Helps to the Reading of Classical Latin Poetry - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907. Excerpt: ... RHYTHMICAL. ELEMENTS Syllables Rhythm as involved in poetry has been considered in the foregoing pages along general lines, but from this point onward the subject will be restricted to the single field of Latin. It is now in order to develop somewhat more fully a phase of the subject already touched upon, namely, the part played by syllables. The existence of syllables rests upon a natural basis. The voice can not convey a succession of thoughts except by being varied into different sounds, and these can not be sufficiently numerous and distinguishable for our needs except by the introduction of such as break or hinder the current of breath, producing a division into syllables. The poet's recognition and selection of syllables for the purposes of versification, far from being a highly artificial process, is mainly subconscious. His standard and criterion are not the dictionary, nor words sounded separately, but audible, fluent speech. And so it not infrequently happens that when one word is merged into another, the result is a syllable that embraces parts of two words. To read Latin poetry well, one must bring out distinctly the sound properties of the syllables, some of these properties being inherent in the separate syllables, some resulting from the effect one syllable has upon another. 6What, in detail, are these properties? A syllable comprises a vowel alone, a diphthong alone, or either in close union with one or more consonants. Latin vowels, according to the ancients, fell into three classes: (1) those of brief duration and therefore considered short, (2) those more extended in time and therefore considered long, and (3) those occurring in closely knit pairs, called diphthongs, the same being long. Consonants seemed to affect the length of syllabl...