ing equally the monotony of the French, on the one hand, and the adventitious read ing tones of the English, on the other, fhould teach the art of reading, upon prin ciples of pure and correct speaking.

Befide the abuse of ftops, by introducing a falfe intonation, which I have laid open, the art of punctuation itself has always been in a very imperfect ftate, with regard to its profeffed end, that of dividing periods and fentences properly, into their refpective members.

Stopping, like fpelling, has, at different periods of time, ⚫ and by different perfons, been confidered,

in a great measure, as arbitrary, and has ' had its different fashions; nor is there at this day, any fure general rules established for the practice of that art. It is evident, that to mark the ftops properly in writing, every perceptible ceffation of found

Lect. on Elocution. L. 5th.

in the voice ought to have a mark; but this is far from being the cafe in the prefent practice of punctuation, continual inftances occurring, where the voice ought to be suspended, without any comma appearing; and inftances as frequent, 'where commas appear in places in which there ought to be no fufpenfion of the voice. The truth is, the modern art of punctuation, was not taken from the art of fpeaking, which certainly ought to have been its archetype, and probably would, had that art been studied and brought to perfection by the moderns; but was in a great measure regulated by the rules of grammar, which they had • studied; that is, certain parts of speech are kept together, and others divided by

ftops, according to their grammatical conftruction, often without reference to the pauses used in difcourfe, And the only ' general.

M 4

general rule, by which pauses can be regulated properly, has been either unknown, or not attended to: which is, that pauses, for the most part, depend upon emphafis. I have already fhewn that words are fufficiently diftinguished ⚫ from each other by accent; but to point 'out their meaning when united in fen

tences, emphafis, and paufes, are neceffary. Accent, is the link which connects fyllables together, and forms them into

words: emphafis, is the link which con'nects words together, and forms them into fentences, or members of fentences; but, that there may be no mistake to ' which emphasis the words belong, at the ' end of every fuch member of a sentence, there ought to be a perceptible paufe. If it be asked, why a pause should any more ⚫ be neceffary to emphasis, than to accent? or why emphafis alone will not fufficiently • distin

diftinguish the members of sentences ' without pauses, as accent does words 'from each other? the answer is obvious,

that we are pre-acquainted with the ⚫ founds of the words, and cannot mistake • them when distinctly pronounced, how' ever rapidly; but we are not pre• acquainted with the meaning of fentences, which must be pointed out to us by the speaker; and as this can only be done, by • evidently fhewing what words appertain to each emphatic one, unless a pause be ⚫ made at the end of the last word belong

ing to the former emphatic one, we shall 'not be able to know at all times, whe'ther the intermediate words, between two emphatic ones, belong to the former, or ⚫ the latter; which must breed a perpetual • confufion in the fenfe. Through the 'want of a proper stop of this fort, there £ is a paffage in the play of Macbeth, which,

as

as it has been usually spoken on the stage, and read by most people, is downright nonsense; I mean an expreffion of Macbeth's after he had committed the murder, where he says,

Will all great Neptune's ocean, wafh this blood Clean from my hand? No-these my hands will rather

The multitudinous fea incarnardine,
Making the green one-red.

Now the laft line pronounced in that manner, calling the fea the green one, • makes flat nonfenfe of it. But if the pause be made in the proper place, as thusMaking the green-o`ne red-here is a moft fublime idea conveyed, that his hands dipped into the fea, would change the colour of the whole ocean into one • entire red.'

There is a line in the Fair Penitent, which, for many years, was fpoken by the

moft