A STUDY 
 
 OF 
 
 ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 KY 
 
 CHARLES F. RICHARDSON 
 
 Professor of English in Dartmouth College 
 
 HANOVER, N. H. 
 
 PRINTED FOR CLASS-ROOM USE 
 
 1909
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVEHSITV Of 
 
 SAN DIEGO 

 
 &4 
 
 A STUDY 
 
 OF 
 
 ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES F. RICHARDSON 
 
 Professor of English in Dartmouth College 
 
 HANOVER, N. H. 
 
 PRINTED FOR CLASS-ROOM&USE 
 
 1909
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1909, 
 BY CHARLES F. RICHARDSON. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 THIS book is the best and the worst on its theme, for there is 
 nq other. 
 
 Many volumes have been written on the principles and prac- 
 tice of the poetic art; but none, from Sidney's days to Saints- 
 bury's, has been wholly devoted to the nature and history of 
 English rhyme. The rhyming dictionaries, such as Walker's, 
 Barnum's, or Loring's, have naturally contented themselves 
 with vocabularies; while general treatises on poetics or poetic 
 history have usually dismissed rhyme as a modern phonetic 
 pleasure of uncertain origin. Furthermore, most writers on the 
 subject, save Schipper and his followers, have ignored the rela- 
 tion, which ought to be obvious, between alliteration, assonance, 
 and end-rhyme, as different forms of the same thing. 
 
 The purpose of the present work is to try to trace the evolution 
 of English rhyme, and to correlate it with physical laws, the 
 growth of individual or communal song, and the history of the 
 rhyme-art in other European tongues. Collateral attention has 
 therefore been given to alliteration in the Teutonic languages, 
 assonance in Spanish, and end-rhyme in Latin, Provencal, Ital- 
 ian, French, and German ; but it was manifestly impossible, in a 
 volume of small size, to present a polyglot or comparative history 
 of a subject of such indefinite extent. Indeed, a full record of 
 English rhyme alone would demand, for its presentation, a 
 library almost as extensive as the works of the poets discussed. 
 It has therefore been my attempt to give the leading principles 
 of the discussion, leaving applications to be followed at the 
 reader's pleasure.
 
 iv PREFACE 
 
 Obligation is acknowledged, in greater or less degree, to the 
 volumes cited in the foot-notes. Hundreds of others have been 
 examined pamphlets and treatises of such varying value that a 
 bibliography would mislead rather than aid the student. A word 
 of special gratitude belongs to Professor G. Gregory Smith, 
 whose Elizabethan Literary Criticism has relieved students from 
 the search for rare originals or sometimes untrustworthy reprints. 
 In general, however, I have relied upon first-hand reading of 
 the poetry itself. For assistance outside my immediate field I 
 am indebted to Louis Bell, Ph.D., of Boston ; Professor Duncan 
 C. Macdonald of Hartford Theological Seminary; Lucius 
 Waterman, D.D., Rector of St. Thomas' Church, Hanover ; my 
 colleagues, C. N. Gould, P. O. Skinner, E. F. Langley, and A. K. 
 Hardy, of the faculty of Dartmouth College; and Elizabeth 
 Richardson. 
 
 The use of the colon between rhyming sounds explains itself. 
 The ordinary ab scheme of indicating rhyming lines is of course 
 followed. In a few cases the phonetic symbols of the New Eng- 
 lish Dictionary have been used, but only in circumstances ad- 
 mitting little doubt. Even contemporary speech is an uncertain 
 or variable thing ; poets in every age have shown a large margin 
 of freedom in their rhyme-sounds; while the application of 
 speech-symbols to the language spoken by the dead is largely 
 guesswork. "Every writer on English verse," said The Quar- 
 terly Review some time since, "has his own metrical symbols, 
 and no one appears to pay any attention to any other theorist, 
 except in occasional intervals for depreciation." This remark 
 applies, in good measure, to the phoneticians. 
 
 In view of the broad definition of rhyme (see page 22) which 
 states the underlying purpose of the book, I have not confined 
 myself to externals ; still less to end-rhyme alone. The student 
 of rhyme must always consider its ultimate result in the mind 
 as well as its immediate effect upon the ear. Again, the book is 
 mainly a study and record, not a lawgiver. If the history of
 
 PREFACE v 
 
 English rhyme teaches anything, it is that taste is the 
 final arbiter in the matter of the pleasurableness of similar 
 sounds. 
 
 I am of course aware of the etymological reasons for the 
 spelling "rime," employed by eminent authorities of the present 
 day; as a matter of fact, however, good use has* thus far 
 'refused to give up the illogical "rhyme," which is therefore 
 retained in these pages. Language, after all, is a fact, not an 
 opinion. 
 
 CHARLES F. RICHARDSON. 
 
 DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, 
 June 25, 1909.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I THE POETRY OF EARTH 1 
 
 II THE RHYTHMICAL CREATION OF BEAUTY .... 6 
 
 III ALLITERATION 22 
 
 IV ASSONANCE 30 
 
 V END-RHYME 35 
 
 VI THE SHAPING OF ENGLISH RHYME 85 
 
 VII THE ELIZABETHANS AND THE RHYME CONTROVERSY 108 
 
 VIII FORMAL RHYME 146 
 
 IX ROMANTIC RHYME 158 
 
 X MODERN RHYME 173 
 
 APPENDIX . 209
 
 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 THE POETRY OF EARTH 
 
 RHYME is an identity or close similarity between stressed sounds 
 in corresponding places. 
 
 Thus defined, rhyme has analogies in all the realm of nature. 
 Matter is a condition of force ; force is motion ; motion is meas- 
 ured by waves ; and wave-motion, whether of heat, light, sound, 
 or electricity, is, like music or verse, a series of phases of stress 
 and interval. In a strictly physical sense, "the poetry of earth 
 is never dead." 
 
 Emerson spoke not more as poet than as observer when he 
 said: 
 
 "Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, 
 
 Or dip thy paddle in the lake, 
 But it carves the bow of beauty there, 
 And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake." 
 
 The whole universe swings to rhythm, and through the ages 
 men have fancied themselves hearing some notes of the cosmic 
 harmony. The Psalmist, meditating on the heavenly bodies by 
 night, perceived their "march of soundless music in the vision 
 of the seer," and exclaimed : 
 
 ."The heavens declare the glory of God; 
 
 And the firmament showeth his handy-work. 
 Day unto day uttereth speech, 
 
 And night unto night showeth knowledge. 
 No speech nor language, 
 
 Their voice is not heard." 
 
 More confident was the lumberman in the woods of northern 
 Maine, who, when told of the music of the spheres, declared that 
 
 1
 
 2 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 he had often heard it, when lying awake on winter nights. It 
 was, he said, "just like a kind of little fine whizz." 
 
 There is more than an elaborate metaphor in the famous in- 
 troduction to Dryden's shorter Song for Saint Cecilia's Day. It 
 is a fair summary of nineteenth-century views of evolution and 
 the correlation and conservation of forces : 
 
 "From Harmony, from heavenly Harmony 
 This universal frame began: 
 When Nature underneath a heap 
 Of jarring atoms lay 
 And could not heave her head, 
 The tuneful voice was heard from high, 
 Arise, ye more than dead ! 
 Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry 
 In order to their stations leap, 
 And Music's power obey. 
 From Harmony, from heavenly Harmony 
 This universal frame began : 
 From Harmony to Harmony 
 Through all the compass of the notes it ran, 
 The diapason closing full in Man." l 
 
 When Galileo and Bruno perceived that the solid earth itself 
 was but keeping time in an orderly whirl of suns and stars, they 
 were not far from the idea of Addison, who heard them singing as 
 they shine. And thus Shakespeare made Lorenzo say to Jessica : 
 
 "Look how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold. 
 There 's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins." 
 
 A hundred years before the time of Dryden George Puttenham, 
 in his Arte of English Poesie (1589), reminded his readers that 
 
 1 "Does not the Earth really live a universal life? Are not all its 
 parts, the liquid interior and the firm crust, the ocean and the atmo- 
 sphere, comprehended into a grand whole whose parts interact in 
 manifold ways and yet in harmony? Ebb and flow, day and night, 
 summer and winter, are they not life-rhythms, similar to those which 
 the individual life experiences; or, rather, do not animals and plants, 
 with their little rhythmical vital processes, take part in the great life 
 of the Earth? Is not the life of the Earth mirrored in their sleep and 
 waking, their bloom and withering, their origin and decay?" Paulsen : 
 Introduction to Philosophy, 207.
 
 THE POETRY OF EARTH 3 
 
 doctors of theology said that God made the world by number, 
 measure, and weight; and that philosophers set forth a triple 
 proportion, the arithmetical, the geometrical, and the musical. 
 Thomas Campion, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
 packed this truth into a few words: "The world is made by 
 symmetry and proportion, and is in that respect compared to 
 music, and music to poetry." 
 
 Thus, in studying the unity of the arts, we find one general law 
 of harmonious satisfying proportion, so that we speak of a poeti- 
 cal picture; of tone-color ; or find painting, song, orchestration, 
 and the drama combining in a Wagnerian opera. Perhaps the 
 symphony is, as yet, man's highest contribution to pure art; 
 but there are other symphonies than those of the orchestra. 
 Every simplest consonance of sound is an illustration of the pleas- 
 ure humanity has always taken in that musical unity which binds 
 agreeable diversities. It is no wonder, then, that man, standing 
 in a universe of harmonious contrasts, 
 
 "Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times, 
 Saw musical order and pairing rhymes." 
 
 When one hears the whisper of the breeze, the roar of the sea, 
 the ripple of the brook, the trill of the bird, pleasure stirs him to 
 imitation. The fable of Pan's flute was but the anticipation of 
 Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony or Whitman's Proud Music of 
 the Sea-Storm. 1 Thoreau once assured us that he heard finer 
 music in the tinkle of his hoe on the pebbles, as he worked in his 
 garden on the shore of Walden Pond, than in any symphony con- 
 cert. To his simple mind the telegraph-wire was a "redeemer," 
 which always brought him a message from the highest: "As I 
 went under the new telegraph wire, I heard it vibrating like a 
 harp high overhead ; it was as the sound of a far-off glorious life ; 
 a supernal life which came down to us and vibrated the lattice 
 work of this life of ours an ^Eolian harp. It reminded me, I 
 say, with a certain pathetic moderation, of what finer and deeper 
 stirrings I was susceptible, which grandly set all argument and 
 dispute aside, a triumphant though transient exhibition of the 
 
 1 The original and better title.
 
 4 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 truth." Himself a flute-player, he would have been interested 
 in the statement of a distinguished American organist who once 
 declared the ultimate sound of Niagara, or the roar of a wind- 
 swept forest, or the multitudinous din of a great city, to be in the 
 key of A, octaves below the bass. Even this rather surprising 
 dictum is not hastily to be dismissed ; for many a musical ear, on 
 experiment, will determine that these sounds are at least nearer 
 A than C or E. 
 
 As regards language, with which poetry is chiefly concerned, 
 Claude Fauchet, at the close of the sixteenth century, said in his 
 still serviceable treatise on the Origines de la Langue et Poesie 
 Francoise, Ryme, et Romans (1581) : "Car cela estant uniuersel 
 en la nature, que tout mouuement se fait auec temps, le son & 
 les paroles estans mouuements, ainsi qu'il appert par leur origine 
 (qui n'est autre chose qu'un air batant 1'artere par laquelle il 
 passe, & qui depuis est modere* par le palais, la langue & les 
 dents), il est necessaire que ce mouuement de paroles se face auec 
 le temps." And again: "Puis done (dit Aristote) que le temps 
 est le nombre du mouuement ; le rhythme (s'il est la mesme chose 
 que le temps) sera le mouuement du nombre." 
 
 The historian Mitford, in his Inquiry into the Principles of 
 Harmony in Language (2d ed., 1804), had similarly striven to 
 explain the movement of verse by reference to the laws of music. 
 Melody, said he, is a pleasing succession of varying tones exhib- 
 ited in the flow of speech. There was nothing new, therefore, in 
 Sidney Lanier's detailed attempt to find the basis of verse in the 
 laws of sound, and to measure rhythm by musical notation. 
 Modern methods go still farther, in making poetry visible as well 
 as audible; for Professor Scripture's phonograph cylinders, 
 described in his Experimental Phonetics, show similar curves 
 for similar that is, symmetrically rhythmical, or rhyming 
 sounds. Here, of course, are no words or syllables in them- 
 selves mere phonetic devices but wave-lines corresponding to 
 vocal or other sounds. 1 
 
 Thus the poet's dream of harmony becomes a fact in the labora- 
 
 1 "With the aid of new and more sensitive methods of making gramo- 
 phone and zonophone disks, we may hope to catch verse as it flows from 
 the mouth of the unsuspecting poet, and thus to obtain and study some-
 
 THE POETRY OF EARTH 5 
 
 tory, where, not less than in the field or wood, there is exact 
 truth in Keats' statement that "the poetry of earth is never 
 dead." 
 
 thing far closer to the real poem than the cold and inadequate skeleton 
 of it that appears on the printed page." E. W. Scripture, in The 
 Century Magazine, February, 1902.
 
 II 
 
 THE RYTHMICAL CREATION OF BEAUTY 
 
 WHAT is the relation between the poetry of earth and the poetry 
 of man ? 
 
 Whatever we may dismiss as fanciful or unproved, this at least 
 is certain : Nothing moves without vibrations ; were the eye and 
 the ear not reached by waves of light and sound, nature and art, 
 as far as man is concerned, would almost disappear. Pulsation, 
 impulse the very etymology of the words tells the universal 
 fact that communication from man to man is ever related to the 
 rapidity, force, regularity, or variability of vibrations. The 
 more rhythmical they become, the more intense the feeling 
 aroused. 
 
 Reversing the statement, the deepest feeling instinctively 
 adopts the rhythmical form : the wail of the animal, the lamen- 
 tation over the corpse, the battle-cry, the love-song, the "Laus 
 Deo" of noble triumph. The spontaneous singer may burst into 
 recitative, parallelism, alliteration, assonance, end-rhyme, or 
 what not ; but he is sure to be rhythmical, and to stir his hearers 
 in proportion to the strength and skill of his wave-like swing 
 from thought to thought and stress to stress. 
 
 "Observe," says Carlyle, "how all passionate language does of 
 itself become musical, with a finer music than the mere ac- 
 cent ; the speech of a man even in zealous anger becomes a chant, 
 a song. All deep things are Song. It seems somehow the very 
 central essence of us, Song ; as if all the rest were but wrappages 
 and hulls! The primal element of us; of us, and of all things. 
 The Greeks fabled of Sphere-Harmonies : it was the feeling they 
 had of the inner structure of Nature; that the soul of all her 
 voices and utterances was perfect music. . . . See deep enough,
 
 and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere 
 music, if you can only reach it." * 
 
 Poe's definition of poetry as "the rhythmical creation of 
 beauty " has never been bettered. Strictly considered, it in- 
 cludes song and symphony, vocal and instrumental music of 
 every kind. In the broad sense, music is poetry and poetry music. 
 If we say that verse is the rhythmical creation of beauty in lan- 
 guage, the statement is sufficiently accurate for all purposes of 
 criticism. 
 
 Whence comes the universal desire to create the beautiful ? 
 
 Many are the theories of the origin of art that is, of created 
 beauty in the world. Plant- and animal-decoration, for 
 allurement or defence, accounts for the subconscious develop- 
 ment of many lovely things, from the petal of a flower to the tail 
 of a peacock. Phyllotaxy and flower-adornment, in the botanical 
 world, are both serviceable and symmetrical ; and in the animal 
 kingdom many creatures survive simply because they appeal, by 
 attractiveness at pairing-time, to an unquestionable sense of 
 beauty in their kind. From the beautiful in substance to the 
 beautiful in act is but a step; hence the gallop, the play of the 
 body, the spectacular flight, the bird-song. Animals and chil- 
 dren gesture, intone, sing; and here the element of feeling, in- 
 dispensable in the lyric, is added to the satisfaction inherent in 
 proportion. 
 
 Puttenham declared that "all arts grew first by observation of 
 nature's proceedings and custom." Many other theorists have 
 connected the beginnings of song with direct imitations of bird- 
 music, reproduced by the human voice, or by a primitive flute, 
 like Siegfried's. 2 
 
 But the more natural explanation is to be found in the instinc- 
 
 1 On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, 78. 
 
 2 So Lucretius (I, 5, 1378): 
 
 "At liquidas avium voces imitarier ore 
 Ante fuit multo quam laevia carmina cantu 
 Concelebrare homines possent, aureisque jurare." 
 
 and compare the onomatopoetic imitations in the Birds and Frogs of 
 Aristophanes. The "Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo," of Nash's 
 Spring is known to everybody from its place on the first page of Pal- 
 grave's Golden Treasury.
 
 8 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 tive development of the human voice itself, as truly a musical 
 instrument as the skylark's. In that development, of course, 
 onomatopoeia and the "bow-wow theory" explain many things. 
 The poetry of language would be a different thing without the 
 melodious I, the explosive p, the dull d, the hissing s, and so on. 
 There was an entire sentence of woe in the Anglo-Saxon 
 "walawa." Lord Bacon understood all this very well when 
 he said, in his Natural History: "There is found a simili- 
 tude between the sound that is made by inanimate bodies, or 
 by animate bodies that have no voice articulate, and divers 
 letters of articulate voices ; and commonly men have given such 
 names to those sounds as do allude unto the articulate letters ; as 
 trembling of hot water hath resemblance unto the letter I; 
 quenching of hot metals with the letter z; snarling of dogs 
 with the letter r; the noise of screech-owls with the letters sh; 
 voice of cats with the diphthong eu; voice of cuckoos with the 
 diphthong ou; sounds of strings with the diphthong ng." 
 Long before Bacon, Ovid had been reminded by ra of the low- 
 ing of the ox. 
 
 Birds and most savages use a very primitive melody, chiefly 
 relying, for effect, upon iteration. Some Indian-songs and 
 Indian prayers are always lyrical consist of only three words, 
 which are sung over and over again. At first, the human song, 
 like that of the bird, shows little emotional variation ; stress of in- 
 tonation and emphatic gesture come later, in the savage as in the 
 child. When Darwin suggested that singing preceded speech 
 and was the author of it, he simply sent us back to the baby's 
 cry and coo, and to the interjection, which is language before 
 it is disintegrated into words. 
 
 While the play-instinct in childhood does not account for the 
 origins of art, it does make plain the universality of the art- 
 instinct, and its early appearance in the individual life. Aris- 
 totle perceived that the two chief causes of poetry were our 
 implanted instincts of imitation and of harmonious rhythm, by 
 which rude improvisations gave birth to true song. The child, 
 as every one knows by his own experience, is a primitive singer, 
 player upon musical instruments, orator, dramatist, painter, 
 architect, soldier, and military and naval engineer. In his various
 
 THE RHYTHMICAL CREATION OF BEAUTY 9 
 
 doings, he instinctively makes more or less orderly repetitions 
 of tone and action. These repetitions, while they last, exemplify 
 Poe's dictum that unity and brevity are lyrical essentials. Of the 
 truth of all this, Wordsworth's famous lines in the Ode on Im- 
 mortality are a convenient summary, showing, as they do, the 
 similarity between the child and the uncivilized adult : 
 
 ."As if his whole vocation 
 Were endless imitation." 
 
