[Previous page]... the executioners of their friends & brethren, or to fall
themselves by their hands." This was the most afflicting to our
prisoners of all the cruelties exercised on them. The others
affected the body only, but this the mind -- they were haunted by the
horror of having perhaps themselves shot the ball by which a father
or a brother fell. Some of them had constancy enough to hold out
against half allowance of food & repeated whippings. These were
generally sent to England & from thence to the East Indies. One of
these escaped from the East Indies and got back to Paris, where he
gave an account of his sufferings to Mr. Adams, who happened to be
then at Paris.
M. de Meusnier, where he mentions that the slave-law has been
passed in Virginia, without the clause of emancipation, is pleased to
mention that neither Mr. Wythe nor Mr. Jefferson were present to make
the proposition they had meditated; from which people, who do not
give themselves the trouble to reflect or enquire, might conclude
hastily that their absence was the cause why the proposition was not
made; & of course that there were not in the assembly persons of
virtue & firmness enough to propose the clause for emancipation.
This supposition would not be true. There were persons there who
wanted neither the virtue to propose, nor talents to enforce the
proposition had they seen that the disposition of the legislature was
ripe for it. These worthy characters would feel themselves wounded,
degraded, & discouraged by this idea. Mr. Jefferson would therefore
be obliged to M. de Meusnier to mention it in some such manner as
this. "Of the two commissioners who had concerted the amendatory
clause for the gradual emancipation of slaves Mr. Wythe could not be
present as being a member of the judiciary department, and Mr.
Jefferson was absent on the legation to France. But there wanted not
in that assembly men of virtue enough to propose, & talents to
vindicate this clause. But they saw that the moment of doing it with
success was not yet arrived, and that an unsuccessful effort, as too
often happens, would only rivet still closer the chains of bondage,
and retard the moment of delivery to this oppressed description of
men. What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! who
can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in
vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment be deaf to all
those motives whose power supported him thro' his trial, and inflict
on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more
misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose. But
we must await with patience the workings of an overruling providence,
& hope that that is preparing the deliverance of these, our suffering
brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full, when their
groans shall have involved heaven itself in darkness, doubtless a god
of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing light &
liberality among their oppressors, or at length by his exterminating
thunder, manifest his attention to the things of this world, and that
they are not left to the guidance of a blind fatality."
Thoughts on English Prosody
TO CHASTELLUX
October 1786
Among the topics of conversation which stole off like so many
minutes the few hours I had the happiness of possessing you at
Monticello, the measures of English verse was one. I thought it
depended like Greek and Latin verse, on long and short syllables
arranged into regular feet. You were of a different opinion. I did
not pursue this subject after your departure, because it always
presented itself with the painful recollection of a pleasure which in
all human probability I was never to enjoy again. This probability
like other human calculations has been set aside by events; and we
have again discussed on this side the Atlantic a subject which had
occupied us during some pleasing moments on the other. A daily habit
of walking in the Bois de Boulogne gave me an opportunity of turning
this subject in my mind and I determined to present you my thoughts
on it in the form of a letter. I for some time parried the
difficulties which assailed me, but at length I found they were not
to be opposed, and their triumph was complete. Error is the stuff of
which the web of life is woven and he who lives longest and wisest is
only able to weave out the more of it. I began with the design of
converting you to my opinion that the arrangement of long and short
syllables into regular feet constituted the harmony of English verse.
I ended by discovering that you were right in denying that
proposition. The next object was to find out the real circumstance
which gives harmony to English poetry and laws to those who make it.
I present you with the result. It is a tribute due to your
friendship. It is due you also as having recalled me from an error
in my native tongue and that, too, in a point the most difficult of
all others to a foreigner, the law of its poetical numbers.
Thoughts on English Prosody
Every one knows the difference between verse and prose in his
native language; nor does he need the aid of prosody to enable him to
read or to repeat verse according to its just rhythm. It is the
business of the poet so to arrange his words as that, repeated in
their accustomed measures they shall strike the ear with that regular
rhythm which constitutes verse.
