The Critical Review, Or, Annals of Literature (Volume 55) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A pure, diftinfl, and articulate pronunciation, as our author obferves, is the firft and moil indifpeniible requifite of delivery. This fhould be nicely attended to in the earlieft youth, as nothing is fo incurable in advanced life as a mumbling, cluttering, and defective articulation. What is meant by a pure, diftinct, and articulate pronunciation of every fyllable, is a clear, full, and delicate found, given to every part of the word, exactly in the ftyle of the bell fpeakers. We mould not, fays Mr. Walker, attempt to revive the found of confonants in reading, which have been for centuries dead in fpeaking. The auxiliary verbs, jkall, would, could, Jbould, are, and have, muft never be pronounced Jhaivll, ivold, cold, fhold, air, and baive, but Jhal, ivtod, cood, Jhoad, arr, and haw. ' For want of confidering the true object of reading, we find ignorant and formal readers preferve the found of the participial ed in thofe words, where cuftom has totally rejected it. Jt is agreeable to the genius of Englifh pronunciation to pronounce every final confonant; but it is likewife agreeable to its genius to multiply fyllables as little as poffible, when the numbers of nouns, and the perfons, or tenfes of verbs can be formed without it. . .One diftinction indeed feems to have obtained between fume adjectives and participles, which is, that of pronouncing the ed in an additional fyllable in the former, and of finking it into the theme in the latter. Thus, when learned, curfed, and ilej/ed, are adjectives, they are invariably pronounced in two fyllables, but when participles in one; as learn'J, curs'd, tlefs'd. Poetry, however, affumes the privilege of ufing tliefe adjectives either way. Yet this analogy, continues our author, is prefervedin but very few words; for we have an almoft...