 But the chief origin of art is man's desire to perpetuate the 
 fleeting. That face will disappear in death; I must carve or 
 paint it while yet there is time. My abode is a poor perishing 
 thing ; let me replace it by wall and arch. That song my fathers 
 sang; I will transmit it, in memory or manuscript, to my chil- 
 dren's children. My glorious reign will pass from the minds of 
 men ; bards and scribes shall rescue its renown from the fugitive 
 years. Of all these things, litera scripta manet; and song, at 
 once agreeable and rememberable because of its rhythm, has 
 best defied the flight of the centuries. 
 
 The basis of song is a yearning to transmit feeling by utterances 
 at once rhythmical and cumulative. In man, and in many of the 
 higher animals, exists an intense wish to express pleasure or 
 pain, especially in states of exaltation. The howl of the dog, the 
 purr of the cat, the mating-song of the bird, the triumphant crow 
 of the cock, the cheer of the warrior, the concerted grunt of the 
 laborer, the funeral croon, are all expressions of heightened or 
 deepened feeling, and most of them are more or less modulated. 
 Folk-singing, however rude, is always rhythmical ; and regularity 
 increases with the development of civilization. Rhythm, the 
 basis of motion in the physical world, is the foundation of primi- 
 tive verse, whether applied to war, worship, love, or labor. To 
 the recurrent sounds of the voice are added simultaneous recur- 
 rent motions of the body, and the emotional chant, individual or 
 communal, is brought into being, a chant that in its essen- 
 tials contains the germs of the dance, the drama, the opera, and 
 the balanced oration. Probably there never was a time, after the 
 first steps in evolution had been taken, when the lowest man 
 some say the woman, as having an earlier intellectual develop-
 
 10 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 ment and a stronger emotional nature, perhaps crooning her 
 baby to sleep did not turn naturally to rhythm in some form, 
 afterwards adding the beat of vocal or instrumental sound, or 
 both together, to concurrent and emphatic movements of the 
 body. Thus music became the universal language, as marching 
 or dancing was almost the earliest of the arts. 
 
 "Every one," says Hazlitt, "who declaims warmly, or grows in- 
 tent upon a subject, rises into a sort of blank verse or measured 
 prose." Doctor Johnson once summed the subject in a few sonor- 
 ous words: "The perception of harmony is, indeed, conferred 
 upon men in degrees very unequal ; but there are none who do 
 not perceive it, or to whom a regular series of proportionate 
 sounds cannot give delight." 1 
 
 The deaf, dumb, and blind Laura Bridgman got some sense of 
 pleasure in the construction of what seemed to her regularly re- 
 current harmonies constituting little poems or hymns; and the 
 abler and more highly educated Helen Keller profiting by 
 half a century of development in the education of the deaf and 
 blind apprehended the finer rhythms of nature, and uttered 
 her feelings in language that possesses not only the spirit but 
 something of the form of poetry: 
 
 ."The noiseless little noises of earth 
 Come with softest rustle ; 
 The shy, sweet feet of life ; 
 The silky flutter of moth-wings 
 Against my restraining palm ; 
 The strident beat of insect-wings, 
 The silvery trickle of water; 
 Little breezes busy in the summer grass ; 
 The music of crisp, whisking, scurrying leaves, 
 The swirling, wind-swept, frost-tinted leaves ; 
 The crystal splash of summer rain, 
 Saturate with the odors of the sod. . . . 
 
 f My hands evoke sight and sound out of feeling, 
 Intershifting the senses endlessly, 
 Linking motion with sight, odor with sound. 
 They give color to the honeyed breeze, 
 The measure and passion of a symphony 
 To the beat, and quiver of unseen wings. 
 
 1 The Rambler, No. 8.
 
 THE RHYTHMICAL CREATION OF BEAUTY 11 
 
 In the secrets of earth and sun and air 
 
 My fingers are wise ; 
 
 They snatch light out of darkness, 
 
 They thrill to harmonies breathed in silence." l 
 
 The pleasurably arranged sound of music or verse exists in 
 some degree, of course, in rhythmical or balanced prose, or in 
 any utterance where idea is put over against idea, or word against 
 word. Thought-rhyme or thought-rhythm is the setting of an 
 expression over against its amplification, its duplicate, or its 
 opposite, the two being bound together in such a way as to pre- 
 serve variety in unity. An ancient illustration of this regularly 
 recurring balance of thought is found in the parallelisms of the 
 Hebrew Psalms and prophetical books. 
 
 Of rhyme, in the modern sense, Hebrew literature had none, 
 though the acrostic abecedarian arrangement of such composi- 
 tions as Psalm cxix is a sort of alliteration. 2 But in the poeti- 
 
 1 The Century, May, 1908. 
 
 2 For the following data with reference to alliteration and acrostics in 
 Hebrew I am indebted to Lucius Waterman, D. D., rector of St. Thomas' 
 Church, Hanover, N. H. : 
 
 Alliteration is fairly common in Hebrew of all periods. Examples 
 may be found in Gen. i, 2; xviii, 27; Job xxx, 19; xlii, 6; Is. xiv, 22; 
 xxii, 5; xxiv, 4; Ps. xviii, 8; Micah i, 10. The Jewish Encyclopaedia 
 says under "Alliteration" that rhyme (except of inflectional endings) 
 in Hebrew is always connected with assonance of the whole word. 
 
 Eight of the one hundred and fifty psalms ( if one takes Psalms ix and 
 x as one piece of work) are marked by acrostical writing. These are ix 
 and x, xxv, xxxiv, xxxvii, cxi, cxii, cxix, cxlv. 
 
 The scheme of Psalm ix is 
 
 Verses 1, 2, four strophes, each beginning with Aleph [A. V. spelling 
 of the letters]. 
 
 Verses 3, 4, four strophes, the first beginning with Beth. 
 
 Verse 5, two strophes, the first beginning with Gimel. 
 
 (Daleth, the fourth letter, is wanting.) 
 
 Verse 6, two strophes, the first beginning with He. 
 
 Verses 7, 8, 9, 10, eight strophes, each verse beginning with Vau. 
 
 Verses 11, 12, four strophes, the first beginning with Zain. 
 
 Verses 13, 14, five strophes, the first beginning with Cheth. 
 
 Verses 15, 16, five strophes, the first beginning with Teth. 
 
 Verse 17, two strophes, the first beginning with Jod. 
 
 Verse 18, two strophes, the first beginning with Caph. 
 
 Two verses more seem to be outside the scheme. 
 
 Psalm x begins verse 1 with the next letter, Lamed, then skips the 
 next six letters, but has just such a number of strophes as would well 
 provide for six; then come
 
 12 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 cal books or parts of books, such as the Psalms, Job, Isaiah, Joel, 
 Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, the Proverbs, etc., the second 
 line or half-line is usually set over against the first, as its proper 
 balance. Thus Hebrew poetry combines a rhythmical swing 
 with the freedom of prose. This characteristic, which was so 
 marked that it remains in most translations, appears at once in 
 what has been called the oldest poem in the world : the Lament of 
 Lamech (Genesis iv, 23, 24) : 
 
 f'And Lamech said unto his wives: 
 'Adah and Zillah: hear my voice, 
 Ye wives of Lamech: hearken unto my speech; 
 For I have slain a man to my wounding : and a young man to my hurt. 
 If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold: truly Lamech seventy and 
 sevenfold.' " 
 
 More elaborate illustrations of this regular proportional form 
 of a : b::c:d may be found all through the Psalms, as, for in- 
 stance, in Psalm ciii, beginning: 
 
 Verses 12, 13, four strophes, the first beginning with Koph. 
 
 Verse 14, four strophes, the first beginning with Resh. 
 
 Verses 15, 16, four strophes, the first beginning with Schin. 
 
 Verses 17, 18, four strophes, the first beginning with Tau. 
 
 Some declare confidently that our present passage, verses 2-11 in- 
 clusive, is a piece of another ancient poem, substituted for the original 
 of the acrostic writer. 
 
 In Psalms xxv and xxxiv there are 22 verses each, but in each case 
 only 21 verses are acrostical, the sixth letter, Vau, being omitted, and 
 the 22d verse beginning with a form of the Hebrew word "deliver." 
 
 The scheme of Psalm xxxvii is similar to that of Psalms ix-x (com- 
 bined), but brings in the entire alphabet, in order. 
 
 Psalms cxi and cxii have the same scheme : 22 strophes, eight verses 
 of two each being followed by two verses of three each. Each strophe 
 begins with its own letter of the alphabet. 
 
 Psalm cxix has 22 sections, one for each letter of the alphabet. Each 
 section has eight verses of two strophes each, and every verse begins 
 with the letter of its section. 
 
 Psalm cxlv has 21 verses, beginning with the letters of the alphabet 
 in order, with the exception of Nun. 
 
 Proverbs xxxi, 10-31 is an acrostic, the verses beginning with the 22 
 letters in order. 
 
 Lamentations i, ii, iii, and iv are acrostics. Chapters ii, iii, and iv 
 exchange the places of the sixteenth and seventeenth letters, Ain and Pe. 
 Chapter iii has 66 verses, beginning three verses in succession with one 
 letter through 22 triplets. 
 
 Curious traces of an ancient acrostic, which has suffered much from 
 editors, are said by some recent scholars to be found in Nahum i, 3 and 
 following verses.
 
 THE RHYTHMICAL. CREATION OF BEAUTY 13 
 
 " The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: long suffering, and of 
 
 great goodness. 
 
 He will not always chide ; neither keepeth he his anger forever. 
 He has not dealt with us after our sins : nor rewarded us according 
 
 to our wickedness. 
 For as the heaven is high above the earth: so far hath he removed 
 
 our transgressions from us." 
 
 Sometimes the first half of a statement is elaborated, but not 
 the second, as in Psalm xc, 2 : 
 
 "Before the mountains were brought forth, 
 Or ever thou hadst framed the earth and the world, 
 Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." 
 
 Again, the duplication is in the second half, as in verse 4 of 
 the same Psalm: 
 
 "For a thousand years in thy sight 
 Are but as yesterday when it is past, 
 And as a watch in the night." 
 
 Of this poetical element in Hebrew some of the earlier English 
 writers had an inkling. Said Thomas Lodge, in his Defence of 
 Poetry (1579) : "Ask Josephus, and he will tell you that Isaiah, 
 Job, and Solomon vouchsafed poetical practices, for (if Origen 
 and he fault not) their verse was hexameter and pentameter. In- 
 quire of Cassiodorus, he will say that all the beginning of poetry 
 proceeded from the Scripture." Similarly Puttenham: "King 
 David also and Solomon his son and many other of the holy 
 prophets wrote in metres, and used to sing them to the harp, al- 
 though to many of us, ignorant of the Hebrew language and 
 phrase, and not observing it, the same seem but a prose." Sir 
 John Harrington, in 1591, followed with the remark: "Some 
 part of the Scripture was written in verse, as the Psalms of David, 
 and certain other songs of Deborah, of Solomon, and others, 
 which the learnedest divines do affirm to be verse and find that 
 they are in metre, though the rule of the Hebrew verse they agree 
 not on." And since nearly all writers on verse, for four hundred 
 years, have dutifully followed their predecessors (when not call- 
 ing them too stupid for endurance) it was easy for William
 
 14 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 Vaughan, in his Golden Grove (1600), to label Moses and Debo- 
 rah "the most ancient poets." 1 
 
 The thought of the Psalms and of King David naturally sug- 
 gests the antiquity of the dance, and its connection with lyrical 
 and instrumental music. 2 Some one has said that when Adam 
 and Eve leaped their first leap of joy and shouted their first shout 
 of joy they gave the start to the dance and the duet. At any rate, 
 in the dawn of history "the Apollinean instinct of solitary song 
 and the Dionysian impulse of ecstatic communal emotion" were 
 often accompanied by rhythmical motions of the body. At the 
 close of a newly-discovered fragment (of the fourth century B.C.) 
 of Timotheus' 'Ot, IIep<rai we read: "But the Greeks set up a 
 trophy, most holy shrine of Zeus, and aloud they shout the song 
 of victory to Apollo, their protecting god, and in harmony with 
 the rhythm beat the earth with measured tread." "The beat," 
 says the latest work on musical notation, 3 "is derived from the 
 pulse, and is shown by raising and lowering the hand, levatio, 
 up-beat ; positio, down-beat ; or in Greek, arsis and thesis. Time 
 was indicated by the raising and lowering of the foot by the 
 Greeks, hence the word foot for a poetical measure." That is, 
 the foot is the unit of time in verse, as the measure is in music. 
 Later, in the delivery of the Greek ode, to the accompaniment 
 of music and dancing, the singers moved to one side during the 
 
 1 A clean definition is that given in Chaytor's Companion to French 
 Verse: "Poetry in its formal aspect may be defined, in order to distin- 
 guish it from prose, as language in strictly recurrent rhythmical form. 
 . . . By the use of rhythm we mean the introduction into language of a 
 principle of proportion in the arrangement of words. . . . When . . . 
 the recurrence of a voice-modulation can be anticipated with certainty 
 by the hearer, rhythm becomes metre, and such rhythmical language 
 becomes verse or poetry (in form). Hence metre may be defined as 
 regularly recurrent rhythm." According to this, the English version 
 of the Psalms, or Whitman's Leaves of Grass, would not be formal 
 poetry, and would come under the head of rhythm, not metre. 
 
 2 " Dancing, the most real of the arts (Wagner), seeing that the 
 whole man is concerned in it, from head to foot, with motions and 
 gestures that give it tone, and rhythm that gives it speech, was also 
 the primitive and universal art, the sign of social consent : consenting 
 steps, with mimicry of whatever sort, timed a series of rude cries 
 which expressed the emotion of the moment, and so grew into articu- 
 late language." F. B. Gummere: The Beginnings of Poetry, 328. 
 
 8 Notation, by C. F. Abdy- Williams : London, 1905.
 
 THE RHYTHMICAL CREATION OF BEAUTY 15 
 
 strophe, and to the other in the antistrophe, standing still in the 
 concluding epode. 
 
 At the basis of the Hebrew parallelism, the Greek strophe, 
 antistrophe, and chorus, and the Teutonic refrain is, of course, 
 the inherent animal-idea already mentioned of strength 
 accumulated by repetition. 1 This is notable in herdsmen's calls 
 to animals ; in parents' summons to children ; in men's adjura- 
 tions to work, fight, or win athletic triumphs ; in funeral croons 
 repeatedly dwelling on the virtues of the dead, etc. Such itera- 
 tion goes from one word to a whole passage. Similarly, children 
 demand absolute uniformity in the oral telling of their best-loved 
 stories, and correct the narrator when he makes the slightest slip 
 from the received version. 
 
 During the American civil war, Thomas Wentworth Higgin- 
 son, then colonel of a regiment of colored troops, largely com- 
 posed of former slaves, gathered at first hand thirty-six folk- 
 songs, religious, aspirational, and other. 2 Most were of unknown 
 or apparently remote authorship ; one or two were of recent and 
 known composition. Nearly all were influenced by scriptural 
 thought or expression, but not to the destruction of racial char- 
 acteristics or proper originality. As a rule, the songs abounded 
 in the repetitions, refrains, contrasts, or parallelisms which are 
 sure to characterize primitive verse. All were sung or chanted 
 by groups, rather than by soloists, and often with a gusto amount- 
 ing to frenzy. Instrumental accompaniments were exceptional. 
 
 A favorite device was to add to some general statement or 
 exclamation the names of the individuals of the company, one 
 by one: "Hold your light, brudder Robert," etc., or 
 
 "Oh, my mudder is gone ! my mudder is gone I 
 My mudder is gone into heaven, my Lord 1 " 
 
 followed by "my fader," "de angels," and so on. 
 
 "The dusky figures," says Colonel Higginson, "moved in the 
 rhythmical barbaric dance the negroes call a shout, chanting, 
 
 1 The refrain is "the main communal element in songs of labor; . . . 
 its functions in communal play [are] primarily a combination of con- 
 senting cries and movements in the festal dance." F. B. Gummere: 
 The Beginnings of Poetry, 314. 
 
 1 The Atlantic Monthly, 19: 685.
 
 16 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 often harshly, but always in the most perfect time, some monot- 
 onous refrain." In one song, looking toward freedom, the in- 
 evitable "no more" burden bears a strong part: no more peck 
 o' corn, no more pint o' salt, no more hundred lash, no more 
 mistress' call. "My brudder, how long" is also a cry of univer- 
 sal humanity. 
 
 Some of these "negro spirituals," as Colonel Higginson calls 
 them, have end-rhyme, with the usual ballad indifference to 
 anything but rough assonances ; but as a rule the balanced ideas, 
 in refrains or elsewhere, furnish all the rhyme-art deemed 
 necessary. 
 
 The gem of this important little ballad-collection is 
 
 "I KNOW MOON-RISE. 
 
 " I know moon-rise, I know star-rise, 
 
 Lay dis body down. 
 I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight, 
 
 To lay dis body down. 
 I '11 walk in de graveyard, I '11 walk through de graveyard, 
 
 To lay dis body down. 
 I '11 lie in de grave and stretch out my arms; 
 
 Lay dis body down. 
 I go to de judgment in de evenin' of de day, 
 
 When I lay dis body down ; 
 And my soul and your soul will meet in de day 
 
 When I lay dis body down." 
 
 In one instance Colonel Higginson was able to catch folk- 
 poetry in the making. He had long wondered whether these 
 songs "had a conscious and definite origin in some leading mind, 
 or whether they grew by gradual accretion, in an almost uncon- 
 scious way." At last, in response to questioning, an oarsman 
 confessed: "I been a-raise a sing, myself, once. Once we boys 
 went for tote some rice, and de nigger-driver, he keep a-callin' 
 on us ; and I say, ' Oh, de ole nigger-driver ! ' Den anudder said, 
 'Fust ting my mammy tole me was, notin' so bad as nigger- 
 driver.' Den I made a sing, just puttin' a word, and den anudder 
 word." Thus, one began the singing, and the men, after listen- 
 ing a moment, joined in the chorus as if it were an old acquaint- 
 ance, though they "evidently had never heard it before, with 
 the following result:
 
 THE RHYTHMICAL CREATION OF BEAUTY 17 
 
 "Oh, de ole nigger-driver! 
 
 Oh, gwine away I 
 Fust ting my mammy tell me, 
 
 Oh, gwine away I 
 Tell me 'bout de nigger-driver, 
 
 Oh, gwine away ! 
 Nigger-driver second devil, 
 
 Oh, gwine away ! 
 Best ting for do he driver, 
 
 Oh, gwine away ! 
 Knock he down and spoil he labor, 
 
 Oh, gwine away ! " 
 
 Here, in South Carolina in the 'sixties, was the communal 
 chant, developed on lines probably followed a thousand times 
 before, in far antiquity and in many sundered lands. 1 
 
 As all early songs were meant to be heard, not read, any sort of 
 repetition helped the singer's memory and the listener's attention. 
 
