The use of the rising circumflex, instead of the simple rising inflection, makes all the difference that is required.

In the following passage the word you has the falling circumflex to express bitter reproach.

So then you are the author of this conspiracy against It is to you that I am indebted for all the mischief that has befallen me.

me.

One or other of the circumflexes is very commonly used when a speaker takes up his own words and puts them in a different form, or in dialogues, where the words of one speaker are repeated in a sneering, contradictory manner by another.

EXAMPLES.

Then he, who had received the one talent, came and said, Lord, I knew thee, that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed; and I was afraid, and went and hid thy money in the earth; lo, there thou hast that is thine. His lord answered and said unto

him, Thou wicked and slothful servant! thou knewest ノ ノ

that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I

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have not strawed; thou oughtest, therefore, to have

put my money to the exchangers, and then, at my

coming, I should have received mine own with usury.

-Matthew xxv. 24—27.

Had the word knewest, in this passage, received only the rising inflection instead of the rising circumflex, it would have conveyed an acknowledgment on the part of the speaker, that he really did reap where he sowed not; but he only means to say, 'You say that you knew,' or, 'You profess to believe, though I allow no such thing.'

It must here be observed, that the circumflex imparts its own character, whether rising or falling, to the succeeding inflections to the clause, agreeably to the rule already laid down respecting the last emphatic word, p. 101. Thus, in the last example, the words reap, sowed, gather, and strawed, all take the rising inflection from knewest: they have the half-circumflex rising, while knewest has a complete one.

Brave peers of England! pillars of the state! To you Duke Humphry must unload his grief, Your grief, the common grief of all the land.

I know you, Sir-I know you, Sir-You, Sir, you are below contempt.

He is my friend.—He? what! he? No, Sir; you are deceived; he is not your friend; but he is your enemy.

Both the circumflexes are exemplified in the word so, in a speech of the Clown, in Shakspeare's As You like It:

I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel; but when the parties were met themselves, one of them thought but of an if; as, If you said so, then I said so; oho! did you so? So they shook hands, and were sworn brothers.

There is another circumflex which is sometimes used in familiar conversation, when we are convinced by the relation of some new and quite unexpected circumstance, not before mentioned in the argument. This may be called the interjective circumflex: it is composed of grave, acute, and grave, that is of a falling, a rising, and a falling inflection on one monosyllable; thus,

Oh!

The reverse of this is also in use.

* For this and the preceding example, as well as for those in the following chapter, I am indebted to Chapman's Rhythmical Grammar.

The extent and form of circumflexes," says Mr. Steele, (Prosodia, p. 85,) "are very various in our language, two or three quarter tones making little difference in the sense of their application. I suppose that there are as many different circumflexes as there are different tempers and features in men. The circumflexes acuto-grave are characteristic of the Irish tone; and the circumflexes grave-acute are characteristic of the Scottish tone. The dialectic tone of the court and other polite circles rises but little above a whisper, and may be compared to that species of painting called The Chiaro Oscuro, which is denied the vivacity of expression by variety of colours. There the circumflex, though it cannot be left out of the language, is used within very narrow limits, frequently not rising or falling above five quarters of a tone, and for the most part hurried over with great velocity, in the time of a quaver or shortest note. But in the court language there is no argument; for in the senate, and where that is used, the extent of the slides is enlarged to the extreme, though the circumflex is never so apparent as in the provincial tones."

"Besides these necessary licences of variation,' (meaning the distinction of the two primary accents or inflections,) "there is also," says Mr. Steele, p. 145," a manner of gracing the tones ad libitum, as in singing, by the use of what the

Italian musicians call the appoggiatura, or supporter; which is a little (as it were superfluous) note, that the singer introduces, to slide up to, or down to, the real prescribed note of the song, and therefore might be called an insinuator. This appoggiatura being a grace ad libitum, the singer varies it in different ways at different times in singing the same tune. So in speech, instead of a plain acute one may use a little circumflexed grave-acute, thus ✔, or sometimes acuto-grave, thus ; and sometimes, instead of a plain grave, thus ^, or thus V. I make this remark, in order to shew, that different speakers, or the same speaker at different times, may all be essentially in the same accentual tones, though a little disguised by the use of graces or appoggiaturas; that is, like musicians severally playing the same air, though some grace it with variations, while others play only the plain notes."

1

These grace-notes, or half-circumflexes, take place chiefly on the heavy syllables of emphatic words, and in poetry on words not particularly emphatic, in order to mark the rhythm and improve the melody. Their application to the former purpose has been already sufficiently explained (pp. 90, &c.); the latter will be best illustrated by the following lines, as marked by Mr. Chapman, in his Rhythmical Grammar, p. 252: