וי * Silou. This word, according to the present general rule of pronouncing these words, ought to have the accent on the second syllable, as it is Græcised by Aw; but Milton, who understood its derivation as well as the present race of critics, has given it the antepenultimate accent, as more agreeable to the general analogy of accenting English words of the same form: -Or if Sion hill Delight thee more, os Siloa's brook, that flow'd If criticism ought not to overturn settled usages, surely when that usage is * Sinai.-If we pronounce this word after the Hebrew, it is three syllables; if after the Greek, Eva, two only; though it must be confessed that the liberty allowed to poets of increasing the end of a line with one, and sometimes two syllables, renders their authority, in this case, a little equivocal. Labbe adopts the former pronunciation, but general usage seems to prefer the latter; and if we al、 most universally follow the Greek in other cases, why not in this? the Greek: Milton adopts We ought not, indeed, to lay too much stress on the quantity of Milton, which is often so different in the same word; but these are the only two passages in his Paradise Lost where this word is used; and as he has made the same letters a diphthong in Asmadai, it is highly probable he judged that Sinai ought to be pronounced in two syllables.(See Rules prefixed to this Vocabulary, No. 5.) "this word in * Zabulon.-" Notwithstanding," says the editor of Labbe, "Greek, Zabawy, has the penultimate long, yet in our churches we always "hear it pronounced with the acute on the antepenultimate. Those who thus pronounce it plead that in Hebrew the penultimate vowel is short; but in the "word Zorobabel, Zoçobάbeλ, they follow a different rule; for, though the penultimate in Hebrew is long, they pronounce it with the antepenultimate "" accent." |