 "All the moods of verse," said Poe, "rhythm, metre, stanza, 
 rhyme, alliteration, the refrain, and other analogous effects . . . 
 are to be referred to the human enjoyment of equality, fitness.'-' 
 The universality of the refrain satisfied Poe of its intrinsic value, 
 but he undertook to improve it by variation, on the ground that 
 "duplicate sameness or monotony" would have been rejected 
 even in the origins of rhyme which it certainly was not. Of 
 the beautifully variant effects of Poe's "repetend" there can be 
 no question ; but the primitive ear, like the child's, better enjoyed 
 the unaltered "over-and-over-again" effect, as even to-day we 
 enjoy the refrains of Fine Flowers in the Valley, A Lyke-Wake 
 Dirge, Tennyson's The Sisters, or Longfellow's My Lost Youth, 
 The effect of cumulative contrast is sometimes best attained, as 
 in the last-named poem, by a final utterance in prose. The pur- 
 pose of the refrain is to furnish a contrast or a climax, or both. 
 In such poems as Mrs. Browning's The Rhyme of the Duchess 
 May the former is desired ; in Poe's Raven both are kept in mind. 
 
 Thus, in all lands and times, the rhythmical creation of beauty 
 has proceeded, by variant means, to the arrangement of words in 
 
 1 "Negro music is spontaneous. In Africa it sprang into life at the 
 war-dance, at funerals, and at marriage festivals. According to African 
 students at Tuskegee, there are in the native melodies strains that reveal 
 the close relationship between the negro music of Africa and America." 
 Booker T. Washington. 
 
 2
 
 18 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 such measured order as shall give utterance to passion and at the 
 same time give pleasure to the ear. It must be sufficiently like 
 ordinary prose to be easily understood, and yet obviously re- 
 moved from common speech. In a way, rhythm is added to 
 speech, in a way it is inherent in it. There is no need to hunt 
 backward, from Teuton to Roman, or Roman to Greek, or 
 Greek to Arabian and Egyptian, for the origins of an instinct 
 which is universal, and is certain to appear indigenously. Taci- 
 tus says that the Germans went to war chanting the deeds of 
 their ancestors, put into verse. The Anglo-Saxons rushed into 
 battle, singing while they smote with the sword on the shield. 
 The sad processions of Russian exiles on their way to Siberia have 
 timed their monotonous songs to the clanking of their chains. 
 
 In all these different but similar creations, the ear is the law- 
 giver. Bede, our first English writer on versification, saw that 
 the difference between metre and rhythm is that the latter is a 
 free chant, not subject to any strict law. 1 Before him, St. Augus- 
 tine had said that all metre is rhythm, but all rhythm not metre. 
 Rhythm is merely a somewhat regular arrangement of time-inter- 
 vals. In it, as in verse, the syllable is by no means the metrical unit. 
 
 Balanced prose, the oratorical swing, the strong iteration, the 
 effective contrast, have always been recognized by all writers on 
 oratory, from Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian down; and all 
 have argued that they must never become regular verse. Thus 
 there may be rhythmical prose, but never metrical prose. But 
 the best Greek and Roman rhetoricians all understood and em- 
 phasized the fact that "the harmony of language, even of prose, 
 belongs to the science of music." 
 
 It is no wonder that writers as late as William Webbe (1586) 
 believed in the old fable that Orpheus "by the sweet gift of his 
 heavenly poetry withdrew men from ranging uncertainly and 
 wandering brutishly about" ; or that he reverently cited Plato in 
 support of the theory that the first singers were called Votes be- 
 cause "inspired with some divine instinct from heaven," while 
 the rest, "which sang of love matters, or other lighter devices al- 
 luring unto pleasure or delight, were called Poetae or makers. 
 Thus it appeareth both eloquence and poetry to have their be- 
 1 See page 46.
 
 THE RHYTHMICAL CREATION OF BEAUTY 19 
 
 ginning and original from these exercises, being framed in such 
 sweet measure of sentences and pleasant harmony called 'PvO/Aos, 
 which is an apt composition of words or clauses, drawing as it 
 were by force the hearer's ears even whithersoever it listeth, that 
 Plato affirmeth therein to be contained yorjrela, an enchantment, 
 as it were to persuade them anything whether they would or no." * 
 It is a far cry from Plato to de Banville; but they agreed in 
 making the Over-Soul the real poet, the earthly singer being but 
 the mouthpiece. Said Plato: "Had he [the poet] learned by 
 rules of art, he would have known how to speak, not of one theme 
 only, but of all; and, therefore, God takes away the mind of 
 poets, and uses them as His ministers, as He also uses diviners 
 and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know 
 that they speak not of themselves, who utter these priceless words 
 in a state of unconsciousness, but that God is the speaker, and 
 that through them He is conversing with us." 2 Similarly de 
 Banville, who declares that rhyme is the quality that constitutes 
 the poet; his is "ce mot sorcier, ce mot fee, ce mot magique" : 
 "Si vous e"tes poete, vous commencerez par voir distinctement 
 dans la chambre noir de votre cerveau tout ce que vous voulez 
 montrer a votre auditeur, et en meme temps que les visions, se 
 pre"senteront spontanement a votre esprit les mots qui, place's a la 
 fin des vers, auront le don d'eVoquer ces me'mes visions pour vos 
 auditeurs. Le reste ne sera plus qu'un travail de gout et de co- 
 ordination, un travail d'art qui s'apprend par I'Stude des maitres 
 et par la fre"quentation assidue de les oeuvres. Si au contraire 
 vous n'e"tes pas poete, vous n'aurez que des visions confuses, que 
 nul peintre ne pourrait, d'aprs votre re*cit, traduire d'une man- 
 ire claire et intelligible; et les mots qui pourront susciter ces 
 me'mes visions dans 1'esprit de votre auditeur ne vous viendront 
 pas a la pense"e. Car ce n'est ni le bon sens, ni la logique, ni 
 1' erudition, ni la me"moire, qui fournissent ces mots arme's d'un 
 si Strange pouvoir ; ils ne se pre"sentent a la pense"e qu'en vertu 
 d'un don special, qui ne s'acquiert pas." 3 
 
 1 A Discourse of English Poetry; reprinted in Elizabethan Literary 
 Criticism, ed. by G. Gregory Smith, I, 231. 
 
 2 Dialogues: Ion (translated by Jowett). 
 
 3 Petit Traite de Poesie Francaise, 50.
 
 20 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 In the rhythmical creation of beauty, the unity of the arts 
 must never be forgotten. But that unity does not mean that they 
 are equivalent or interchangeable. Instrumental music is not 
 vocal music, nor is sung poetry exactly equivalent to recited 
 poetry. George Saintsbury concludes that "one has, while ad- 
 mitting the great stimulating force of music, to hint or re-hint a 
 doubt whether, by itself, it can do much for prosody save sug- 
 gest." But such suggestion may be very strong: Stephen C. 
 Foster, the most original American composer, wrote the 
 words and music of his songs simultaneously, fitting the one 
 to the other as he went along. The French critic Camille 
 Mauclair finds in Schumann the union of song and syllabic 
 sonority. 
 
 Many later critics agree with Sir Philip Sidney in his explicit 
 characterization of music as "the most divine striker of the 
 senses." Poe, certainly most competent to speak, declared 
 verse "an inferior and less capable music." Poe, indeed, in- 
 cluded the landscape garden with painting, sculpture, architec- 
 ture, the dance, and music, as expressive of the poetic 
 sentiment. 
 
 In this fascinating "land east of the sun and west of the moon," 
 where one may hear colors, and see perfumes, and try to incarnate 
 in this or that art what all feel but never see, modern symbolism 
 has found its veritable home. Hence "tone-pictures"; poems 
 translated into symphonies; and impressionistic fantasias of 
 every kind. 
 
 Pater was right when he reminded us that in the unity of the 
 arts, as elsewhere, the rule of suum cuique holds. " It is a common 
 and fundamental error to suppose that all of them draw on a 
 single fixed quantity of imaginative thought, whereas actually 
 each has its own special quality of beauty, untranslatable into 
 the terms of any other. All art aspires towards the condition of 
 music towards that perfect fusion of matter and expression 
 that music at its highest exhibits. It follows, then, that the finer 
 the poem the more completely self sufficing is it." 
 
 It is the function of poetry to excite or elevate the soul. Hence 
 he who sings sweetly must first have seen or felt sincerely. The 
 truest inspiration instinctively turns to the best rhythms and the
 
 THE RHYTHMICAL CREATION OF BEAUTY 21 
 
 fittest rhymes. These rhythms and rhymes stir corresponding 
 vibrations in the mind of the hearer or reader, as the sounded 
 violin-string sets a-throbbing its fellow-string in the piano. 
 Rhythmical beauty has not reached its full creation until it is 
 transmitted.
 
 Ill 
 
 ALLITERATION 
 
 IF our definition of rhyme the identity or close similarity of 
 stressed sounds in corresponding places is proper, it follows 
 that alliteration, which is nothing if not this, is as truly rhyme as 
 is end-rhyme. One occurs at the beginning of a sound-group, 
 the other at the end, that is all. 
 
 We may generalize thus : 
 
 Rhyme = identity, or close similarity, between stressed 
 sounds in corresponding places. 
 
 Beginning-rhyme = alliteration; initial-rhyme. 
 
 Middle-rhyme = assonance: identity or similarity of in- 
 cluded vowel-sounds. Spanish assonance also requires the same 
 vowel-sounds, in order, from the last accented vowel to the end 
 of the word. 
 
 End-rhyme = identity or similarity of final stressed vowels 
 and any following consonants; preceding consonants being 
 different. 
 
 Schipper, in his treatise on Englische Metrik (I, 31), says: 
 " Die Alliteration, auch Anreim, oder haufiger Stabreim genannt, 
 ist die specifisch altgermanische Reimart und zugleich die 
 alteste in der Poesie der germanischen Vb'lker." 
 
 Gummere and the best of the authorities since Schipper agree 
 with him and with common sense in considering allitera- 
 tion, assonance, and end-rhyme as different expressions of the 
 same thing. One of them has been characteristic of one lan- 
 guage or time, another of another, that is all. This is concisely 
 put by F. A. March (Latin Hymns, 320) : 
 
 "Nations who unite prose accent and arsis need to mark off 
 their verses plainly. They do it by rhyme, the rhythmical repe-
 
 ALLITERATION 23 
 
 tition of letters. When the rhyming letters begin their words, it 
 is called alliteration; when they end their words, it is called 
 rhyme. Rhyme seems to have grown naturally into use in the 
 later Latin poetry. It will be seen to appear first as an occa- 
 sional ornament in the hymns, and become regular in form and 
 place by slow degrees. The old Teutonic poetry used allitera- 
 tion as an essential part of their metrical system, and German 
 and Anglo-Saxon poets often use it freely in their Latin verses." 
 Professor March elsewhere says that alliteration was essential, 
 and other rhyme ornamental, in Anglo-Saxon, Icelandic, and 
 Old Saxon. 
 
 It is not necessary to hunt for earlier uses of alliteration, in 
 classical or other tongues. In the old Latin line, "O Tite tute 
 Tati tibi tanta tyranne tulisti," it extends to the unusual number 
 of seven letters, but such things are mere sporadic "sports." 
 
 Alliteration lent itself easily to the needs of a folk that enjoyed 
 "both singing and striking in front of the war." The Shaper in 
 the mead-hall struck the harp and sang "with gesture, with the 
 beat of his voice and of the hand upon his instrument at each 
 alliterative word of the saga." 1 The use of alliteration "served 
 to indicate at once the place of the rhetorical emphasis and of the 
 rhythmical pause." Hence the minstrel's "natural tendency was 
 to conduct his narrative through a series of abrupt, energetic 
 clauses, packed with those phrases, in immediate apposition with 
 each other, so frequent in Hebrew poetry, and technically called 
 parallelisms; the whole effect being well suited to chanting or 
 recitative." 2 
 
 Anglo-Saxon alliteration, according to John Earle, "gratified 
 the ear with a resonance like that of modern rhyme, but it also 
 had the rhetorical advantage of touching the accented or em- 
 phatic words; falling as it did on the natural summits of the 
 construction, and tinging them with the brilliance of a musical 
 reverberation." The same Anglo-Saxon scholar deems allitera- 
 tion superior, in the strength of its effects, to end-rhyme itself: 
 
 "Rhyme [end-rhyme] is an attendant upon metre; its office is 
 to mark the 'verse' or turn of the metre, where it begins again. 
 
 1 S. A. Brooke : History of Early English Literature. 
 
 2 W. J. Courthope : History of English Poetry.
 
 24 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 Rhyme is an insignificant thing in itself, as compared with allit- 
 eration; whereas this is ... an accentual reverberation, and 
 rests upon the most vital part of words, rhyme is but a syllabic 
 resonance, and rests most frequently upon syllables which are of 
 secondary consideration." 
 
 Alliteration doubtless arose spontaneously among the Ger- 
 manic peoples as a result of their enjoyment of similar stresses, 
 in languages lacking any finer undertones of phonetic effect. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon (Old English) verse, like Scandinavian and Old 
 German, was rhythmical and alliterative. In Anglo-Saxon 
 poetry each line was in two halves, divided by a pause at the end 
 of a word. The first root-syllables of words were stressed, there 
 being at least one such stress in each half-line. The alliterative 
 consonants were the same; the alliterative vowels were usually 
 different, it being considered that all vowels were so similar in 
 sound as to be alliterative. When unstressed syllables were allit- 
 erative, the circumstance was an accident, to be disregarded in the 
 rhyme-scheme. 1 
 
 None of the Teutonic lands Germany, Iceland, Denmark, 
 Norway, or Sweden led England in the use of this poetical 
 means of effect, which is almost instinctive in the folk-poetry of 
 every age. And from Chaucer to Swinburne it has been much 
 more than an ornament. However Chaucer or we may disclaim 
 "rym ram ruff," it is bound to reappear in pun or proverb, in 
 lyric and blank-verse epic. 
 
 1 Or to restate this in the clear words of Henry Sweet (Anglo-Saxon 
 Reader, 7th ed.) : 
 
 "Old English poetry consists of lines (long verses) divided into 
 verses (short verses, half verses) by a pause or caesura, the two verses 
 being bound together by alliteration. . . . There is also a tendency to 
 parallelism, or repetition of the same idea in different words. The last 
 half of one line is often connected with the first half of the next, in this 
 way: 
 
 " ' Unriht sefnde, op pset ende becwom 
 swylt aefter synnum. pset gesyne wearp 
 widcup werum, psette wrecend pa gyt 
 lifde sefter lapum.' " 
 
 [" 111 deeds performing, till his end overtook him, 
 Death for his sins. J T was seen very clearly, 
 Known unto earth-folk, that still an avenger 
 Outlived the loathed one." Hall's Beowulf.]
 
 ALLITERATION 25 
 
 The history of alliteration in English, and of its relation to end- 
 rhyme, belongs to all the later chapters of this book, and espe- 
 cially to that devoted to The Shaping of English Verse. Some 
 of its collateral appearances may be noted here, as throwing light 
 on English use. 
 
 Early German poetry was scantier than Anglo-Saxon or Scan- 
 dinavian. Though Otfried used end-rhyme as far back as the 
 ninth century, alliteration was in Germany, as elsewhere, the 
 Teutonic mark. German alliterative verse was somewhat more 
 irregular than Anglo-Saxon, and included more syllables in the 
 line. "We know, or may at least infer," says Kuno Francke, 
 "that the form of all of these [first German] poems once in ex- 
 istence was the same as that of the few preserved to us : namely, 
 the rhymeless, alliterative verse, consisting of two half-lines, 
 separated by a caesura, a metre whose grand, sonorous mo- 
 notony was wonderfully adapted to the representation of a life of 
 primitive heroism." 1 No existing poem, however, in length or 
 merit, shows this power in any such degree as the Anglo-Saxon 
 Beowulf. The German Wessabrun Prayer (about 800) "de- 
 scribes the created world," says Francke, "in a manner remark- 
 ably similar to the cosmogony of the Elder Edda." Its allitera- 
 tion is usually obvious, but the text is not sufficiently certain to 
 enable the student to draw exact conclusions as to the scheme as 
 it lay in the poet's mind. In the somewhat later Old High Ger- 
 man fragment of the Hildebrandslied, however, though in some 
 cases the singer was satisfied with one alliteration in the first half- 
 line and one in the second, in most instances he used two in the 
 first and one in the second, in the manner so familiar to readers 
 of our own Beowulf. Essentially the same is the alliterative 
 rhyme of the Old Saxon Heliand (ninth century). 2 
 
 It should be said, in passing, that German mono-rhyme is but 
 a later form of alliteration ; for example, in one of Walther von 
 der Wogelweide's Lieder (about 1200) the successive stanzas are 
 mono-rhymed aeiou after this pattern, reminding us of 
 the similiter desinens of late Latin: 
 
 1 History of German Literature. 
 
 2 For a sufficiently full discussion of this subject, with numerous 
 examples, see F. Kauffmann's Deutsche Metrik; Marburg, 1897. Some- 
 times the alliterative rhyme-scheme was abab, sometimes aaaa.
 
 26 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 "Diu werlt was gelf, rot unde bla, 
 griien, in dem walde und anderswa 
 kleine vogele sungen da. 
 nti schriet aber den nebelkra. 
 pfligt s'iht ande varwe? ja, 
 s'ist worden bleich und iibergra : 
 des rimpfet sich vil manic bra." 
 
 The following data concerning Icelandic alliteration I condense 
 from various parts of Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum 
 Boreale. 1 
 
 In every line of old Northern poetry the verse was divided into 
 halves by a line-pause at the end of a word. Each half was 
 made up of a fixed number of measures, that is, word or number 
 of words, of which the first syllable was forcibly pronounced. 
 The measure never began or ended in the middle of a word. In 
 each line at least two stressed syllables must begin with similar 
 consonants or with vowels; the vowels were usually different, 
 and in later Northern poetry always so. There was no strict num- 
 ber of syllables in the half-lines. In the beginning, poetry was 
 merely excited or emphatic prose, with repetitions and catch- 
 words. 2 
 
 Alliteration, in the Scandinavian tongues, followed natural 
 laws ; serving something the same purpose as quantity in Greek. 
 At first there was probably no accompaniment by musical instru- 
 ments, and the verse had to carry itself; in the old epic metre 
 alliteration was the only bond. In a rougher way, the old Teu- 
 tonic laws, dicta, etc., though not strictly in verse, had line-pause, 
 stress, and alliteration, the last of which was designed to aid the 
 memory. In poetic alliteration words were often forced beyond 
 agreeableness or intelligibility, for the sake of the beginning- 
 rhyme. Descriptive synonyms were used (as in Anglo-Saxon) ; 
 thus the hero was the spear-hurler, the wolf-feeder, the steersman, 
 the ring-giver. 
 
 "It is impossible to satisfy the popular ear in Iceland without 
 alliteration, even to this day. The editor [Gudbrand Vigfusson] 
 
 1 Corpus Poeticum Boreale : the Poetry of the Old Northern Tongues, 
 from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. Edited, etc., by 
 Gudbrand Vigfusson and F. York Powell. 2 vols., Oxford, 1883. 
 
 a See the preceding chapter on The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty.
 
 ALLITERATION 27 
 
 remembers many instances of this from his childhood. In Ice- 
 landic of the present day alliteration of stressed words is a sine 
 qua non in all verse, rhymed or unrhymed." 
 
