of the ancient accents, founded upon mufical principles, produced melody; thofe of the Scotch, which take an oppofite direction, can produce only difcord. Befides, these accents of the Scotch have never been settled by any rule of proportion. Their degrees of elevation and depreffion are different in different fhires and towns, as alfo in the individuals of the fame place. With fome, the distance between high and low is much greater; and the tranfitions from the one to the other, more fudden than with others: and they who ufe the more moderate pronunciation, fuch as the inhabitants of Edinburgh, find their ears as much offended by the tones of the natives of Inverness or Glasgow, as an Englishman is with those ufed at Edinburgh. Whereas the proportion between the ancient accents was fixed by a mufical scale. Dionyfius of Halicarnaffus informs us, that the acute and

grave

took in the compafs of five notes; confequently the acute was a fifth above the grave, and each of them a third from the middle note: the acute, a third above it, and the grave a third below it; and the circumflex, paffed from a fifth above, through a third, to a fifth below; fo that the diftinguished notes in fpeaking, were always thirds and fifths, and confequently in a mufical proportion.

If it be asked, how it was poffible that these nice proportions could be observed in common difcourfe by a whole people; it may be answered that this was a matter not left to chance. When the practice of the best orators of Greece, had established the proportion of these accents, obfervation. on the pleafing effects which fuch proportion produced on the ear, gave rife to the rules of art; and the children of all the better clafs of people, were regularly taught I 3 thefe

these proportions, at the fame time that they learned to read, by the fame masters who taught the art of finging, and playing upon musical instruments: for the use of a false accent, would have been an unpardonable fault, in any one who attempted to speak in public. This uniformity in the higher class, was easily transferred, by imitation and custom, to those of an inferiour order. And though poffibly, they, who had not the benefit of fuch regular inftruction, might not be fo critically exact in the use of those accents, as they who had, yet the difference was but fmall; and we are particularly affured, that in Athens, where oratory was at its highest pitch, the utterance of the loweft citizen was as correct, and his ear as pure, as in those of the first clafs.

As the English have but one accent, fo they have but one mark in writing to point

it out; and this mark is one of those used in Greek books, as it is pretended, to point out their accents, though in reality they are quite infignificant. But as if there were fome fatality, that every thing should contribute to puzzle this subject among the learned, our cafually borrowing the mark of the acute accent from the Greek, has made them, by an affociation of ideas, confider every accented fyllable with us, as elevated, or pronounced in a higher note than the rest. So that had the grave of the acute been adopted to be our mark, they would, upon the fame principle, have confidered all those fyllables as depreffed, or uttered in a lower note than the reft. But

instead

had we luckily pitched upon fome mark of our own, which had no fimilitude to any of the Greek accents, there never would have been the least question about high and low with regard to thofe fyllables, and the learned

I 4

learned would have fallen in of course with the general idea, that of its only marking the fyllable on which the stress of the voice is to be laid, For I think I may appeal to all my hearers, whether upon any dispute about the pronunciation of a word, when the question is afked upon which fyllable the accent ought to be laid, as, advertisement or advertífement, con'cordance or concórdance, it ever enters into their heads, that this question means, on which fyllable the voice is to be raised; or whether they do not understand it to be, on which fyl lable are we to lay the greatest stress. Indeed the very term itself the accent, fhews we have but one, for had we more than one, they must be diftinguished by different names as among the Greeks; and that one, I have clearly fhewn to be a monotone, as before exemplified by the notes of a drum. The adventitious fenfe annexed

to