no consonant divided the two following vowels. Possibly the reason was that there was a synæresis of the two vowels, but I doubt this, for a parasitic y was treated as a consonant. Examples are alias, genius, odium, junior, anæmia, and on the other hand fĭlius, Ly̆dia. Compound verbs with a short prefix were exceptions, as ŏbeo, rĕcreo, whence our 'recreant'. A long prefix remained long as in dēsino. The only other exception that I can remember was Phŏloe.

In polysyllables the general rule was that all vowels and diphthongs before the penultima other than u, when it bore a primary or secondary stress, and au and eu were pronounced short except where the 'alias' rule or the 'larva' rule applied. Thus we said hĕrĕditaritis, æ̆quăbilitas, imbĕcillus, suspĭcionem, but fidūciarius, mēdiocritas, pārticipare. I do not know why the popular voice now gives Ăriadne, for our forefathers said Āriadne as they said ārea.

In very long words the alternation of stress and no-stress was insisted on. I remember a schoolmaster who took his degree at Oxford in the year 1827 reproving a boy for saying Álphesibœ́us instead of Alphesibœ́us, and I suspect that Wordsworth meant no inverted stress in

nor Landor in

though I hope that they did.

It is not to be thought that these rules were in any way arbitrary. So little was this so that, I believe, they were never even formulated. If examples with the quantities marked were ever given, they must have been for the use of foreigners settling in England. English boys did not want rules, and their teachers could not really have given them. The teachers did not understand that each vowel represented not two sounds only, a long and a short, but many more. This fact was no more understood by John Walker, the actor and lexicographer, who in 1798 published a Key to the Classical Pronunciation of Greek and Latin proper names. His general rule was wrong as a general rule, and so far as it agreed with facts it was useless. He says that when a vowel ends a syllable it is long, and when it does not it is short. Apart from the confusion of cause and effect there is the error of identifying for instance the e in beatus and the e in habebat. Moreover, Walker confounds the u in 'curfew', really long, with the short and otherwise different u in 'but'. The rule was useless as a guide, for it did not say whether moneo for instance was to be read as ino-neo or as mon-eo, and therefore whether the o was to be long or short. Even Walker's list is no exact guide. He gives for instance Mō-na, which is right, and Mō-næses, which is not. Now without going into the difference between long vowels and ordinary vowels, of which latter some are long in scansion and some short, it is clear that there is no identity. In fact Mona, has the long o of 'moan' and Monæses the ordinary o of 'monaster'. A boy at school was not troubled by these matters. He had only two things to learn, first the quantity of the penultimate unit, second the fact that a final vowel was pronounced. When he knew these two things he gave the Latin word the sounds which it would have if it were an English word imported from the Latin. Thus he finds the word civilitate. I am not sure that he could find it, but that does not matter. He would know 'civility', and he learns that the penultima of the Latin word is long. Therefore he says cĭvĭlĭtātĕ. Again he knows 'ĭnfĭnĭt' (I must be allowed to spell the word as it is pronounced except in corrupt quires). He finds that the penultima of infinitivus is long, and he therefore says ĭnfĭnĭtīvŭs. Again he knows 'irradiate', and finding that the penultima of irradiabitur is short he says ĭrrādĭăbĭtŭr. It is true that some of these verb forms under the influence of their congeners came to have an exceptional pronunciation. Thus irradiābit led at last to irradiābitur, but I doubt whether this occurred before the nineteenth century. The word dabitur, almost naturalized by Luther's adage of date et dabitur, kept its short a down to the time when it regained it, in a slightly different form, by its Roman right; and amămini and monĕmini were unwavering in their use. Old people said vāriăbilis long after the true quantities had asserted themselves, and the word as the specific name of a plant may be heard even now. Its first syllable of course follows what I shall call the 'alias' rule. We may still see this rule in other instances. All men say 'hippopótămus', and even those who know that this a is short in Greek can say nothing but 'Mesopotāmia', unless indeed the word lose its blessed and comforting powers in a disyllabic abbreviation. When a country was named after Cecil Rhodes, where the e in the surname is mute, we all called it 'Rhodēsia'. Had it been named after a Newman, where the a is short or rather obscure, we should all have called it 'Newmānia ', while, named after a Davis, it would certainly have been 'Davĭsia'. The process of thought would in each case have been unconscious. A new example is 'aviation', whose first vowel has been instinctively lengthened.

Again, when the word 'telegram' was coined, some scholars objected to its formation and insisted upon 'telegrapheme', but the most obdurate Grecian did not propose to keep the long Greek vowel in the first syllable. When only the other day 'cinematograph' made its not wholly desirable appearance, it made no claim to a long vowel in either of its two first syllables. Not till it was reasonably shortened into 'cĭnĕma' did a Judge from the Bench make a lawless decree for a long second vowel, and even he left the i short though it is long in Greek.

Of course with the manner of speech the quantities had to be learnt separately. The task was not as difficult as some may think. To boys with a taste for making verses the thumbing of a Gradus (I hope that no one calls it a Grădus) was always a delightful occupation, and a quantity once learnt was seldom forgotten. It must be admitted that, as boys were forced to do verses, whether they could or not, there were always some who could read and yet forget.

Although these usages did not precede but followed the pronunciation of words already borrowed from Latin, we may use them to classify the changes of quantity. We shall see that although there are some exceptions for which it is difficult to give a reason, yet most of the exceptions fall under two classes. When words came to us through French, the pronunciation was often affected by the French form of the word. Thus the adjective 'present' would, if it had come direct from Latin, have had a long vowel in the first syllable. To an English ear 'prĕsent' seemed nearer than 'prēsent' to the French 'présent'. The N.E.D. says that 'gladiator' comes straight from the Latin 'gladiatorem'. Surely in that case it would have had its first vowel long, as in 'radiator' and 'mediator'. In any case its pronunciation must have been affected by 'gladiateur'. The other class of exceptions consists of words deliberately introduced by writers at a late period. Thus 'adorable' began as a penman's word. Following 'inéxorable' and the like it should have been 'ádorable'. Actually it was formed by adding -able to 'adóre', like 'laughable'. It is now too stiff in the joints to think of