 In the following lines, selected as representative, the allitera- 
 tive effect is sufficiently apparent even to those unacquainted 
 with the language. It is from the Raven-Song of the poet Horn- 
 klofi (about 985) : 
 
 5"Hvat es ydr, hrafnar? Hva'San eroS e"r komnir 
 meS dreyrgo nefi at digi aondverSom? 
 hold lo'Sir ySr f klom ; hrses pefr gengr ySr or munni ; 
 nser hykk y5r f n6tt bioggo >ar[s] 6r vissoft nai liggja.' 
 
 '"How is it with you, ye ravens? Whence are ye come with gory 
 beak at the dawning of the day ? There is flesh cleaving to your talons, 
 and a scent of carrion comes from your mouth. Ye lodged last night, 
 I ween, near where ye knew the corses were lying.'" (Vigfusson's 
 translation.) l 
 
 The earliest manuscript of any Icelandic poem is of the thir- 
 teenth century; none is thought to have been composed earlier 
 than the ninth. 
 
 Icelandic alliteration is more melodious, on the whole, than 
 Anglo-Saxon. The songs generally consist of eight verses or 
 lines, four so united that each half of the strophe has an independ- 
 ent thought. Each half is again divided into two parts, which 
 form a fourth part of the whole strophe, and contain two lines 
 belonging together and united by alliteration. There are (usu- 
 ally) two alliterations in the first line and one at the beginning of 
 the second line. The third and last letter is called the head- 
 stave, as ruling over the two others, called supporters. There 
 are two feet or accents in each of the eight verses. Sometimes 
 there is a strophe of six lines, the third and sixth alliterating inde- 
 pendently, and the first, second, fourth, and fifth together. In 
 the use of the scalds there was greater variety, and longer verses. 
 The most common metre had three feet in each of eight lines. 
 
 John Earle thinks that alliteration might have been devel- 
 oped in England as in Iceland, had it been isolated from Roman- 
 esque literature. It retired into the background after England 
 came under French influence. It was, again, for a short 
 
 1 Corpus Poeticum Boreale, I, 256.
 
 28 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 time, a nearly equal rival of the iambic rhymed couplet in the 
 fourteenth century, but thenceforward declined, and had become 
 a "whimsical curiosity" in Shakespeare's time. "I will some- 
 thing affect the letter, for it argues facility," says Holofernes (in 
 Love's Labor 's Lost, IV, 2). 
 
 "The various kinds of by-play in poetry, such as alliteration, 
 rhyme, and assonance, seem all to harmonize with the accentua- 
 tion. Alliteration belongs naturally to a language which tends to 
 throw its accent as far back as possible toward the beginning of a 
 word ; rhyme and assonance suit those which lean towards a ter- 
 minal accentuation. Hence alliteration is the domestic artifice of 
 Teutonic poetry, as rhyme and assonance are of the Roman- 
 esque. Rhyme has indeed won its way, as in nearly all our other 
 dialects; still it is in Romance literature that we must observe 
 it, if we would see it in the full swing which it enjoys only in its 
 native element." 
 
 The north and west of England, as we shall see in the chapter 
 on The Shaping of English Verse, used alliteration, more or less, 
 to the end of the fifteenth century; indeed, as has been said, it 
 has never been lost to the English ear. Modern European litera- 
 tures generally gave up alliterative beginning-rhyme in connection 
 with neo-Latin influences. Abused, it became a mere tiresome 
 trick, as in Hugobald the Monk's alleged "large poem to the 
 honor of Carolus Calvus," mentioned by Puttenham, in which 
 every word began with c, thus : "Carmina clarisonae Calvis can- 
 tate camenae," etc. Such stuff is on the level of "An Austrian 
 army, awfully arrayed," of our childhood. By Puttenham's 
 time this business had come to seem "but a fantastical devise, 
 and to no purpose at all more than to make them harmonical to 
 the rude ears of those barbarous ages." 
 
 Thus alliteration in English verse, since the days of Surrey, 
 has remained a matter of embellishment rather than of necessity. 
 It has chiefly appeared in connection with end-rhyme, and not 
 as a substitute for it. Without alliteration, English poetry would 
 have lost much even in blank verse ; and such new tunes as have 
 been played upon the old lyre by Poe and Swinburne have often 
 been alliterative. Poe thought that alliteration could be "made 
 to infringe on the province of rhyme by the introduction of general
 
 ALLITERATION 29 
 
 similarities of sound between whole feet occurring in the body of a 
 line." He also perceived that the refrain was a kind of rhyme, al- 
 literative or other. 
 
 To some ears, however, alliteration is an intrusive discordance. 
 "As soon," says Tom Hood the younger (in The Rhymester), "as 
 alliteration attracts the reader's attention as a tour de force it is 
 a blot . . . machinery instead of matter." The same rhymer 
 thinks that the chief drawback of English as a poetical language 
 is the preponderance of consonants ; while, on the contrary, an- 
 other critic assures us that likeness of neighboring consonant 
 sounds, if not too frequent, is an element of beauty. Who shall 
 decide ? 
 
 Meanwhile, the general public holds to alliteration in many a 
 pun or proverb, book-title, or newspaper head-line. One hears 
 daily such expressions as "neither chick nor child"; "without 
 fear or favor"; "to have and to hold"; "house and home"; 
 "kith and kin" ; "neither rhyme nor reason" ; "safe and sound" ; 
 "time and tide"; "watch and ward"; "wind and weather"; 
 "wit and wisdom," etc. There is also a survival of pleasure, a 
 thousand years after the Anglo-Saxon time, in any mere vowel 
 alliteration, such as "end and aim"; "ever and aye," etc. 
 
 "How dear to humanity," says John Earle, "is the very jingle 
 of his speech ; and how he loves, even in his riper age, to keep up 
 a phantom of that harmony which in his infancy blended sound 
 and sense in one indistinguishable chime!"
 
 IV 
 
 ASSONANCE 
 
 ASSONANCE, to the English ear, is but half-rhyme, and is likely 
 to be either imperceptible or intrusive. Notwithstanding its 
 effective use by a few of our poets, it plays so small a part in 
 English verse that any discussion of it must be brief. 
 
 To some extent assonance is common to all languages, and is 
 bound to appear accidentally. When it is used consciously, as a 
 means of increasing the hearer's poetic pleasure, it becomes a 
 rhyme-art. 
 
 "Vowel-rhyme" is a better synonym for assonance than 
 "middle-rhyme," for the latter term is sometimes applied to "in- 
 ternal rhyme," i. e., a syllabic group in the middle of a line 
 rhyming with one at the end. Assonance was common to all 
 early Romance tongues, and, in particular, is a distinguishing 
 mark of Spanish. To some extent it took the place, in Romance 
 poetry, of alliteration in Teutonic. In general, it differed from 
 Teutonic vowel-correspondence in that corresponding rhyming 
 vowels were usually both preceded and followed by consonants, 
 as in the English height: shine. 
 
 An interesting specimen of twelfth century Latin assonance is 
 cited by D. Marcelino Mene'ndez y Pelayo in Vol. XI of the An- 
 tologia de Poetas Liricos Castellanos (Madrid, 1903). It was, he 
 says, first noted in 1827 by the "ilustre humanista hispano-ameri- 
 cano D. Andres Bello," who found it in a Vida de la Condesa 
 Matilde, of monastic authorship : 
 
 "Auxilio Petri jam carmina plurima fed, 
 Paule, doce mentem nostram nunc plura referre, 
 Quae doceant poenas mentes tolerare serenas. 
 Pascere pastor oves Domini paschalis amore 
 Assidue curans comitissam maxime supra, 
 Saepe recordatam Christi memorabat ad aram."
 
 ASSONANCE 31 
 
 Ticknor, in his History of Spanish Literature, rejects attempts 
 to trace assonance to Latin or Anglo-Norman sources, but calls 
 it, like end-rhyme, an indigenous development. He thinks early 
 assonance, in other than Spanish tongues, due to accident (like 
 occasional end-rhyme in Virgil, etc.), or caprice, or unsuccessful 
 attempts at end-rhyme. The Spanish consonants was our Eng- 
 lish end-rhyme; the asonante something between our blank 
 verse and rhyme. Castilian abounds in vowels, and always 
 gives the same values to the same vowels. Thus even Spanish 
 prose is easily turned into an eight-syllabled assonant ballad meas- 
 ure, which is a natural and obvious verse-form in the language. 
 In the older ballads, as for the most part since, assonance ap- 
 peared in every other line. After the first, u and o, i and e, ui 
 and u, etc., were considered proper assonances. 
 
 Ticknor takes as characteristic the following from a ballad by 
 Gongora (which he accompanies by a translation from The 
 Retrospective Review not worth reprinting here; it reads like a 
 poor paraphrase from Hiawatha, and the assonance would not 
 be noticed, without explanation, by one English ear in a thou- 
 sand) : 
 
 "Aquel rayo de la guerra, 
 Alferez mayor del reyno, 
 Tan galan como valiente, 
 Y tan noble como fiero, 
 De los mozos embidiado 
 Y admirado de los viejos, 
 Y de los ninos y el vulgo 
 Sefialado con el de do, 
 El querido de las damas, 
 Par cortesano y discrete, 
 Hijo hasta alii regalado 
 De la fortuna y el tiempo," etc. 
 
 In general, Ticknor considers futile the attempt to transfer 
 Spanish assonance into English or German, for the Teutonic ear 
 does not apprehend it, like the Castilian. But he singles out for 
 special praise Dennis Florence McCarthy's assonant translations 
 of two plays and an auto of Calderon's: Love the Greatest En- 
 chantment, The Sorceries of Sin, and The Devotion of the Cross, 
 calling them the boldest attempts ever made, in English verse, 
 and remarkably successful: "Nothing, I think, in the English
 
 32 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 language will give us so true an impression of what is most char- 
 acteristic in the Spanish drama perhaps I ought to say, of 
 what is most characteristic of Spanish poetry generally." 
 
 To poet and hearer in Spanish, Provencal, or Old French, 
 assonance sounded sufficiently strong to bind together this or 
 that portion of the verse. Saintsbury calls it a fore-echo of rhyme ; 
 but the statement is chronologically inaccurate, as assonance was 
 insignificant in classical prosody, delicately attuned as it was to a 
 fine quantity lost to modern ears; while alliteration was in full 
 vigor before assonance made any large mark. Indeed, regular 
 Castilian assonance was preceded by sporadic cases of end- 
 rhyme. 
 
 To Mitford, the earliest important English writer on the mel- 
 ody of language, considered comparatively, Italian and Spanish 
 seemed "the fairest daughters of the Latin." But assonance is of 
 little importance in Dante and his followers ; so that of all modern 
 tongues Spanish alone retains it as the distinguishing mark of 
 poetry. In early abandonment in French the oldest French 
 metrical romances were assonanced is a sign of its lack of 
 catholic adaptability. But of its charm in Spanish many have 
 spoken. "Spanish lyric poetry," said the delighted Mitford, 
 "wants less assistance from that coarse ornament [end- rhyme] 
 than other modern European tongues." 
 
 In early English verse assonance was never important. In the 
 border ballads, as in nursery jingles and crude careless verse 
 to-day, it was either incidental or used as a substitute for more 
 finished rhyme by 'prentice hands. In ballads and morality-plays 
 the pronunciation was forced, for the sake of the rhyme, in almost 
 every way ; any similarity answered the purpose. Whether con- 
 temporary hearers of 
 
 "Merie sungen the muneches binnen Ely 
 Tha Cnut ching rew therby. 
 Roweth cnihtes neer the land 
 And here we thes muneches sang " 
 
 thought that the two last lines were assonance or end-rhyme 
 cannot now be told. 
 
 It is hard to tell why some assonances are agreeable, like "The 
 lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea," while "The breezy call of
 
 ASSONANCE 33 
 
 incense-breathing morn," in the same poem, is disagreeable to 
 many modern ears, grown increasingly fastidious in this matter. 
 Assonances in adjoining lines, as in Keats' Ode to Psyche, 
 evidently aroused no objection in the poet's mind, but do not 
 seem admirable to most critics to-day: 
 
 "And in the midst of this wide quietness 
 A rosy sanctuary will I dress 
 With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain, 
 
 With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, 
 With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign, 
 
 Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same." 
 
 A similar assonance may be found in the closing lines of Words- 
 worth's sonnet on the sonnet : 
 
 "a glow-worm lamp, 
 
 It cheered mild Spenser, called from fairy-land 
 To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp 
 
 Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand 
 The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew 
 Soul-animating strains alas, too few." 
 
 Whatever may be said for assonance, this line in William Wat- 
 son's Lachrymae Musarum can hardly be called felicitous: 
 
 ."Bright Keats to touch his raiment doth beseech;" 
 
 while in the following, from The Hidden Servants, by Francesca 
 Alexander, where identity is added to assonance, the fault be- 
 comes unendurable: 
 
 "Our Master said that a service done 
 To a child of his in a time of need 
 Is done to himself in very deed 
 And is with love by himself received ! 
 So do not think I have been deceived." 
 
 A good example, in English, of the intentional use of unaided 
 assonance is to be found in the lyric by George Eliot in The 
 Spanish Gypsy, where she experimented with the Spanish na- 
 tional form of rhyme. The song undoubtedly gives pleasure to 
 the English ear, which catches its melody before analyzing the 
 source of satisfaction: 
 
 3
 
 34 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 "Maiden, crowned with glossy blackness, 
 
 Lithe as panther, forest-roaming, 
 Long-armed naiad, when she dances, 
 On a stream of ether floating, 
 Bright, O bright Fedalma I 
 
 f Form all curves like softness drifted, 
 
 Wave-kissed marble roundly dimpling, 
 Far-off music slowly winged, 
 Gently rising, gently sinking, 
 Bright, O bright Fedalma I" 
 
 Assonance, more than any other kind of rhyme, is a matter of 
 taste and of ear. To one hearer at one time it may be a delicate 
 delight ; to another at another time or even at the same time 
 and in the same country it is either unpleasant or impercepti- 
 ble. That, however, it still has its uses in English verse is proved 
 by the last extract, and by the combination of assonance and 
 alliteration in the first stanza of Tennyson's The Lotos Eaters : 
 
 "'Courage,' he said, and pointed toward the land, 
 'This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.' 
 In the afternoon they came unto a land 
 In which it seemed always afternoon. 
 All round the coast the languid air did swoon, 
 Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. 
 Full-faced above the valley stood the moon ; 
 And like a downward smoke, the slender stream 
 Along the cliff to fall and rise did seem." 
 
 Although assonance in English, as a single rhyme-mark, would 
 be monotonous enough, it retained a place in other nineteenth- 
 century poems, from Keats to Morris, in which a peaceful idyllic 
 effect was desired. It is usually combined with liquids and soft 
 end-rhymes in such a way as to give new effects of tone-color. 
 The well-known rhyme- waywardness of Mrs. Browning was 
 largely due to her assonantal rhymes, expressing her belief that 
 too close a fettering of similar sounds is a loss to freedom of 
 thought and to richness of verbal effect. 1 Many rhymes ordinarily 
 called "poor" are simply good assonances. Here, as in other 
 verbal uses, it is the poet, and not the critic, who has the final 
 say-so. "Only free, he soars enraptured." 
 
 1 See page 185.
 
 END-RHYME 
 
 WHENCE came end-rhyme, the one great mark of modern verse, 
 a thing so prominent that it is used by Dante and Milton as synon- 
 ymous with poetry itself? 
 
 George Saintsbury, the latest, fullest, and most important his- 
 torian of English prosody, 1 dismisses the question promptly 
 enough: "Rhyme appeared, no one knows quite how, or why, 
 or whence, and at the same time." 
 
 Courthope, in his History of English Poetry, does not develop 
 the subject at length, but favorably considers the theory that 
 rhyme passed from Arabia into Europe. It is of course difficult 
 to disprove the conjecture that Arab poetry may have influ- 
 enced bards in Charlemagne's court, or Sicilians before Dante; 
 but definite proofs of connection between this or that Arabian 
 source and any European result are not discoverable. 2 It seems 
 more reasonable to conclude that end-rhyme appeared early, in 
 
 1 A History of English Prosody, from the Twelfth Century to the 
 Present Day. Vol. I: From the Origins to Spenser; Vol. II: From 
 Shakespeare to Crabbe. London: 1906-8. 
 
 2 Under the predecessors of Frederick II (1194-1250), king of Naples 
 and Sicily, Arabian poetry was still composed; "but in the earliest 
 Italian poetry it is impossible to find any traces of Arabian influence, 
 which could no longer maintain itself against the popularity of the 
 Provengal love-poetry." History of Early Italian Literature to the 
 Death of Dante; translated from the German of Adolf Gaspary by Her- 
 man Oelsner (London, 1901), 58. 
 
 "Su lo scorcio del secolo duodecimo, vale a dire quando i Saraceni 
 perseguitati sgombraron Palermo, cercando ricovero in Val di Mazara, 
 la voce triste ed ardente della poesia araba di Sicilia improwisamente 
 s'estinse." G. A. Cesareo : La Poesia SicUiana sotto gli Svevi (Catania, 
 1894), 7.
 
 36 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 Arabia, in accordance with natural laws of language and poetry, 
 manifesting themselves independently in different countries. 1 
 
 George Ticknor, whose History of Spanish Literature enjoys 
 the unusual honor of being authoritative sixty years after its 
 appearance, dismisses the Arabian theory as undeserving of 
 serious consideration, and says that both rhyme and romantic 
 fiction "are now generally admitted to have been, as it were, 
 spontaneous products of the human mind, which different nations 
 at different periods have invented separately for themselves." 
 Again, he quotes approvingly a remark by August Fuchs that 
 "rhyme lies so deep in human nature and in human language that 
 it is as little worth while to discuss the origin of rhyme as the 
 origin of singing or dancing"; and adds: "All nations have 
 shown a tendency to it, in alliteration or otherwise" a conclu- 
 sion which summarizes the argument of the present volume. 
 
 The influence of Latin, after it developed end-rhyme, was un- 
 questionably so great that many scholars seek no farther. Their 
 conclusion may be summarized in the curt statement of C. F. 
 Abdy- Williams : "Christianity introduced two new things into 
 its music: the rhyme, and the singing of the prose words of 
 Scripture. The rhyme was invented in the early days, and was 
 used to attract the vulgar; and the setting of prose words to 
 music was a novelty unknown to the ancient Greeks, who only 
 sang poetry. 2 
 
 1 "We have in it the strange phenomenon of a literature as perfectly 
 popular in origin and use as our ballads, which yet obeys rigid norms of 
 metre, rhyme, and form, and has crystallized into narrow convention- 
 alities of structure. . . . The poetry of Arabia of to-day is the same in 
 all essentials as the poetry of Arabia before Muhammad. From the 
 sixth to the twentieth century the stream has flowed unchanging." - 
 D. B. Macdonald : The Nation, 79 : 518-19. 
 
 Professor Macdonald adds these valuable points in a private letter, 
 from which I am permitted to quote : 
 
 "I know of no direct evidence connecting European rhyming with 
 that in Arabic. While there was evidently considerable interchange of 
 stories and especially of Marchen between Islam and Christendom, 
 the types of poetry seem to have been too essentially different for the 
 one to have affected the other. . . . Everything suggests that it 
 [Arabian rhyme] runs back to the most primitive times. There is much 
 very chaotic rhyme mostly vowel only in the Hebrew Old Testa- 
 ment, and rhymed prose seems to have been the original form of poetry 
 in Arabic." 
 
