, or spondaic; the first class containing an anapæst, the second a dactyl, and the third two spondees. When a spondee occurred in an anapæstic dipode, it is extremely probable, if not absolutely certain, that it was accented like the anapæst; when in a dactylic, like the dactyl; and in a spondaic it is best to assign to it the ictus of the anapæst. We should, accordingly, thus read the following verses of the Medea of Euripides:

Mn.

Τρο.

Δυστάνος ἐγώ, μελέα τε πονών,

Ἰώιμοι μοί, πως ἂν δλοίμᾶν,

Τόδ' εκείνο, φιλοί παῖδές Ιματήρ

Κινεί η κραδιά», | κινεί | δὲ χυλόν. vss. 95. sqq. Let it be remembered, that in this extract the metrical pauses are denoted, as they would occur independently of the sentential: every attempt to designate the pauses of the verse, varied as they were by the blending of the sentential and metrical, must prove fruitless. One of the most important features of our system of recitation is, that it supposes two regular metrical pauses of different lengths, which could be lengthened or shortened agreeably to the requisitions of the sense, and the less neglected when occasioned by casura, or occurring in the middle of a dipode, if called for by the