And here let me pause to assert that more pitiable
nonsense has been written on the topic of long and short syllables
than on any other subject under the sun. In general, a syllable is
long or short, just as it is difficult or easy of enunciation. The
natural long syllables are those encumbered- the natural short
syllables are those unencumbered with consonants; all the rest is mere
artificiality and jargon. The Latin Prosodies have a rule that a
"vowel before two consonants is long." This rule is deduced from
"authority"- that is, from the observation that vowels so
circumstanced, in the ancient poems, are always in syllables long by
the laws of scansion. The philosophy of the rule is untouched, and
lies simply in the physical difficulty of giving voice to such
syllables- of performing the lingual evolutions necessary for their
utterance. Of course, it is not the vowel that is long (although the
rule says so), but the syllable of which the vowel is a part. It
will be seen that the length of a syllable, depending on the
facility or difficulty of its enunciation, must have great variation
in various syllables; but for the purposes of verse we suppose a
long syllable equal to two short ones, and the natural deviation
from this relativeness we correct in perusal. The more closely our
long syllables approach this relation with our short ones, the better,
ceteris paribus, will be our verse: but if the relation does not exist
of itself we force it by emphasis, which can, of course, make any
syllable as long as desired;- or, by an effort we can pronounce with
unnatural brevity a syllable that is naturally too long.
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