 2 The Story of Notation. London, 1903.
 
 END-RHYME 37 
 
 Guest is inclined to trace end-rhyme through Gothic and Latin 
 back to Celtic Welsh, say of the sixth century; but Archbishop 
 Trench says that it was autochthonic, at first with poor as- 
 sonances instead of full consonances ; the happy chances at length 
 becoming an attainment. Ampere concludes that, beginning 
 with St. Ambrose, it triumphed in the eleventh century; "Ce qui 
 n'etait d'abord qu'une fantaisie de 1'oreille a fini par devenir un 
 besoin impe'rieux et par transformer en loi. II n'est done pas 
 ne"cessaire de chercher d'autre origine a la rime; elle est ne'e du 
 sein de la poe"sie latine de"ge"nere"e." 
 
 The Elizabethan critics of whom we shall see more in a 
 later chapter copied each other in saying that the "Goths and 
 Huns" brought in end-rhyme; that is, Northerners given to 
 alliteration spread end-rhyme before they had adopted it them- 
 selves. Omne ignotum pro magnifico. 
 
 Guess-work concerning the origin of end-rhyme might easily 
 be made to fill the remainder of this volume. A single illustra- 
 tion will show the extent to which theorizing has gone. On the 
 basis of a few doubtful and a few unquestionable rhymes in Latin 
 verse of presumably Irish authorship, George Sigerson makes 
 the vast claim * that St. Sedulius (Siadal), who is assigned to the 
 middle of the fifth century, introduced from the Irish the ter- 
 minal sound-echo or rhyme into Latin verse ; and that the influ- 
 ence of his Carmen Paschale "must have been immense. The 
 systematic adoption by its author of rhyme, assonant and con- 
 sonant, and of alliteration, must have moulded the forms of 
 subsequent literary production in all the nascent languages of 
 Europe, north and south, as it taught them the art of alliteration, 
 of assonant and of consonant rhymes." The whole field of liter- 
 ary criticism can hardly show so sweeping an assumption on so 
 slight a basis. Sedulius was not even a significant pioneer. 
 
 More sensible, because purely local, is Sigerson's statement, in 
 the same article, that "In the Dan direach, or direct metre, of 
 Old Irish, the lines had to have a certain number of syllables ; in 
 each quatrain of two couplets the sense might be complete in the 
 couplet, but must be in the quatrain; two words in each line 
 must begin with a vowel or the same consonant ; the termination 
 1 The Contemporary Review, 62: 510.
 
 38 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 required the final word of each couplet to be one syllable longer 
 than the final word in the preceding line ; and the final word of 
 one line chimes with a central word in the next." 
 
 What solid ground, if any, can be found in these shifting sands ? 
 I believe that rhyme, broadly defined as similarity of stressed 
 sounds in significant places in verse, and followed as a natural 
 evolution of man's desire for rhythmical expression, was certain 
 to appear, and did appear, independently in many places, before 
 and after the time when classical quantity was recognizable. 
 
 Was rhyme a proof of a finer ear, or of the need of emphasizing 
 thought by ruder means than those employed by the classical 
 poets? It is certain that we know something about classical 
 quantity, and it is equally certain that we do not know exactly 
 how Homer or Horace sounded to a Greek or Latin hearer. 
 Mitford, declaring that the harmony of quantity had vanished 
 from all modern languages and that the harmony of quality had 
 been substituted in most of them, said that it was absurd to pre- 
 tend to a perfect pronunciation of a language no longer to be 
 known but from books. Saintsbury doubts whether we really 
 know anything about the pronunciation of Chaucer. Yet both 
 quantity and rhyme are surely matters of pronunciation, and if 
 they mean nothing, or are but miscellanies of uncertainties, we 
 may as well throw all prosodies into the fire. What are the facts 
 in the case? 
 
 As regards modern rhyme, the conclusion of the best scholar- 
 ship is as follows : 
 
 There are, and always have been, three kinds of rhyme : allit- 
 eration, where initial consonant or vowel sounds are similar; 
 assonance, where stressed included vowels are similar ; and end- 
 rhyme, where the stress falls on final vowels, followed, if by any, 
 by identical consonants. All have the same function, that of an 
 agreeable emphasis upon important ideas, in accordance with a 
 desire that is innate and universal, and independent of con- 
 ditions of time or place. 
 
 These three kinds of rhyme, then, are inherent in any language, 
 and necessarily bound to appear, separately or in combination. 
 In the ancient languages little was made of any one of them, 
 though alliteration appeared in the oldest Latin verses ; while,
 
 END-RHYME 39 
 
 as James Russell Lowell says, "Homer, like Dante and Shake- 
 speare, like all who really command language, seems fond of 
 playing with assonances." 
 
 The early Teutonic tongues used alliteration; end-rhyme 
 came to them later, partly under mediaeval Latin influences, 
 partly because of its natural pleasureableness. The general order 
 of development of end-rhyme was Latin > Proven9al > French, 
 though German introduced it in the ninth century and Icelandic 
 in the tenth. In Spanish, assonance was the indigenous and 
 satisfactory rhyme-art. 
 
 Alliteration, assonance, and end-rhyme enjoyably emphasize 
 stressed ideas ; the two latter are better able to bind verses into 
 idea-groups or stanzas. 
 
 The more highly inflected a language, the more readily it de- 
 velops end-rhyme, and vice versa. The great exception afforded 
 by Greek and Latin of the classical period is explained by their 
 delicate, and now imperfectly understood, sense of quantity. 
 As a matter of fact, Italian, which is really a new Latin, is almost 
 pre-eminent, among modern languages, in the fluency of its 
 rhymes, while mediaeval Latin itself as examples will presently 
 show is perhaps the most facile of all tongues, ancient or 
 modern, in the effective beauty of its late-developed end-rhymes. 
 
 Proven9al assonance became end-rhyme by the easiest of steps ; 
 while in the fullest of mediaeval literatures (1100-1400), the 
 English, we can see how alliteration, with the development of 
 study of continental languages, and with the increase of the 
 vocabulary, yielded little by little to end-rhyme. The strength 
 inherent in alliteration approved it to crude early tongues ; end- 
 rhyme came with the time when verse was a matter not of ex- 
 clamation but of elaborated thought. Meanwhile the chants and 
 even the sermons of the church, with their sing-song and paral- 
 lelism, were a powerful aid in the development of the new 
 word-music. 
 
 In this new music the time-beater was also an effective thought- 
 transmitter. Poe stated the case thus: "Lines being once in- 
 troduced, the necessity of distinctly defining these lines to the ear 
 (as yet written verse does not exist) would lead to a scrutiny of 
 their capabilities at their terminations; and now would spring
 
 40 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 up the idea of equality in sound between the final syllables in 
 other words, of rhyme." 
 
 Still earlier, Mitford's investigations had led him to the conclu- 
 sions that end-rhyme "is so important that, though without anal- 
 ogy in music, wholly unrelated to melody, and only in its office of 
 time-beater connected with measure, scarcely can any verse in 
 our language stand without it, excepting the epic, which indeed 
 often dispenses with it most advantageously." Again: "Rhyme 
 is an ornament not of a quiet and unobtrusive character, but, on 
 the contrary, so forcing itself upon the ear's notice, generally, 
 indeed, under good management, agreeably that, with some 
 of very gross and untutored perception, it stands instead, almost, 
 of all other grace." 
 
 It is difficult to understand how a writer on the "harmony of 
 language" could say that rhyme was "without analogy in music, 
 wholly unrelated to melody, and only in its office of time-beater 
 connected with measure." In fact, the development of end- 
 rhyme in modern times was a direct result of the development of 
 music, the ear demanding more strikingly agreeable linguistic 
 effects. But to Mitford, in whom survived some of the Eliza- 
 bethan contempt for rhyme, it was only a sort of higher drum- 
 beat. Just what he got out of Shakespeare's sonnets or Spen- 
 ser's Faerie Queene I do not know. Still, however, he perceived 
 that the line-division by rhyme was related to a larger thing: 
 "Among rhymes a verse is not the highest denomination of poet- 
 ical measure; it is but a part of a larger measure, to which 
 rhyme in a great degree gives form and proportion, and alone 
 gives boundary"; and he affably admitted that rhyme was "the 
 common crutch and stilt of poetry in all the languages of modern 
 Europe." He evidently believed that without rhyme, save in the 
 epic, there could be no modern verse. Others have agreed with 
 him in the view that unrhymed verse in French "can be verse 
 only in name and written form, having nothing essential to dis- 
 tinguish it from the merest prose." 
 
 The development of end-rhyme in Latin forms a doubly in- 
 teresting theme; for though late in appearing it was early in its 
 influence upon the entire body of mediaeval European poetry. 
 
 When classical quantity ruled, end-rhyme was not needed, or
 
 END-RHYME 41 
 
 was possibly cacophonous, like excessive alliteration to-day. 
 Non-rhyming Latin poets apparently had to avoid frequent rhyme 
 because of the natural tendency of inflectional terminations to run 
 into rhyme. Trench says that end-rhyme was so inherent in 
 Latin as continually to reappear, "being no doubt with difficulty 
 avoided by those writers whose stricter sense of beauty taught 
 them not to catch at ornaments which were not properly theirs." 
 Yet even in classical Latin poetry rhyme was probably regarded 
 as a permissible occasional ornament, or mnemonic device, or 
 pleasantry ; Latin charms jingle ; and Plautus often, and Virgil 
 sometimes, rhymes. Trench, in the introduction to his Sacred 
 Latin Poetry, cites from Ennius' Andromache : 
 
 "Haec omnia vidi inflammari, 
 Priamo vi vitam evitari, 
 Jovis aram sanguine turpari ; " 
 
 from Ovid : l 
 
 "Quern mare carpentem substrictaque crura gerentem;" 
 ."Quot coelum stellas, tot habet tua Roma puellas;" 
 
 (For many years a stock illustration of rhyme in classical 
 
 Latin.) 
 
 from Martial : 
 
 ."Sic leve flavorum valeat genus Usipiorum;" 
 
 from Claudian: 
 
 ."Flora cruentanun praetenditur umbra jubarum;" 
 
 from Horace: 
 
 "Multa recedentes adimunt. Ne forte seniles 
 Mandentur juveni partes, pueroque viriles;" 
 
 and from Virgil : 
 
 "Limus ut hie durescit, et haec ut cera liquescit;" 
 "Nee non Tarquinium ejectum Porsena jubebat 
 Accipere, ingentique urbem obsidione premebat." 
 
 1 "Toutefois si Guide en a us6, je croy que c'est par rencontre, plus 
 tost que par loy ou subiection d'aucun genre de vers, ou reigle versifica- 
 toire." CLAUDE FAUCHET: Recvil de VOrigine de la Langve et Poesie 
 Francoise, Ryme et Romans. Paris, 1581.
 
 42 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 He also refers to Mneid, I, 319, 320; III, 656, 657; IV, 256, 257; 
 V, 383, 386; VIII, 620, 621. 
 
 To these we may add the second line of Horace's famous 
 
 f'Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, 
 Lectorem delectando pariterque monendo," 
 
 in which the assonantal-rhyme delectando : monendo must have 
 been intentional, whatever we may think about lectorem : delec- 
 tando. 
 
 In only one of the lines having internal rhyme "Limus ut 
 hie durescit, et haec ut cera liquescit" do quantity-stress and 
 rhyme-stress coincide. How, for instance, shall we preserve both 
 of them in reading "Flora cruentarum praetenditur umbra ju- 
 barum," or the jocose later line "Est avis in dextra melior quam 
 quattuor extra" ? 
 
 Dingeldein, in his excellent and comprehensive monograph on 
 the subject, 1 gives many examples of sporadic end-rhyme in 
 Greek and Latin poets. So does Norden, who also notes the 
 early appearance of that parallelism considered in a previous 
 chapter, and, like the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century 
 French and English critics of poetry, makes something of the 
 Greek homoioteleuton as a kind of early end-rhyme, even in prose. 2 
 
 Poe called "an effective species of ancient rhyming" such 
 lines as 
 
 "Parturiunt montes et nascitur ridicuZws mus." 
 "Litoreis ingens inventa sub iliciZws sus." 
 
 He also thought that the terminal system must have caused the 
 Latins to give a greater emphasis than ours to final syllables; 
 and that Horace did not scan his own verse as the classical proso- 
 dists claim. His melodious "true scansion" of Horace's Integer 
 vitae may be found in his well-known paper on "The Rationale 
 of Verse." 
 
 1 Otto Dingeldein : Der Reim bei den Griechen und Romern. Leipzig, 
 1892. 
 
 9 Thus Cicero: "Volvendi sunt libri Catonis: intelliges nihil illius 
 lineamentis, nisi eorum pigmentorum, quae inventa nondum erant, 
 florem et colorem defuisse"; Pliny the Younger: "Illam veram et 
 meram Graeciam"; and Plautus: "Amor et melle et felle est 
 fecundissimus."
 
 END-RHYME 43 
 
 Trench, who was the pioneer in the investigation of the history 
 of Latin mediaeval religious poetry, says that Latin verse gradu- 
 ally substituted accent for quantity, and then employed rhyme, 
 within the verse and at its end, as a means of marking rhythm, 
 and as a resource for producing melody. There was no abso- 
 lutely necessary connection between accent and rhyme ; we have 
 in our own blank verse accent without rhyme, while the monkish 
 poets wrote rhymed hexameters, pentameters, and Sapphics, 
 i. e., in quantity and feet, without accent. 
 
 Meanwhile the Greek homoioteleuton, the Latin similiter de- 
 sinens, the "finissant de mesme" of Fauchet "quelque fois 
 plaisante et receue en prose oration," more and more affected all 
 kinds of composition, especially the religious prose of the early 
 church, e. g., Augustine's sermons, from which Trench cites: 
 lingua clamat, cor amat; in Novo [Testamento] patent, quae in 
 Vetere latent; praecedat spes, ut sequatur res; quis est enim fides, 
 nisi credere quod non vides; hoc agamus bene, ut illud habeamus 
 plene ; ibi [in coelis] nullus oritur, quia nullus moritur. 
 
 In favor of the theory that rhyme is a thing of indigenous 
 origin, Trench speaks in no doubtful voice. Man craves, and 
 deeply delights in, the rhythmic and periodic, for instance, in 
 the sound of waves on the beach or of men on the march. The 
 Latin language has one word for the solemn and the recurring. 
 "Rhyme can as little be considered the exclusive discovery of any 
 one people as of any single age. It is rather, like poetry, like 
 music, like dramatic representation, the natural result of a deep 
 craving of the human mind ; as it is the well-nigh inevitable ad- 
 junct of a poetry not quantitative, being almost certain to make 
 a home for itself therein. In this universality of rhyme . . . 
 peculiar neither to the rudeness of our early and barbarous age, 
 nor to the over-refined ingenuity of a late and artificial one, but 
 running through whole literatures from their beginning to their 
 end, we find its best defence. It lies deep in our human nature, 
 and satisfies an universal need. . . " We encounter it every- 
 where : in the Welsh and the Irish of the west ; the Sanskrit, the 
 Arabic, the Persian, and the Chinese of the east ; and the Gothic 
 and the Scandinavian of the north. It is "no formal discovery," 
 "but in all, the well-nigh instinctive result of that craving after
 
 44 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 periodic recurrence, proportion, limitation, of that sense out 
 of which all rhythm and metre springs." 
 
 Latin sacred poetry was satisfying because it combined a 
 rhythm-mark with a new melody, the one promoting and sustain- 
 ing the other. Quantity, in the fading away of classical learning, 
 became less and less known, while every one recognized accent. 
 Indeed, "quantity itself was not indigenous to the Latin soil, 
 and therefore had struck no deep root" ; so the later poets aban- 
 doned the ancient metres, to "expatiate in the free region of 
 accented verse." Then came Christian chanting, with real, not 
 fictitious and inconsistent, values for the ear. Latin rhyme, thus 
 naturally appearing after a period of suppression, belongs to the 
 third and fourth Christian centuries, though not largely employed 
 before the eighth or ninth. Thenceforward it was used in every 
 sort of way : within the line, at the end, in pentameters, in hexam- 
 eters, in Sapphics, etc. At first it was "very far from that elab- 
 orate and perfect instrument which it afterwards became." As- 
 sonance was enough, to begin with ; then rhymes were used only 
 when convenient; sometimes they fell on unstressed syllables, 
 and sometimes they had only the same ending-letter. But from 
 "rude, timid, and uncertain beginnings, rhyme came in the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries to display all its latent capa- 
 bilities and attain its final glory, satiating the ear with a richness 
 of melody scarcely anywhere to be surpassed." 
 
 The early Latin hymns ranged all the way from loose similari- 
 ties of sound, anywhere in the lines, to assonances at the end, 
 visible identities of unaccented last syllables, and absolute end- 
 rhymes. Sometimes the same word ended alternate stanzas, as 
 we would now call them. Repetitions seem to have answered 
 every purpose of rhymes ; and end-rhymes themselves, when in- 
 troduced, occur sporadically. By such means, perhaps, accentual 
 metre, addressed to the comparatively illiterate, became the verse 
 of the church, which, says Fauchet, "ayans ceux qui prenoient 
 plaisir a la versification, employ^ tout leur esprit a composer des 
 vers de cadence unisone vulgairement nominee ryme." 
 
 In the twelve hymns attributed to Ambrosius, bishop of Milan 
 (333 ?-397), the lines are frequently, but not regularly, rhymed. 
 Ambrose's authorship is clearly established in but four hymns:
 
 END-RHYME 45 
 
 "Deus creator omnium"; "Aeterne rerum conditor"; "Veni 
 redemptor gentium"; "lam surgit hora tertia." He introduced 
 the practice of singing choral hymns antiphonally arranged 
 (cantus Ambrosianus) ; and wisely selected the metre least 
 markedly metrical and most nearly rhythmical the iambic 
 dimeter in a movement toward emancipation from classical 
 pagan forms and restraints. It was really, says Trench, a return 
 to the freedom of early Latin un-Grecised verse, in which place- 
 marked stresses were more important than accurate feet. 
 
 Ampere says that Ambrose's hymns show "une tendance a la 
 rime se produire evidemment dans ces strophes analogues a 
 celles d'Horace. Ce qui sera le fondement de la prosodie des 
 temps modernes, la rime, n'est pas encore une loi de la versifica- 
 tion, et deja un besoin mysterieux de 1'oreille 1'introduit dans les 
 vers pour ainsi dire a 1'insu d'oreille elle me'me." 1 
 
 These points will be made clear by quoting, entire, the hymn 
 which is perhaps the best of the four undoubtedly written by 
 Ambrose : 
 
 "DE ADVENTU DOMINI 
 
 "Veni, Redemptor gentium, 
 Ostende partum Virginis; 
 Miretur omne saeculum : 
 Talis decet partus Deum. 
 
 "Non ex virile semine, 
 Sed mystico spiramine, 
 Verbum Dei factum est caro, 
 Fructusque ventris floruit. 
 
