followed by our ancestors that such pronunciations are as erroneous
as in the case of the ordinary man they are unnatural and pedantic.
An exception for which there is a reason must of course be accepted,
but an exception for which reason is unsound is on every ground to
be deprecated. Among other motives for preserving the traditional
pronunciation must be reckoned the claim of poetry. Mark Pattison
notes how a passage of Pope which deals with the Barrier Treaty loses
much of its effect because we no longer stress the second syllable of
'barrier'. Pope's word is gone beyond recovery, but others which are
threatened by false theories may yet be preserved.

The _New English Dictionary_, whose business it is to record facts,
shows that in not a few common words there is at present much
confusion and uncertainty concerning the right pronunciation. This
applies mostly to the position of the stress or, as some prefer to
call it, the accent, but in many cases it is true also of the quantity
of the vowels. It is desirable to show that there is a principle in
this matter, rules which have been naturally and unconsciously obeyed,
because they harmonize with the genius of the English tongue.

For nearly three centuries from the Reformation to the Victorian era
there was in this country a uniform pronunciation of Latin. It had its
own definite principles, involving in some cases a disregard of the
classical quantities though not of the classical stress or accent. It
survives in borrowed words such as _[=a]li[)a]s_ and _st[)a]mina_,
in naturalized legal phrases, such as _N[=i]s[=i] Prius_ and _[=o]nus
probandi_, and with some few changes in the Westminster Play. This
pronunciation is now out of fashion, but, since its supersession does
not justify a change in the pronunciation of words which have become
part of our language, it will be well to begin with a formulation of