From:  Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Date:  25 Sep 2024 19:14:38 Hong Kong Time
Newsgroup:  news.alt119.net/sci.lang
Subject:  

Joshua Steele dedicated his Melody and Measure of Speech (25/9/1775)

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Irish planter and writer (1700-1796)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Steele

Spent most of his life in London.
In 1775, he published _An Essay Towards Establishing the Melody and 
Measure of Speech, to be Expressed and Perpetuated by Peculiar Symbols_.
(Second edition 1779, with the short title Prosodia Rationalis.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosodia_Rationalis

There you can see an example of his "peculiar symbols", which are based 
on five-line staff musical notation.

This was one of the earliest serious treatments of English prosody 
(intonation, stress, rhythm, metre).

Having published his most interesting work in his 70s, in 1780 he left 
London to spend the rest of his life managing his plantations in Barbados.