 "Alvus tumescit Virginis, 
 Claustrum pudoris permanet, 
 Vexilla virtutum micant, 
 Versatur in templo Deus. 
 
 "Procedit e thalamo suo, 
 Pudoris aula regia, 
 Geminae Gigas substantiae,' 
 Alacris ut currat viam. 
 
 "Egressus ejus a Patre, 
 Regressus ejus ad Patrem, 
 Excursus usque ad inferos, 
 Recursus ad sedem Dei. 
 
 1 Histoire Litteraire de la France, I, 411.
 
 46 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 "Aequalis aeterno Patri, 
 Carnis tropaeo cingere, 
 Infirma nostri corporis 
 Virtute firmans perpeti. 
 
 "Praesepe jam fulget tuum, 
 Lumenque nox spirat novum, 
 Quod nulla nox interpolet, 
 Fideque jugi luceat." 
 
 This hymn is on the whole a fair representative of the New- 
 Latin verse of its time. In its thought-rhymes, sound-rhymes 
 irregularly put in this or that place, identities, assonances, etc., 
 it is constructively something like modern juvenile jingles, in 
 which the immature mind does not care for nice accuracies. 
 
 Sedulius, in the first half of the fifth century, followed similar 
 methods. In one of his hymns the same words form both the 
 first half of the hexameter and the second half of the pentameter 
 (epanaleptic construction), the result, according to Teuffel and 
 Schwabe (History of Roman Literature), "being intolerably 
 monotonous." Another hymn is a so-called abecedarius. The 
 suppression of final m, s, t, then customary, says the same au- 
 thority, shows itself in rhymes such as inpie : times; personat : 
 pignora ; millia : victimam ; plurimus : febrium. 
 
 In the ringing "Vexilla regis proderunt" (written a little later) 
 are rhymes throughout, but without any fixed rule as to sequence 
 or alternation. 
 
 Trochaic tetrameter is well suited to the Latin language and 
 also to church hymns, as, for instance, in the anonymous "Ap- 
 parebit repentina dies magna Domini." In this metre assonance 
 easily took its place. 
 
 At this time we reach the earliest English writer on poetry, 
 Bede, who says nothing about rhyme, but gives the following 
 interesting passage : 
 
 "Videtur autem rhythmus metris esse consimilis, quae est 
 verborum modulata compositio non metrica ratione, sed numero 
 syllabarum ad judicium aurium examinata, ut sunt carmina 
 vulgarium poetarum. Et quidem rhythmus sine metro esse 
 potest, metrum vero sine rhythmo esse non potest: quod liqui- 
 dius ita definitur. Metrum est ratio com modulatione ; rhythmus
 
 END-RHYME 47 
 
 modulatio sine ratione : plerumque tamen casu quodam invenies 
 etiam rationem in rhythmo non artificis moderatione servatam, 
 sed sono et ipsa modulatione ducente, quern vulgares poetae 
 necesse est rustice, docti f aciant docte ; quomodo et ad instar iam- 
 bici metri pulcherrime f actus est hymnus ille praeclarus : 
 
 f'[O] Rex aeterne Domine, 
 Rerum creator omnium 
 Qui eras ante secula 
 Semper cum patre films. 
 
 Et alii Ambrosiani non pauci. Item ad formam metri trochaic! 
 canunt hymnum de die judicii per alphabetum: 
 
 Apparebit repentina 
 Dies magna Domini, 
 Fur obscura velut nocte 
 Improvises occupans." * 
 
 Fauchet's comment on this passage is as follows : 
 
 "Mais ne trouvant en ces Hymnes aucune cadence omiotel- 
 eute, ie pense que le Rhythmus des Poetes dont Bede parle, 
 n'estoit qu'un vers de certaine quantite de syllabes sans loy ne 
 pieds, tel que ces deux couples Latines cydessus transcriptes 
 ["Rex aeterne Domine" and "Apparebit repentina"], lequel 
 n'estant en usage entre les doctes, Terentianus Maurus n'a 
 daigne en faire mention en sa versificatoire." 
 
 In the work of Marbod (1035-1125), Bishop of Rennes, is a 
 perfect specimen of end-rhyme: 
 
 "ORATIO ADDOMINUM 
 
 ."Deus-homo, Rex coelorum, 
 Miserere miserorum ; 
 Ad peccandum proni sumus, 
 Et ad humum redit humus ; 
 Tu ruinam nostram fulci 
 Pietate tua dulci. 
 Quid est homo, proles Adae? 
 Germen necis dignum clade. 
 Quid est homo nisi vermis, 
 Res infirma, res inermis? 
 
 1 Bedae Venerabilis De Arte Metrica: 24: De Rhythmo.
 
 48 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 Ne digneris huic irasci, 
 Qui non potest mundus nasci : 
 Noli, Deus, hunc damnare, 
 Qui non potest non peccare; 
 ludicare non est aequum 
 Creaturam, non est tecum; . 
 Non est miser homo tanti, 
 Ut respondeat Tonanti. 
 Sicut umbra, sicut fumus, 
 Sicut f oenum facti sumus : 
 Miserere, Rex coelorum, 
 Miserere miserorum." 
 
 In this melodious little lyric the rhymes Adae : clade and 
 aequum : tecum give us an intimation of contemporary pronun- 
 ciation. 
 
 In the twelfth century came the once famous "leonine" 
 rhyme (the origin of the term is not known), hexameters in which 
 the syllables before the caesura rhymed with the final syllables. 
 For it Trench has no liking ; it is useless, he says, to try to super- 
 induce end-rhyme on the classical hexameter a remark which 
 may also be made of our few and mostly poor English hexameters. 
 
 At about the same time appeared the great 3000-line De Con- 
 temptu Mundi of Bernard of Clugny, or Bernard of Morlaix; 
 born in Morlaix, Brittany, of English parents ; monk of Clugny, 
 1122-1156. The author, like an early Jones Very, believed him- 
 self inspired in the composition of these tripping hexameters, so 
 prodigal in assonances and rhymes of every kind. Certainly the 
 world had a new music in 
 
 "Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus. 
 Ecce minaciter imminet arbiter ille supremus. 
 Prominet, imminet ut mala terminet, de qua coronet, 
 Recta remuneret, anxia libere, aethera donet, 
 Auferet aspera duraque pondera mentis onustae 
 Sobria muniat, improba puniat, utraque juste." 
 
 Assonance is frequent, as in 
 
 "Pax sine crimine, pax sine turbine, pax sine rixa, 
 Meta laboribus, atque tumultibus anchora fixa." 
 
 This easy careless jingle may become displeasing or ludicrous ; 
 loose facility of rhyming is a positive distress to some delicate 
 ears in such lines as
 
 END-RHYME 49 
 
 "Est tibi laurea, dos datur aurea, sponsa decora, 
 Primaque Principis oscula suscipis, inspicis ora," 
 
 where end-rhyme, assonance, and alliterative or other contrasts, 
 accented or unaccented, are thrown together almost at random. 
 Not until modern times did rhymed Latin verse recover from the 
 dangerously fascinating looseness of lines like 
 
 "Urbs Syon inclyta, turns et edita littore tuto, 
 Te peto, te colo, te flagro, te volo, canto, saluto." 
 
 If the metres of Virgil and Horace were to degenerate into this, 
 we can understand, in part, why classic Latin so sedulously 
 avoided rhyme, and why the sixteenth-century crusade against 
 rhyme in English enlisted so many classical scholars. 
 
 It is not worth while to descend to the examination of the 
 various tricks in rhyme which amused mediaeval verse-mongers, 
 in Latin as elsewhere. There were acrostics, mesostics, telestics ; 
 poems in the form of a cross, a serpent or other object ; poems 
 with a fixed number of letters, or without a specified letter; 
 those in which all lines ended in e, i, or o; those in which the first 
 line consisted of two-syllable words, the second of three-, the 
 third of four-, and the fourth of five-, while the fifth had each suc- 
 cessive word contain one syllable more than the preceding. Then 
 there would be eight parts of speech in eight successive words, 
 etc. Of course riddles, as difficult as Cynewulf's and as stupid 
 when unravelled, were manufactured; and a favorite experi- 
 ment was to compose lines reading both ways, like "Roma tibi 
 subito motibus ibit amor." Macaronic poetry a mixture of 
 languages in the same poem was another device. Its vagaries 
 cannot be followed here ; sometimes it was even trilingual, as in 
 
 "A celuy que pluys eime en movnde, 
 Of al!6 tho that I have found, 
 
 Carissima, 
 
 Saluz od treye 1 amour, 
 With grace and joye and alle honour, 
 
 Dvlcissima." l 
 
 All this wealth of Latin rhyme, especially as it was under 
 church control, was naturally influential upon every European 
 
 1 Early English Lyrics, Amorous, Divine, Moral, and Trivial. 'Chosen 
 by E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick. London, 1907. 
 
 4
 
 50 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 language, chiefly upon those derived from Latin. But this 
 influence was not inconsistent with the independent exercise of 
 the rhyme instinct. 
 
 Such, then, was the curious product which Mitford, without 
 very full knowledge, inaccurately described in his remark that 
 "the Middle Ages produced a kind of popular Latin verse, com- 
 posed in accentual cadence without any regard to metre, and for 
 ornament adopting rhyme." 
 
 Before dismissing this rich subject, it should be noted that the 
 power of producing Latin rhyme continues in England, from 
 poets to schoolboys. 1 The mediaeval Latin versifiers never turned 
 out anything more melodious than Swinburne's hymn assigned to 
 "Aloys of Blois," in Rosamond, beginning: 
 
 "Fautor meus, magne Deus, quis adversum tibi stabit? 
 Parum ridet qui te videt; sponsam sponsus accusabit; 
 Sicut herbam qui superbam flatu gentem dissipabit, 
 Flectit coelum quasi velum quo personam accusabit." 
 
 As Provenal was the oldest daughter of Latin, one naturally 
 encounters, here and there, remarks to the effect that the new 
 rhymed lyric of the mediaeval world of love, or loyalty, or 
 war had its birth in Provence. As a matter of fact, end-rhyme 
 appeared in German and Icelandic, and even in French, earlier 
 than in Proven9al. Distinction belongs to the songs of southern 
 France in which cadence is strongly marked by accent not 
 so much for priority in the use of rhyme as for prodigal ingenuity 
 in its employment, and for the development of the widely popular 
 lyric of compliment, courtship, the tournament, and the field 
 of battle. Songs on these themes were bound to appear as 
 soon as medievalism found its voice; and for geographical, 
 social, and linguistic reasons they first reached maturity in 
 Proven9al. 
 
 The first period of Provencal literature belongs to the tenth and 
 eleventh centuries. Originally Latin words and half-Latin words 
 were intermingled. End-rhyme was used at the start, in couplets 
 and in stanzas of four verses. A frequent arrangement was that 
 of eight-syllable verse in rhymed couplets; feminine rhymes, 
 
 1 See the Latin translations in Florilegium Latinum, edited by F. St. 
 J. Thackeray and E. D. Stone, 2 vols., London, 1899-1902.
 
 END-RHYME 51 
 
 when appearing, making nine syllables. Epic poems were written 
 in ten-syllable verses. There were some alexandrines, with a 
 caesura after the sixth syllable. Rhymed couplets of six-syllable 
 verses were employed in didactic poetry. The number of sylla- 
 bles in lyrical lines varied from one to twelve; corresponding 
 verses must have the same number. When, in a poem, verses 
 were united to form strophes or coblas, they were often 
 in three parts, the rhymes of the first two arranged in inverse 
 order. 
 
 The earlier rhymes lacked the flexibility and variety after- 
 wards acquired, but were, from the first, of remarkable 
 accuracy. 
 
 Assonance often appeared. Masculine rhymes were first used, 
 and the utterance of the verse was evidently slow. Any one 
 dialect is seldom represented in its purity ; the poets using words 
 from various sources as the exigencies of rhyme and metre sug- 
 gested. Their work has reached us through many intermediate 
 hands, of little linguistic exactitude, and there is no generally 
 accepted system of orthography. As regards the rhymes, fur- 
 thermore, some features of the pronunciation are obscure. 
 "When we meet in a late text," says Professor C. H. Grandgent, 
 "such a word as flor, we cannot be certain whether it is to be 
 sounded flor (close o) or ffor (sound of French ou)." 
 
 Proven9al poetry differed from other verse in that the same 
 rhymes usually ran through the entire poem. The poets delighted 
 in piling rhyme on rhyme, regardless of meaning. Thus the last 
 part of Le Tezaurs (Treasures) of the troubadour Peire de 
 Corbiac (thirteenth century) as given in Bartsch's Chrestom- 
 athie Provenqale presents no less than one hundred and eleven 
 lines ending in ens, the result being very monotonous. This curi- 
 ous piece consists of a rhymed list of authors and books known 
 to the writer. 
 
 The forty-five lines of a song by Alphonso II have only two 
 rhymes : atz and ors. 
 
 One of the devices of Proven9al rhyme is illustrated in Professor 
 Justin H. Smith's full account, with many translations, of The 
 Troubadours at Home (2 vols., New York, 1899), vol. I, pp. 102, 
 430. The stanza is Raimbaut d' Aurenga's :
 
 52 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 "E pois ieu li sui veraia 
 beis taing qu'el me sia verais 
 qu'anc de lui amar non m'estrais 
 m ai cor que m'en estraia; " 
 
 the quality of which Professor Smith preserves in his version : 
 
 "Since I love my love so deeply, 
 
 It must be that his love is deep, 
 
 For never will his love seem cheap 
 
 Never could I prize it cheaply." 
 
 "When rhyme first appeared in the modern languages," says 
 Ticknor, "an excess of it was the natural consequence of its 
 novelty." Luxuriant indeed were the rhyming powers of the 
 Provencal bards of southern France in their golden age: the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries. "Rhyme," says John Earle, 
 "has developed its luxuriance in its natural regions, that is to say 
 in the Romanesque dialects. The rhyming faculty in our [Eng- 
 lish] speech has suffered by deflexionalization, and this is why 
 the English language is found to be poor in rhymes when it is 
 severely tested, as in the essay of translating Dante in his own 
 terzd, rima." That English is vastly poorer than Italian in femi- 
 nine endings is certainly true ; but Earle seems here to forget, in 
 our own tongue, such a poem as Swinburne's Faustine. 
 
 Peire de Corbiac's best poem is a Hymn to the Virgin, in which 
 there is an originality not to be found in most Troubadour hymns, 
 which are mainly translations or paraphrases from the Latin. 
 The first stanza is as follows : 
 
 ."Domna, dels angels regina, 
 esperansa dels crezens, 
 segon quern aonda sens, 
 chan de vos lenga romana; 
 quar nulhs horn justz ni peccaire 
 de vos lauzar nos deu traire, 
 cum sos sens mielhs 1'aparelha, 
 romans o lenga latina." 
 
 The next six stanzas, all beginning with "Domna," retain these 
 rhymes, line for line ; the poem closes thus : 
 
 "Domna, esposa filh' e maire, 
 mandal filh e pregal paire, 
 ab 1'espos parP e conselha, 
 com merces nos si'aizina.
 
 END-RHYME 53 
 
 "Nos dormem, mas tuns revelha 
 ans quens sia mortz vezina." 1 
 
 French end-rhyme naturally resembling both Proven9al 
 and Italian began sweetly with the famous Cantilene de Sainte 
 Eulalie, the first extant specimen of French verse; a curiously 
 isolated thing, belonging near the end of the ninth century. In it 
 about half the rhymes are assonances and half are end-rhymes : 
 
 "Buona pulcella fut Eulalia, 
 bel auret corps, bellezour anima. 
 
 Voldrent la veintre li deo inimi, 
 voldrent la faire di'aule servir. 
 
 Elle non eskoltet les mals conseilliers, 
 qu'elle deo raneiet, chi maent sus en ciel, 
 
 Ne por or ned argent ne paramenz, 
 por manatee regiel ne preiement. 
 
 N'iule cose non la pouret omque pleier, 
 la polle sempre non amast lo deo menestier. 
 
 E poro fut presentede Maximilien, 
 chi rex eret a eels dis sovre pagiens. 
 
 El li enortet, dont lei nonque chielt. 
 qued elle fuiet lo nom christiien. 
 
 Ell' eut adunet lo suon element, 
 melz sostendreiet les empedementz, 
 
 Qu'elle perdesse sa virginitet : 
 poros furet morte a grand honestet. 
 
 Enz enl fou la getterent, com arde tost, 
 elle colpes non auret, poro nos coist. 
 
 A ezo nos voldret concreidre li rex pagiens; 
 ad une spede li roveret tolir lo chief. 
 
 La domnizelle celle kose non contredist, 
 volt lo seule lazsier, si ruovet Krist. 
 
 In figure de colomb volat a ciel, 
 tuit ovem, que por nos degnet preier, 
 
 Qued auuisset de nos Christus mercit 
 post la mort et a lui nos laist venir 
 
 Par souue dementia." 
 
 These end-rhymed or assonanced couplets led the way, after a 
 considerable interval, for a long series of early French lyrics and 
 romances, which were sung and recited far and wide, and which 
 both popularized and disseminated the new Romance measures. 
 By the twelfth century French poetry was as regularly and 
 smoothly end-rhymed as any early verse, in which, of course, 
 
 1 Karl Bartsh: Chrestomathie Provengale, 207. Elberfeld, 1868.
 
 54 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 irregularity depended on the incompetence of the versifier; for 
 balladists, in every land and time, are satisfied with assonance. 
 Mono-rhyme, as in Provenfal, for a time, was deemed a peculiar 
 merit. Then came the fanciful array so well befitting the 
 French language and so ill the English of the ballade, chant- 
 royal, triolet, rondeau, rondel, virelai, sextine, pantoum, villa- 
 nelle. From the days of Chaucer to those of Dobson, not all the 
 ingenuity of English verse-wrights has succeeded in giving any 
 one of them an indispensable place in the British anthology. Of 
 all that English can show in its attempts to popularize these 
 forms, two of the best are separated by five centuries : Chaucer's 
 Ballade to his Lady and Dobson's The Ladies of St. James's. 
 
 In the ballade, whatever the number of syllables in the line or 
 the number of lines in the stanza (from eight to twelve), the 
 stanzas must follow the same rhyme-order ; each stanza, and the 
 four-lined "envoi" at the close of the poem, ending with the same 
 line. The ababbcbc system of the eight-line stanza and the 
 ababbccdcd system of the ten-line stanza give something of the 
 effect of both Chaucer's ababbcc Troilus and Cressida stanza and 
 the Spenserian ababbcbcc stanza; while the refrain makes its 
 usual impression. 
 
 The chant-royal is a ballade with five eleven-lined stanzas, 
 and an envoy, the normal rhyme-scheme of the stanzas being 
 ababccddede, and of the envoy ddede only five rhymes for sixty 
 lines. Rhyme-royal is of course a different and much simpler 
 thing : a seven-line stanza, iambic pentameter, rhymed ababbcc. 
 
 The triolet has eight lines, with two rhymes, abaaabab; the 
 first, fourth, and seventh lines being identical, and the second and 
 eighth. It has all of the demerits and none of the merits of 
 iteration. 1 
 
 1 Edmund Gosse has called the notice of readers to the following 
 elementary triolet by Henri de Cray (thirteenth century) : 
 
 "Je Bois; 
 
 Si Je fT' 
 
 Ne Vois, 
 Je Bois." 
 
