The Iliad; - Truth Seeker Times

xii PEEFACE.
they confess their despair of introducing than who ; a circum-
stance which convinces me that their whole effort has been
mistaken. In fact, they have intruded on us an ugly and
gratuitous irregularity, in bidding us to say than whom in a
sentence where they would forbid than him. Their argument,
based on the doctrine of supplying ellipses, is fallacious. It
would condemn a Frenchman for saying msilleur que moi and
an Englishman for saying the book is mine. I cannot listen
to unsophisticated English talk, without being convinced that
in old English the words me, thee, him, &c., are not merely
accusatives, but are also the isolated form of the pronoun, like
moi, toi, lui. In reply to the question, " "Who is there?" every
English boy or girl answers Me, until he or she is scolded
into saying /. In modern prose the Latinists have prevailed
but in a poetry which aims to be antiquated and popular, I
must rebel. If any one insists on my quoting some precedent,
I call Southey to my aid (a man very particular about his
English), who in his " Thalaba " says, " He must be a stronger
than thee, who would break this thread of mine.'' After
all, those readers who cannot bear than thee, than him, &c.,
in my lines, must alter them to than thou, than he.
In regard to pronunciation, our language has undergone a
change not dissimilar to that of passing from old Ionic to the
later Attic Greek, by a clipping of the sounds, partly by the
slurring over of a vowel. We have also shown a tendency to
throw the accent to an earlier syllable of a word, as the con-
temporaries of Aristophanes said trdpaion, homoios, for the
older tropdion, hom6ios. All such trisyllabic compounds as sea-
coursing, prize-bearing, are with me accented on the second
syllable, and not in modern fashion on the first : so too I pronounce
medicinal, as in Milton. Again, to be congruous with
the older style, I endeavour to keep up the more elongated
pronimciations. Thus with me, orjdinarily such words as
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