pronunciation.  Thus irradi[=a]bit led at last to irradi[=a]bitur, 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 am[)a]mini and mon[)e]mini were unwavering in their use.  Old people said v[=a]ri[)a]bilis 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 ‘hippop[’o]t[)a]mus’, and even those who know that this a is short in Greek can say nothing but ‘Mesopot[=a]mia’, 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 ‘Rhod[=e]sia’.  Had it been named after a Newman, where the a is short or rather obscure, we should all have called it ’Newm[=a]nia ’, while, named after a Davis, it would certainly have been ‘Dav[)i]sia’.  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 ‘c[)i]n[)e]ma’ 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 Gr[)a]dus) 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 ‘pr[)e]sent’