 Since then the little business of manufacture has been simple enough ; 
 for, according to the late W. E. Henley, 
 "Easy is the triolet 
 If you really learn to make it 1
 
 END-RHYME 55 
 
 The rondeau and rondel, of varying structure, always repeat 
 the opening words in the middle (roughly) and at the end. 
 
 The virelai, still freer in structure, rhymes the longer lines with 
 the longer and the shorter with the shorter, in the first stanza, 
 this arrangement being shifted in the next stanza, in which the 
 long-line rhymes are dropped (to reappear in the last stanza), 
 and the short-line rhymes transferred to the long. 
 
 In the sextine, or sestina, there are no rhymes, but the six end- 
 words of the first six-lined stanza are repeated in the five subse- 
 quent stanzas, in variant ways; while in a closing three-line 
 stanza half of the end-words are given in the middles of the lines 
 and half at the ends. The result of this clever intricacy, when 
 transferred to English, is hardly distinguishable from blank-verse. 
 
 The pantoum ingeniously combines all the faults of both the 
 virelai and the sextine by an interminable number of four-line 
 stanzas, in which the second and fourth lines of the first stanza, of 
 but four lines, become the first and third of the next, and so on, 
 the first and third lines of the first stanza reappearing as the 
 second and fourth of the closing one. 
 
 The villanelle, in five three-line stanzas and a four-line con- 
 clusion, has but two rhymes, arranged aba and abaa. Further- 
 more, lines 1, 6, 12, and 18 are identical, and lines 3, 9, 15, and 19. 
 This, like the great terza rima itself, nearly destroys any stanza- 
 effect on the English ear. 
 
 French poetry, in its essential principles of structure and ex- 
 pression, differs from classical verse on the one hand and modern 
 Teutonic on the other. With quantity (time, length, stress) it 
 has little to do. Alliteration is usually an accident, an ornament, 
 or an eccentricity. French scansion depends chiefly upon the 
 count of syllables in the line, and in a less degree upon accent, 
 which, of course, exists in French, but not in the English or Ger- 
 man sense. Such a line as Tennyson's "Break ! break ! break I" 
 would be impossible in French, nor could a French poet pride 
 
 Once a neat refrain you get 
 
 Easy is the triolet. 
 
 As you see I pay my debt 
 
 With another rhyme. Deuce take it. 
 
 Easy is the triolet 
 
 If you really leam to make it 1"
 
 56 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 himself, like Coleridge, upon having, in a poem with four stresses 
 in each line, four syllables in some lines and thirteen in others. 
 Of the "foot" as determined by intensity of stress, French hardly 
 knows anything; trochee and iambus have little relativity to 
 the French line; indeed, these terms, though used by the older 
 French prosodists in the classical period, are generally ignored by 
 modern authorities, as having small significance. 
 
 Mitford thought French the poorest of languages in harmony, 
 and incapable of constituting measure save by numbering sylla- 
 bles, or of indicating measure save by rhyme and pause, rhyme 
 being "the powerful and almost only indicant of measure in 
 French verse." To Poe the French heroic was "the most wretch- 
 edly monotonous verse in existence." The French language, he 
 went on to say, is "without accentuation and consequently with- 
 out verse." 
 
 Profoundly as French poetry has been influenced by the clas- 
 sical spirit, the forms of classical verse become mere shadows when 
 imitated in French. Indeed, the syllable itself is sometimes called 
 the foot. In the all-prevalent alexandrine one has to think of the 
 twelve syllables rather than of any six stresses, with a strong 
 caesura, as in English. Rhyme of some sort is therefore an essen- 
 tial of French poetry, in which blank verse can hardly be made 
 distinguishable from good prose. 1 
 
 Assonance was satisfactory to the hearers of the Chanson de 
 Roland, and, indeed, was so accordant with the genius of the 
 
 1 If an accumulation of metaphors may be taken as an adequate 
 expression of indebtedness, certainly Sainte-Beuve's address to Rhyme 
 is a sufficient acknowledgment of its service to the French language : 
 
 "Rime, qui donnes leurs sons 
 
 Aux chansons, 
 Rime, 1'unique harmonic 
 Du vers, qui, sans tes accents 
 
 Fremissants, 
 Serait muet au g4nie ; " 
 
 and so on through seven more stanzas. A recent critic (Edmund 
 Wright, in The Contemporary Review) says flatly that "French blank 
 verse is not verse at all, as M. Maeterlinck and other modern experi- 
 menters in new rhythms have sadly discovered. The unstable French 
 accents cannot by themselves, however skilfully they are placed, give to 
 French poetry the structure which distinguishes it from prose. The 
 fetters of rhyme are necessary to this end."
 
 END-RHYME 57 
 
 language that it might naturally have survived longer than was 
 the case, had it not lacked the regular place-emphasis of its suc- 
 cessor end-rhyme. 
 
 Consonance, in French verse, is the identity of consonants 
 following the tonic (in English the accented) vowel thus, 
 mille : belle. It is, for consonants, what assonance is for vowels. 
 But even the French ear hardly distinguishes the two; and in 
 English, where the thought rests on the stressed vowel, conso- 
 nance, thus defined, seems merely like an end-rhyme that is 
 slightly less imperfect than ordinary assonance. Indeed, con- 
 sonance, in English, is a term of such wandering meaning as to be 
 useless ; some writers make it synonymous with assonance, and 
 Puttenham with end-rhyme. 
 
 The rime riche of French amant: charmant; sommeil: 
 vermeil; orages: courages; etc. is now scarcely allowable in 
 English, though entirely satisfactory to the French ear. 1 The 
 rime superfine (offense'e : pensee) carries identity of spelling back 
 of the final syllable; though here French, of course, has no 
 penultimate rhyming accent. 
 
 As regards "eye-rhymes," French and English are not unlike: 
 cacher : cher is no more allowable in the one tongue than 
 tough : though in the other. But the French rather dislike alliez : 
 ecoliers, as the English hardly sanction rotten : cotton. In some 
 cases the usages of the two languages are squarely opposite ; thus 
 French forbids aimer : danger, but sanctions danger : songer. 
 French retains the permissibility of rhymes between identical 
 words with entirely different meanings ; thus pas (negative) : 
 pas (step) ; porte (gate) : porte (carries), etc., a practice dis- 
 continued in English hundreds of years ago. One language, or 
 one time, regards a contrast as agreeable which is intolerable to 
 another language or time. 
 
 Rhyme, in French, being more necessary than in other lan- 
 guages to distinguish verse from verse, is less frequently accom- 
 panied by the enjambement or completion of the phrase in a second 
 line. Meaning, accent, and rhyme must usually coincide, even 
 in English ; in French they are seldom separated in the lines of 
 the classical drama. With the advent of the romantic school, 
 1 Compare page 78.
 
 58 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 runover lines multiplied, as giving a sense of freedom; just as 
 they increased in English when the formal couplets of Pope gave 
 way to the liberty of the Wordsworth-Coleridge school. 
 
 Masculine and feminine rhymes in French are used more 
 strictly and labelled more carefully than in English, though most 
 of the effects secured in French are attainable in English. The 
 only possible feminine rhyme in French is where the line ends in 
 mute e. In rimes plates, or suivies, two feminine rhymes alter- 
 nate with two masculine; "in strict classical plays this sequence 
 is not broken even at the end of a scene or act." 1 Rimes 
 croisees are simply alternations of feminines and masculines; 
 embrassees the inclusion of two feminines between two mascu- 
 lines, or vice versa. In English such variations are not deemed 
 sufficiently noticeable to deserve titles; a fact which shows 
 the greater dependence upon rhyme in French. 
 
 Rimes melees, resulting in vers libres, are those in which mascu- 
 line and feminine rhymes occur as the poet's wish may dictate. 
 Vers libres, when the term is transferred to English, would more 
 readily suggest lines of Whitman. But even in this free verse of 
 the French, adjoining masculine or feminine rhyme-words must 
 rhyme together, and any given rhyme cannot be repeated more 
 than three successive times, the very reverse of the system 
 originally imposed by the Proven9al poets. 
 
 Another device is the rime fraternisee, in which the last syllable 
 of a line is repeated, in sound or in identity, as the first of the 
 next line. Such repetition is rather common in English as an 
 occasional device for emphasis, in a particular case; but when 
 carried through a poem becomes very tedious. 2 
 
 Whether, as some claim, the French is peculiarly the precision- 
 language of the world, it is certain that its lack of strong rhythm 
 is largely compensated by the extraordinary poetic beauty of 
 many of its words, considered as thought-symbols. What can be 
 more mellifluous and also suggestive than 
 
 "L'ombre passe et repasse, 
 Sans repasser 1'homme passe"? 
 
 1 A Companion to French Verse, by H. J. Chaytor, 28. 
 8 See citations in French and English, in C. Alphonso Smith's Repeti- 
 tion and Parettdism in English Verse, 23-25.
 
 END-RHYME 59 
 
 The late appearance of end-rhyme in Italian is to be ex- 
 plained by the dominance of Latin on its parent soil. A long 
 essay might be written, not on the beneficence of classical Latin- 
 ity all through the Middle Ages, unquestionable as it was, but on 
 the baneful effect of Latin upon the very tongues it most influ- 
 enced, because of its ancient and long-continuing superiority 
 and their self-admitted inferiority. Dante wrote an apologia for 
 using the vulgar tongue ; Bacon thought to save his really valu- 
 able works by putting them into the permanence of the world- 
 language; Milton, who has left on record his despite of rhyme, 
 employed Latin as a superior means of expression; Gray used 
 English and Latin indifferently; and Walter Savage Landor, 
 who died as late as 1864, preferred the ancient vehicle for some 
 of his poems. 
 
 There was no Italian poetry, save in Latin, before the time in 
 which Proven9al that connecting link between French and 
 Italian had produced a definitely developed verse. Proven- 
 cal escaped the ban of provinciality because it was farther away 
 from Italy and less under Latin influence. "The Proven9al 
 poets," says Richard Garnett, in his History of Italian Litera- 
 ture, " allowed themselves to be seduced by their language's un- 
 equalled facilities for rhyming into an idolatry of the elaborate, 
 which offered great impediments to the simple expression of 
 feeling. Some of their strophes contain no fewer than twenty- 
 eight verses, the same set of rhymes being carried through the 
 whole stanza, and very frequently through the entire poem. . . . 
 It was fortunate for the Italians that their language, fluent and 
 supple as it is, is incapable of such feats, and that, while adopt- 
 ing their lyrical measures from the Prove^als, they could not, 
 had they wished, cramp themselves by the reproduction of the 
 latter' s tours-de-force." Yet, as will immediately be seen, Dr. 
 Garnett's statement goes too far ; for some of the earliest Italian 
 rhymers sedulously attempted the same thing. 
 
 The discussions as to whether there was a body of early popu- 
 lar poetry which is entirely lost ; or whether Sicily or Italy was 
 first in the poetical field ; or whether the earliest Sicilian * poems 
 
 1 The term "Sicilian" in this connection is generally used by scholars 
 to signify not only the island of Sicily, but also southern Italy.
 
 60 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 were written in a Sicilian dialect transcribed into Tuscan, or, as 
 Dante seems to have thought, written in a purer Sicilian form ; 
 or whether the earliest verse was literary, popular, or religious, do 
 not concern us here. For us the question is simply: When did 
 end-rhyme appear in the volgare? Clearly it began at once, be- 
 ing practically universal, and used with much precision, as was 
 natural under Proven9al influence. Blank verse was of late date, 
 and never commonly used, Trissino, who is chiefly known for 
 his effort to introduce it in the late Renaissance, having failed in 
 his purpose. 
 
 Perhaps the oldest piece of end-rhyme with a known date is an 
 inscription in the Duomo of Ferrara, of 1135. It was destroyed 
 by an earthquake, and survives in a copy, which I quote from 
 Monaci's Crestomazia italiana del Primi Secoli (Citta di Cas- 
 tello, 1889), 9: 
 
 "Li mile cento trenta cenqe nato, 
 fo questo templo a San Gogio donate 
 da Glelmo ciptadin per so amore, 
 e mea fo 1 'opra Nicolao scolptore." 
 
 Then, as in French three centuries before, came a Cantilena. 
 Here, as in Provenfal, success in rhyme was supposed to depend 
 upon cumulation; in the first twenty-four lines, cited below, 
 there are but two rhymes, while in the remaining sixteen there are 
 two more; the greater number of rhymes, however forced, 
 one could find for the same word, the better poet he was. This 
 fetter, however, was speedily dropped in Italian : 
 
 "Salva lo vescovo sanato, 
 lo mellior c'umque sia nato ; 
 ke da 1'ora fue sagrato 
 tutt' allumina '1 cericato. 
 ne fisolaco n& Cato 
 non fue si ringratiato. 
 
 el papa '1 su 
 
 per suo drudo plu private. 
 
 suo gentile vescovato 
 
 ben e cresciuto e melliorato. 
 
 L' apostolico romano, 
 1' ... laterano, 
 san Benedetto e san Germane 
 '1 destine d'esser sovrano 
 de tutto regno cristiano;
 
 END-RHYME 61 
 
 peroe vene da Lornano, 
 del paradis dil Viano. 
 Sa non fue questo villano, 
 da ce '1 mondo fue pagano 
 non ci so tal marchisciano. 
 se mi da caval balgano, 
 monsterroll' al bon Galgano, 
 al vescovo volterrano, 
 cui bendicente bacio la mano." 1 
 
 The uncertain borderland between "pure" and "Italian" 
 Proven9al is shown by the appearance in Monaci's Crestomazia, 
 as well as in the Proven9al collections, of the Contrasto of Ram- 
 baldo de Vaqueiras (end of the twelfth century), in fourteen- 
 line stanzas, the first, in which the lover speaks, being in Pro- 
 venfal, and the next, the lady's reply, in Italian, and so on 
 throughout masculine and feminine rhymes appearing in- 
 differently. 2 To the same period Monaci assigns four-rhymed 
 verses in the vernacular, introduced into a Latin chronicle as a 
 comment thereon. The assonance in the first two lines will be 
 noticed : 
 
 "De Casteldard havi li nostri bona part 
 i lo zetta totto intro lo flumo d'Ard, 
 e sex cavaler de Tarvis li plui fer 
 con se duse li nostri cavaler." 3 
 
 About 1224 came a song traditionally assigned to St. Francis of 
 Assisi, said to have been uttered by him and recorded by one 
 of his followers. It is a paraphrase of Psalm cxlviii, in a sort of 
 rhythmic prose, assonanced and rhymed, assonance predominat- 
 ing. 4 Alliteration found a slight and almost indistinguishable 
 place in the intricate obscurities of the pre-Dantesque poets. 
 
 The oldest specimen given in Giosue Carducci's Primavera e 
 Fiore delta Lirica Italiana (Florence : 2 vols., 1903) is an address 
 to a lady, by Federico II (1194-1250), king of Naples and Sicily, 
 perfectly rhymed abbcdabdcddeefdeef. 5 This poem Carducci ap- 
 parently considers the first piece of pure literature among Italian 
 lyrics. 
 
 It is to be noted that the Southern poets were never so artificial 
 
 1 Crestomazia, 9. 3 Crestomazia, 14-15. * Crestomazia, 15-16. 
 4 Crestomazia, 29-31. 6 See page 35.
 
 62 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 in form as the Northern, though, to take a single example, Gia- 
 como da Lentino, who was a contemporary of Federico II, wrote 
 sonnets interesting for their repetition of the same rhyme-word 
 (Proven9al "replication"), sometimes with the same meaning, 
 sometimes not. In one, only two rhymes are used: viso and 
 visare; while the root is constantly repeated: 
 
 "Lo viso e son diviso da lo viso," etc. 1 
 
 Then there were the usual punning verses, depending upon simi- 
 larities of sound, such as amore and amaro, etc. More distinctly 
 Italian than Proven9al were such repetitions as those of Puccian- 
 done Martelli of Pisa : 
 
 "Similemente gente criatura, 
 La portatura pura ed awenente 
 Faite plagente mente per natura, 
 Si che'n altura cura vo' la gente," etc. 8 
 
 Such trickery, of course, with its substitution of sound for sense, 
 could make no lasting place for itself. 
 
 Guittone d'Arezzo (born about 1230) was especially noted for 
 his wilful artificiality and obscurity in forced rhyming. His con- 
 temporaries Guido Guinicelli and Guido Cavalcanti (both of 
 the middle of the thirteenth century) are much more normal, 
 while, as a rule, the poems of Cino da Pistoia (1270-1326), the 
 contemporary and friend of Dante, show perfect and regular 
 rhyme. Thus was prepared the way for Dante. 
 
 That great poet well knew the intricate rhyming devices of his 
 time, and prided himself on his power over them. In the De 
 Vulgari Eloquentia he devoted a chapter to "the Relation of the 
 Rhymes, and in what Order they are to be placed in the Stanza." 
 After alluding to Arnauld Daniel's "unrhymed stanza, in which 
 there is no question of the arrangement of rhymes," he adds: 
 "And we have said 
 
 ' Al poco giorno ed al gran cerchio d'ombra.' " 
 
 That is, Dante reminded his readers that he himself had written 
 at least one poem without rhyme. But though that poem had no 
 
 1 Crestomazia, 55. 
 
 3 Gaspary's History of Early Italian Literature, 79.
 
 END-RHYME 63 
 
 technical end-rhyme, each stanza made use of the same terminal 
 words, in rearranged order, forming a sestina, or sestine. 
 Then, in his discussion, Dante passes from mono-rhymes to 
 mixed rhymes, which offer the fullest license, on which "the 
 sweetness of the whole harmony chiefly results." Rhyming the 
 first line of the latter part of the stanza with the ending of the 
 last line of the former part "appears to be nothing else but a kind 
 of beautiful linking together of the whole stanza." While al- 
 lowing "every suitable license" to "the arrangement of rhymes 
 according as they are in the Fronte or Coda," "still the endings 
 of the last lines will be most beautiful if they fall with a rhyme 
 into silence." The terza rima, as such, is not discussed at length, 
 but he duly considers cases where, in a group of lines of uneven 
 number, a line must be cared for by an accompanying rhyme 
 in another division. Things to be avoided are (1) "excessive 
 repetition of the same rhyme," save as "something new and before 
 unattempted in the art [novum aliquod atque intentatum artis]" 
 of the canzone, which "we appear to have achieved in the can- 
 zone beginning 'Amor tu vedi che questa donna' "; (2) "that 
 useless ambiguity which always seems to detract somewhat from 
 the subject" ; and (3) "roughness of rhymes, unless it be mingled 
 with smoothness, for the Tragedy itself gains brilliancy from the 
 mixture of smooth and rough rhymes." 1 
 
 Dante at least once divided a word at the end of a rhyming 
 line differente-mente (Paradiso, XXIV, 16), where, curiously 
 enough, the halves of the word rhyme. His rhyming Cristo: 
 Cristo was perhaps an indication that he thought the word too 
 sacred for any other companion. In only two other cases does 
 he rhyme identical words with the same sense. Purgatorio, XX, 
 65, 67, 69, ammenda; and Paradiso, XXX, 95, 97, 99, vidi. 
 
