OBS. 23—­For the determining of quantities and feet, this author borrows from some old Latin grammar three or four rules, commonly thought inapplicable to our tongue, and, mixing them up with other speculations, satisfies himself with stating that the “Art of Measuring Verses” requires yet the production of many more such!  But, these things being the essence of his principles, it is proper to state them in his own words:  “A short vowel sound followed by a double consonantal sound, usually makes a long quantity;[506] so also does a long vowel like y in beauty, before a consonant.  The metrical accents, which often differ from the prosaic, mostly fall upon the heavy sounds; which must also be prolonged in reading, and never slurred or lightened, unless to help out a bad verse.  In our language the groupings of the consonants furnish a great number of spondaic feet, and give the language, especially its more ancient forms, as in the verse of Milton and the prose of Lord Bacon, a grand and solemn character.  One vowel followed by another, unless the first be naturally made long in the reading, makes a short quantity, as in th[=e] old.  So, also, a short vowel followed by a single short consonant, gives a short time or quantity, as in toe give. [Fist] A great variety of rules for the detection of long and short quantities have yet to be invented, or applied from the Greek and Latin prosody. In all languages they are of course the same, making due allowance for difference of organization; but it is as absurd to suppose that the Greeks should have a system of prosody differing in principle from our own, as that their rules of musical harmony should be different from the modern.  Both result from the nature of the ear and of the organ of speech, and are consequently the same in all ages and nations.”—­Am.  Rev., Vol. i, p. 488.

OBS. 24.—­QUANTITY is here represented as “time” only.  In this author’s first mention of it, it is called, rather less accurately, “the division into measures of time.”  With too little regard for either of these conceptions, he next speaks of it as including both “time and accent.”  But I have already shown that “accents or stresses” cannot pertain to short syllables, and therefore cannot be ingredients of quantity.  The whole article lacks that clearness which is a prime requisite of a sound theory.  Take all of the writer’s next paragraph as an example of this defect:  “The two elements of musical metre, time and accent, both together constituting quantity, are equally elements of the metre of verse.  Each iambic foot or metre, is marked by a swell of the voice, concluding abruptly in an accent, or interruption, on the last sound of the foot; or, [omit this ‘or:’  it is improper,] in metres of the trochaic