the same deficiencies as Johnson’s; and yet no author has more frequently used the words accent and unaccented, than did Walker.[493] Mason’s Supplement, first published in 1801, must have suggested to the revisers of Johnson the addition of the latter term, as appears by the authority cited for it:  “UNA’CCENTED, adj. Not accented.  ’It being enough to make a syllable long, if it be accented, and short, if it be unaccented.’ Harris’s Philological Inquiries.”—­Mason’s Sup.

OBS. 5—­This doctrine of Harris’s, that long quantity accompanies the accent, and unaccented syllables are short, is far from confounding or identifying accent with quantity, as has already been shown; and, though it plainly contradicts some of the elementary teaching of Johnson, Sheridan, Walker, Murray, Webster, Latham, Fowler, and others, in regard to the length or shortness of certain syllables, it has been clearly maintained by many excellent authors, so that no opposite theory is better supported by authority.  On this point, our language stands not alone; for the accent controls quantity in some others.[494] G H. Noehden, a writer of uncommon ability, in his German Grammar for Englishmen, defines accent to be, as we see it is in English, “that stress which marks a particular syllable in speaking;” and recognizing, as we do, both a full accent and a partial one, or “demi-accent,” presents the syllables of his language as being of three conditions:  the “accented,” which “cannot be used otherwise than as long;” the “half-accented” which “must be regarded as ambiguous, or common;” and the “accentless,” which “are in their nature short.”—­See Noehden’s Gram., p. 87.  His middle class, however, our prosodists in general very properly dispense with.  In Fiske’s History of Greek Literature, which is among the additions to the Manual of Classical Literature from the German of Eschenburg, are the following passages:  “The tone [i.e. accent] in Greek is placed upon short syllables as well as long; in German, it accompanies regularly only long syllables.”—­“In giving an accent to a syllable in an English word we thereby render it a long syllable, whatever may be the sound given to its vowel, and in whatever way the syllable may be composed; so that as above stated in relation to the German, an English accent, or stress in pronunciation, accompanies only a long syllable.”—­Manual of Class.  Lit., p. 437.  With these extracts, accords the doctrine of some of the ablest of our English grammarians.  “In the English Pronunciation,” says William Ward, “there is a certain Stress of the Voice laid on some one syllable at least, of every Word of two or more Syllables; and that Syllable on which the Stress is laid may be considered long.  Our Grammarians have agreed to consider this Stress of the Voice as the Accent in English; and therefore the Accent and long Quantity coincide in our Language.”—­Ward’s Practical Gram., p. 155.  As to the vowel sounds, with the quantity of which many prosodists have greatly puzzled both themselves and their readers, this writer says, “they may be made as long, or as short, as the Speaker pleases.”—­Ib., p. 4.