It is for foreigners principally that Prosody is necessary; not
knowing the accustomed measures of words, they require the aid of
rules to teach them those measures and to enable them to read verse
so as to make themselves or others sensible of its music. I suppose
that the system of rules or exceptions which constitutes Greek and
Latin prosody, as shown with us, was unknown to those nations, and
that it has been invented by the moderns to whom those languages were
foreign. I do not mean to affirm this, however, because you have not
searched into the history of this art, nor am I at present in a
situation which admits of that search. By industrious examination of
the Greek and Latin verse it has been found that pronouncing certain
combinations of vowels and consonants long, and certain others short,
the actual arrangement of those long and short syllables, as found in
their verse, constitutes a rhythm which is regular and pleasing to
the ear, and that pronouncing them with any other measures, the run
is unpleasing, and ceases to produce the effect of the verse. Hence
it is concluded and rationally enough that the Greeks and Romans
pronounced those syllables long or short in reading their verse; and
as we observe in modern languages that the syllables of words have
the same measures both in verse and prose, we ought to conclude that
they had the same also in those ancient languages, and that we must
lengthen or shorten in their prose the same syllables which we
lengthen or shorten in their verse. Thus, if I meet with the word
praeteritos in Latin prose and want to know how the Romans
pronounced it, I search for it in some poet and find it in the line
of Virgil,
"O mihi praeteritos referat si Jupiter annos!:" where it
is evident that
prae is long and
te short in direct opposition to
the pronunciation which we often hear. The length allowed to a
syllable is called its quantity, and hence we say that the Greek and
Latin languages are to be pronounced according to quantity.
Those who have undertaken to frame a prosody for the English
language have taken quantity for their basis and have mounted the
English poetry on Greek and Latin feet. If this foundation admits of
no question, the prosody of Doctor Johnson, built upon it, is perhaps
the best. He comprehends under three different feet every
combination of long and short syllables which he supposes can be
found in English verse, to wit: 1. a long and a short, which is the
trochee of the Greeks and Romans; 2. a short and a long, which is
their iambus; and 3. two short and a long, which is their anapest.
And he thinks that all English verse may be resolved into these feet.
It is true that in the English language some one syllable of a
word is always sensibly distinguished from the others by an emphasis
of pronunciation or by an accent as we call it. But I am not
satisfied whether this accented syllable be pronounced longer,
louder, or harder, and the others shorter, lower, or softer. I have
found the nicest ears divided on the question. Thus in the word
calenture, nobody will deny that the first syllable is pronounced
more emphatically than the others; but many will deny that it is
longer in pronunciation. In the second of the following verses of
Pope, I think there are but two short syllables.
Oh! be thou bless'd with all that Heav'n can send
Long health, long youth, long pleasure, and a friend.
Innumerable instances like this might be produced. It seems,
therefore, too much to take for the basis of a system a postulatum
which one-half of mankind will deny. But the superstructure of
Doctor Johnson's prosody may still be supported by substituting for
its basis accent instead of quantity; and nobody will deny us the
existence of accent.
In every word of more than one syllable there is some one
syllable strongly distinguishable in pronunciation by its emphasis or
accent.
If a word has more than two syllables it generally admits of a
subordinate emphasis or accent on the alternate syllables counting
backwards and forwards from the principal one, as in this verse of
Milton:
Well if thrown out as supernumerary,
where the principal accent is on
nu, but there is a lighter
one on
su and
ra also. There are some few instances indeed
wherein the subordinate accent is differently arranged, as
parisyllabic,
Constantinople. It is difficult, therefore, to
introduce words of this kind into verse.
That the accent shall never be displaced from the syllable
whereon usage hath established it is the fundamental law of English
verse.
There are but three arrangements into which these accents can
be thrown in the English language which entitled the composition to
be distinguished by the name of verse. That is, 1. Where the accent
falls on all the odd syllables; 2. Where it falls on all the even
syllables; 3. When it falls on every third syllable. If the reason
of this be asked, no other can be assigned but that it results from
the nature of the sounds which compose the English language and from
the construction of the human ear. So, in the infinite gradations of
sounds from the lowest to the highest in the musical scale, those
only give pleasure to the ear which are at the intervals we call
whole tones and semitones. The reason is that it has pleased God to
make us so. The English poet then must so arrange his words that
their established accents shall fall regularly in one of these three
orders. To aid him in this he has at his command the whole army of
monosyllables which in the English language is a very numerous one.
These he may accent or not, as he pleases. Thus is this verse:
'Tis just resentment and becomes the brave.
-- POPE
the monosyllable
and standing between two unaccented
syllables catches the accent and supports the measure. The same
monosyllable serves to fill the interval between two accents in the
following instance:
From use obscure and subtle, but to know.
--- MILTON
The monosyllables
with and
in receive the accent in one of
the following instances and suffer it to pass over them in the other.
The tempted
with dishonor foul, supposed.
-- MILTON
Attempt
with confidence, the work is done.
-- HOPKINS
Which must be mutual
in proportion due.
-- MILTON
Too much of ornament
in outward shew.
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