_why the sepulchre Has oped his ponderous and marble jaws._ Hamlet, I. iv. 50.
_To draw with idle spiders' strings Most ponderous and substantial things._ Measure for Measure, III. ii. 290.
This passing of an unaccented syllable into complete muteness is very frequent in English, as compared with other cognate languages. It has led, in the historical development of the language, to a gradual weakening, and finally, in many instances, to a total loss of the inflexional endings. Very frequently, an inflexional vowel that has become mute is retained in the current spelling; thus in the verbal forms _gives_, _lives_, the _e_ of the termination, though no longer pronounced, is still retained in writing. Sometimes, in poetical texts, it is omitted, but its position is indicated by an apostrophe, as in the spellings _robb'd_, _belov'd_. In many words, on the other hand, the silent vowel has ceased to be written, as in _grown_, _sworn_, of which the original forms were _growen_, _sworen_.
§ =8.= Written marks to indicate the position of the accent were employed in early German poetry as early as the first half of the ninth century, when they were introduced, it is supposed, by Hrabanus Maurus of Fulda and his pupil Otfrid. The similar marks that are found in certain Early English MSS., as the _Ormulum_, are usually signs of vowel-quantity. They may possibly have sometimes been intended to denote stress, but their use for this purpose is so irregular and uncertain that they give little help towards determining the varying degrees of accent in words during the earliest stages of the language. For this purpose we must look for other and less ambiguous means, and these are found (in the case of Old English words and forms) first, in the alliteration, secondly, in comparison with related words of the other Teutonic languages, and, thirdly, in the development in the later stages of English itself. After the Norman Conquest, the introduction of rhyme, and of new forms of metre imitated from the French and mediaeval Latin poetry, affords further help in investigating the different degrees of syllabic accent in Middle English words. None of these means, however, can be considered as yielding results of absolute certainty, chiefly because during this period the accentuation of the language was passing through a stage of transition or compromise between the radically different principles which characterize the Romanic and Teutonic families of languages. This will be explained more fully in a subsequent chapter.