h grammar, _seems_ to have understood
_Accent_, or _Accents_, to be the same as _Inflections_--though these are
still unlike to quantities, if he did so. (See an explanation of
Inflections in Chap. II, Sec. iii, Art. 3, above.) His exposition is this:
"_Accent_ is the _rising_ and _falling_ of the Voice, above or under its
usual _Tone_. There are three Sorts of Accents, an _Acute_, a _Grave_, and
an _Inflex_, which is also call'd a _Circumflex_. The _Acute_, or _Sharp_,
naturally _raises_ the Voice; and the _Grave_, or _Base_, as naturally
_falls_ it. The _Circumflex_ is a kind of _Undulation_, or _Waving_ of the
Voice."--_Brightland's Gram._, Seventh Ed., Lond., 1746, p. 156.

OBS. 4.--Dr. Johnson, whose great authority could not fail to carry some
others with him, too evidently identifies accent with quantity, at the
commencement of his Prosody. "PRONUNCIATION is just," says he, "when every
letter has its proper sound, and when every syllable has its proper accent,
or which in English versification is _the same_, its proper quantity."--
_Johnson's Gram._, before Dict., 4to, p. 13; _John Burn's Gram._, p. 240;
_Jones's Prosodial Gram._, before Dict., p. 10. Now our most common notion
of _accent_--the sole notion with many--and that which the accentuation of
Johnson himself everywhere inculcates--is, that it belongs _not_ to "_every
syllable_," but only to some particular syllables, being either "a _stress
of voice_ on a certain syllable," or a _small mark_ to denote such
stress.--See _Scott's Dict._, or _Worcester's_. But Dr. Johnson, in the
passage above, must have understood the word _accent_ agreeably to his own
imperfect definition of it; to wit, as "_the sound given to the syllable
pronounced_."--_Joh. Dict._ An _unaccented_ syllable must have been to him
a syllable unpronounced. In short he does not appear to have recognized any
syllables as being unaccented. The word _unaccented_ had no place in his
lexicography, nor could have any without inconsistencey. [sic--KTH] It was
unaptly added to his text, after sixty years, by one of his amenders, Todd
or Chalmers; who still blindly neglected to amend his definition of
_accent_. In these particulars, Walker's dictionaries exhibit the same
deficiencies as Johnson's; and yet no author has more frequently used the
words _accent_ and _unaccented_, than did Walker.[493] Mason's Supplement,
first published in 1801, must have suggested to the revisers of Johnson the
addition o