 In Dante's opinion rhyme was the servant, not the master. 2 
 
 1 A. G. Ferrers HowelPs translation, 80-4. Gaspary (History of 
 Early Italian Literature, 262) expresses the opinion that in the canzone 
 "Amor tu" "the 1 subject-matter is entirely lost in the artificiality of the 
 form." 
 
 2 Professor E. A. Fay, in his Concordance of the Divina Commedia, 
 notes that Dante uses as rhymes no less than 402 words and word- 
 forms more or less unusual, "not including the numerous instances 
 of the substitution of the verb-ending e for i, which, except with the 
 verb sie, Dante makes only in the verse-ending." Professor Fay also
 
 64 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 "I, the writer [L'Ottimo Comento, Inferno, X, 85, cited in Long- 
 fellow's translation] heard him say that never a rhyme had led 
 him to say other than he would, but that many a time and oft he 
 had made words say in his rhymes what they were not wont to 
 express for other poets." So, under his hand, the Divina Corn- 
 media became the first monument of the Italian language, the 
 first great poem ofthe Christian world, the first masterpiece of 
 modern literature, and the first great treasury of end-rhyme. In 
 Italian, no longer mere Tuscan, all subsequent end-rhymers were 
 given a model of perfection. "To write in rhyme in the vulgar 
 is, after a manner, the same thing as to write in verse in Latin. 
 If any figure or rhetorical coloring is allowed to [classical] poets, 
 it is also allowed to the rhymers," said Dante in the Vita Nuova 
 (XXV). Never was a great literary change more concisely stated, 
 by one who had every right to speak. 
 
 In Italian poetry, as the language demands, the feminine end- 
 ing is the rule and the masculine the exception. Masculine rhyme 
 is most frequently used by truncation; thus mare becomes mar; 
 sole, sol; stare, star, etc. A few words once feminine are now 
 masculine (always with a), as cittate, citta; pietate, pietA; cari- 
 tate, carita. Similarly available for poetic use as masculine 
 rhymes are some verb-forms, such as accostera, andra, trovera 
 (future), or trovb, vende, servl (preterite). Among monosyllabic 
 verb-forms are e, fu, da, sta, do, fo, etc. Other monosyllabic 
 words are dl, re (nouns) ; mi, si, me, se, te (pronouns) ; ll (adverb). 
 
 Thus masculine rhymes appear all the way from the thirteenth 
 to the twentieth century, when Carducci used them effectively. 
 They are more frequent in popular and religious verse than in 
 the more literary forms. Dante used them sparingly, there being 
 only twenty-eight in the whole of the Divina Commedia. 
 
 In Lo Splanamento dei proverbj di Salomone, per Maestro 
 Girardo Patecchio da Cremona (thirteenth century) 1 are such 
 
 makes the interesting point that, of the 93 words used only by Dante, 
 75 are found only in the verse-ending. Of the 93, 62 are in the Paradiso, 
 because, he thinks, of the necessarily greater number of philosophical 
 and theological terms, the inclination to portray the higher glories by 
 unusual words, and the fact that Dante, "after he had been crowned and 
 mitred lord of himself, . . . felt freer than before to choose and coin the 
 words his subject or his rhyme demanded." 
 1 Crestomazia, 101-3.
 
 END-RHYME 65 
 
 rhymes as rason: Salamon; mendar : omiliar ; de:le; mal:val; 
 da : fara ; tant : favelant ; mescladament : cent. 
 
 In the song Ogni giorno tu mi di (fifteenth century) 1 the rhymes 
 are entirely masculine, with the recurrent refrain of the title-line. 
 
 Many other illustrations may be found in fourteenth and fif- 
 teenth century verse. Thus in the Lirica Italiana antica, "Fatti 
 inderiera, non t'acostare in za" (p. 105; fourteenth century) has 
 za : ilia : fa' : m'a : da : acostera : za ; acosterb : t'ubbidirb ; mi : ti : 
 si; f:e:re; piu: tu. In "Giu per la mala via" (p. 121; fif- 
 teenth century) are va : sara : falsita : ha : iniquita : aiutera : da : 
 fa: sta: dara: fara: volonta: adversita, and so on, in thirteen 
 more a rhymes. This use of mono-rhyme also appears in thir- 
 teen e rhymes in "La charitad e spenta" (p. 147; fifteenth cen- 
 tury) ; but in this case some words are repeated, as in the ron- 
 deau and similar poems. I rhymes are carried through the poem 
 (pp. 254-5; fifteenth century) taking its title from its refrain "Se 
 mi dicessi, di'." 
 
 Rhythm or rhyme, in any language, must frequently modify 
 the usual accents. Thus in English, even such a word as "water" 
 is either water, as in prose, or wate"r, as in Rossetti and other 
 medisevally-inclined poets. Proper names in English, however, 
 are invariable. But in the earliest Italian poetry great freedom 
 was taken, of which a full account is given in Dr. C. N. Caix's 
 study of Le Origini della Lingua Poetica Italiana (Florence, 
 1880), pp. 193-6. "The exigencies of rhythm and of rhyme," 
 says Dr. Caix, "caused frequent anomalies in the accent, 
 whereby it was now thrown backward, now forward. Formerly in 
 Latin the vowel quantity was free within certain limits in the 
 positio debilis, and the same liberty naturally remained to the 
 Italian poets; thus tenebre, penetro, side by side with tenebre, 
 penetro, and the like, are still in poetic use. But in other cases the 
 poetic accent is not less opposed to the Latin use than to the 
 popular Italian use. Thus, to cite but a few of his examples, he 
 gives onesta, liberta, and pieta, instead of onesta, etc., among 
 common nouns ; while for proper nouns, he notes that "the poets 
 continued to follow, in names of mythological origin, the French 
 accent with much greater frequency when these names were less 
 
 1 Lirica Italiana antica, per Eugenia Levi. Florence, 1905, 190. 
 
 5
 
 66 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 popular and they could change the accent in the service of har- 
 mony or rhyme, without running against custom." Thus in 
 Dante: Naidde, Eti6pe, Pisistrdto, Etedcle, Ardbi, Climene, 
 Lete, Satdn, Polinestar, Paris, etc., and in Petrarch: Alcibidde, 
 Penelope, Cleomenes, Annibdl, etc. 
 
 The accent may be pushed forward in adjectives, timile be- 
 coming umile, simile, simile, etc. 
 
 Dr. Caix also shows that in the Poema dell' Intelligenza such 
 verb-endings as the third person plural of the imperfect were ac- 
 cented for the sake of rhyme, -edno, idno; while in the same 
 poem when they are not rhyme-words they are given the normal 
 accent, -eano, -iano. 
 
 Early Italian poets also changed the verb-endings from one 
 conjugation to another; thus Dante changed schermire (third 
 conj.) into schermare (first conj.), and many others at will, most 
 easily turning the second into the third or the third into the second. 
 These transfers included not only the infinitive but also the par- 
 ticipial and personal terminations. Such alterations would, of 
 course, be possible only in the case of a language in a state of 
 formation. 
 
 Other changes of verb-spelling for the sake of rhyme are, for 
 instance, aita for ajuta (Le Origini, 220-1). l 
 
 This is not the place for an extensive history of Italian rhyme ; 
 as in the case of other languages thus far considered, those points 
 only have been noted which have borne upon the general study. 
 Its origins in Italy were, as has been seen, Latin and Proven9al ; 
 but, of course, the usual attempts have been made to assign its 
 beginnings to the Goths, the Huns, or what-not. The Goth-Hun 
 fallacy, the predecessor of the Arabian, survived as late as Mit- 
 ford's time; he says that "Italian, Spanish, and Romanesk 
 . . . were compelled to depose the ruling power of the harmony 
 of their parent language, and receive new laws of verse from the 
 Teutonic conquerors." But, as a matter of fact, the Teutonic 
 and the Romance languages, without influence the one upon the 
 
 1 In all phonetic history, we find vowels freely changing into similar 
 vowels, and consonants somewhat less freely into similar consonants. 
 The exigencies of rhyme, for a thousand years, have continually, 
 though sporadically, increased this tendency, sometimes in the line 
 of permanent changes in orthography, sometimes not.
 
 END-RHYME 67 
 
 other, took the same pleasure in adding end-rhyme for the sake 
 of new enjoyment in stress, and so reached the same result. 
 
 I am tempted to turn to the modern poets, to take up the far- 
 reaching influence of the Italian sonnet, or to study the details of 
 the canzone, the sestina, etc., but must take space for nothing 
 more than the first, and the last two, stanzas of the triumphant 
 tribute to rhyme paid by the latest of the greater Italian singers 
 himself, in his Odi Barbari, a "rebel" against it: 
 
 "Ave, o rima ! Con belle arte 
 Su le carte 
 
 Te persegue il trovadore; 
 Ma tu brilli, tu scintilli, 
 Tu zampilli, 
 Su del popolo dal cuore. . . . 
 
 "Ave, o bella imperatrice, 
 O felice 
 
 Del latin metro reina ! 
 Un ribelle ti saluta 
 Combattuta, 
 E a te libero s'inclina. 
 
 "Cura e onor de' padri miei, 
 Tu mi sei 
 
 Come lor sacra e diletta. 
 Ave, o rima : e dammi un fiore 
 Per 1'amore, 
 E per 1'odio una saetta." 
 
 In German, notwithstanding the primeval vogue of allitera- 
 tion, end-rhyme appeared early in the famous work of Otfried, 
 who finished in 868 a paraphrastic translation of the Gospels, 
 the earliest piece of such verse in the language, and one of the most 
 valuable monuments of Teutonic speech. Longfellow, in his 
 Poets and Poetry of Europe, as late as 1845, spoke of it as having 
 been written in "Frankish," but the old term, used from Fau- 
 chet's time for more than two centuries, has now been aban- 
 doned for the more proper word. 
 
 Otfried's rhyme is irregular, often a mere similarity of sound, 
 and subordinate to rhythm, as in Latin end-rhyme, and in the 
 German rhymers immediately following him. But it is unmis- 
 takable, as, for instance, in the two concluding stanzas of his 
 poem in praise of the Franks :
 
 68 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 "Nu freuuen sih es alle 
 So uuer so uuola uuolle 
 Joh so uuer si hold in muate 
 Francono Thiote 
 
 Thaz uuir kriste sungun 
 In uusera zungun. 
 Joh uuir ouh thaz gilebetun 
 In frengiskon nan lobotun." * 
 
 Here, at first, as in some of our early English rhymed ballads, it 
 makes no particular difference whether the line be regarded as one 
 or two, one, with internal rhyme, or two, with rhymes at the end. 
 
 Naturally, such early rhyming has long attracted the atten- 
 tion of scholars. Fauchet argues that Charlemagne took pleas- 
 ure in hearing the deeds of kings recited in his own tongue, and 
 thinks that Eginhard intimates that this singing was in rhyme. 
 It may well have been, he says, that rhyme was in use in Charle- 
 magne's day, even in vulgar tongues, such was the vogue of ec- 
 clesiastical Latin hymns. In fact, "ie dy qu'il y a grande appar- 
 ence que nos Franfois ont monstre aux autres nations d'Europe 
 1'usage de la ryme consonante ou omioteleute, ainsi que voudrez," 
 for the Franks overcame the Proven9als and the Sicilians, from 
 whom the Italians got rhyme. Joan de la Enzina, says Fauchet, 
 had confessed "que la ryme est passee d'ltalie en Espagne." 
 But after this bit of guesswork, so similar to that which we have 
 in our own day, Fauchet wisely concludes that the origin of rhyme 
 is "vne si grande obscurite," "pour laquelle esclaircir tant de 
 Savans hommes d'ltalie se sont iusques icy trauillee." How- 
 ever, " Que si les Proven9aux veulent dire qu'ils sont autheurs de 
 la ryme, c'est a eux a monstrer vn tesmoinage plus ancien que la 
 translation qu' Otfried a f aicte des Evangiles : ou que leur langue 
 fut en prix du temps de Charles le Grand." 2 
 
 1 "And now may all men of good will rejoice and be content, all 
 those of the Prankish nation who have a right heart ; for we have lived 
 to sing Christ in the tongue of our fathers." 
 
 2 Recoil de I 'Origine de la Langve et Poesie Franqoise, Ryme et 
 Romans; ch. VII Quand la Ryme, telle que nous 1'avons, commenga : 
 & que les Espagnoles & Italiens 1'ont prise des Frangois. Paris, 1581. 
 This entire chapter, in its discussion of the decline of classical quantity, 
 the new rhymed rhythms of the church, and north-European pleasure 
 in strongly stressed similar consonantal sounds, was far in advance of the 
 prevalent English criticism of the time.
 
 END-RHYME 69 
 
 A good deal of common sense, as well as scholarship, is packed 
 into a few words by Professor Francke when he says : 
 
 "The very fact that Otfried's work 'The Book of the Gos- 
 pels in the Vernacular/ as he calls it himself, is known as 
 the first specimen of rhymed verse in German literature, is sig- 
 nificant of the tendency of the time. Otfried's personal reason for 
 discarding alliterative verse and adopting rhyme in its stead was 
 his hatred of what he calls the obscene songs of the laymen, i. e., 
 the popular epic ballads. As these still preserved the alliterative 
 measure, Otfried could not have marked his opposition to them 
 more effectively than by introducing a poetical form hallowed 
 by the example of the great hymn- writers of the Latin church. 
 But there can be little doubt that alliterative verse itself, in the 
 middle of the ninth century, had already begun to decay, and to 
 lose its hold upon the people at large. Limited as it was to the 
 portrayal of a primitive, sturdy, unreflective life, it would have 
 given way, even without Otfried's initiative, to a poetic form 
 better adapted to the emotional, reflective, spiritual state of mind 
 which now was in the ascendancy, and which Otfried himself 
 so well represents." * 
 
 This is not the place to trace the history of German rhyme 
 down through the Middle Ages to Lessing's day, or to consider 
 its splendid achievements in the melodious "Kennst du das 
 Land" period of Goethe, Schiller, Kbrner, Riickert, and Heine. 
 But one must enter a caveat against the curious dictum of Pro- 
 fessor Earle, in his Philology of the English Tongue, that Ger- 
 man has a better command of "this Romanesque ornament" 
 than does English, because German has more inflectional endings. 
 Rhyme may, as Earle says, be naturally at home in inflected 
 languages, which invite it; but if anybody doubts the equality 
 of English in its use, let him read through, in comparison with 
 German, such an anthology as the late W. E. Henley's English 
 Lyrics: Chaucer to Poe. 
 
 Icelandic rhyme, as we have seen, was and is mainly allitera- 
 tive ; Vigf usson says that Icelanders are still apt in improvisation, 
 and that alliteration is to-day necessary to please. But end-rhyme 
 sporadically appeared in the work of Egil Skallagrimsson, in 
 1 History of German Literature, 41-2.
 
 70 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 the tenth century. Perfect rhyme, in Icelandic, required that 
 two of the syllables in the same verse correspond perfectly, and 
 half-rhyme that they have different vowels before the same con- 
 sonant or combination of consonants. In Egil four or eight 
 verses of the strophe sometimes had the same rhyme. The divi- 
 sions were clear, with stanzas and burdens ; but rhyme was not 
 regular, and Egil had no immediate followers. Schipper's con- 
 jecture that the Anglo-Saxon Rhyming Poem of the Codex Ex- 
 oniensis may have been produced under the influence of Egil, 
 who was twice in England, must remain a conjecture. 
 
 A bit from Egil's Hofuft-Laum (The Head-Ransom) will 
 illustrate his end-rhyme, even to those unfamiliar with the 
 language : 
 
 "Vestr f6r-ek um ver; enn ek ViSriss her 
 
 mun-strandar mar: ^svd es mftt of far: 
 Dr6-ek eiki d flot viS Isa-brot, 
 
 hloS ek mserCar hlut minniss knorrar skut. 
 BuComk hilmir laoS. Nu &-ek hr6ffrar kvaoC; 
 
 berr-ek OSins miaoS a Engla biaoC: 
 Lof at vfsa vann ; iaofur maeri-ek pann ; 
 
 hliotfe sesti-ek hann, es ek hroCr of fann." * 
 
 Another rhyming device, suggestive of certain measures of the 
 English poets of the nineteenth century, is thus described by 
 Vigfusson and Powell: "Einar, late in the tenth century, uses a 
 kind of echo in his line, making the first stress after the line-pause 
 in alliteration and consonance with the last stress before the line- 
 pause." This metre is called idr-moelt, iterative, by Snorri : 
 "Hug stdran biS-ek heyra: heyr-iarl kvasis dreyra." 
 
 I may remark here, once more, that the term "consonance" 
 has not sufficiently established itself in English prosody to make 
 its use desirable. Take : gate are assonance ; took : cake conso- 
 nance. One minds the vowel, the other the consonant. The 
 later "court-metrists" of Iceland called consonance half-rhyme. 
 
 1 "I came west on the sea, bearing the sea of Woden's heart [my 
 song]; that was my way. I launched my ship afloat from Iceland, I 
 loaded the stern of my mind-vessel [my breast] with a cargo of praise. 
 The king has given me a welcome. I owe him a song of praise. I bring 
 the mead of Woden into England. I have made a Song of Honor on 
 the king ; I laud that prince. I ask him for a hearing now that I have 
 devised my song of praise." (Vigfusson and Powell's translation.)
 
 END-RHYME 71 
 
 
 
 Icelandic dance-songs, at the end of the eleventh century, 
 sometimes consisted of rhyming couplets, one line sung by the 
 man and the other by the woman. It was usually satirical or 
 amorous in the latter respect not wholly unlike some Provenfal 
 dawn-poems or old English ditties. The dance-songs were fre- 
 quently non-alliterative, say Vigfusson and Powell; but "this 
 lack was less felt because they were sung and stepped to, the 
 metre being thus unmistakably marked out." In the later cen- 
 turies came popular rhymes, jingles, and ditties of every sort: 
 juvenile, meteorological, sententious, religious; of animals; 
 anagrams, riddles, etc. 
 
 In the "court-metre" (1150-1222), in each alliterative line 
 were two sets of rhymes, one in each half-line. A foreign (chiefly 
 French) influence was now apparent. The first regular later end- 
 rhyme is in the Olafs-Rima of Einar Gilsson, about 1360. 
 Thenceforward, of the more ambitious verse, there was a continual 
 succession to the present day of rhymed poems religious, satiri- 
 cal, historical, and romantic. "Both strict alliteration and rhyme 
 are necessary in every variety of ' Rimur. ' . . . The ' Rimur,' in 
 mediaeval and modern Iceland, have replaced the Saga as the 
 national artistic mode of expression and subject of entertain- 
 ment." 
 
 The following lines from the Olafs-Rima of Einar Gilsson 
 remind us, in their easy swing, of the earlier work of Robert of 
 Gloucester in English: 
 
 " Olaf r kongur aorr ok f riffr : atti Noregi at raSa ; 
 
 gramr var se viS bragna bliSr : buinn til sigrs ok na5a. 
 Daogling hlt sva dyran heiSr: dr6ttni himna hallar; 
 engi skyrir aorvar meiSr: aoSlings fraegSir allar." 
 
 It will be noted that in the extracts given we have feminine 
 rhyme as well as masculine. In Icelandic, as elsewhere after 
 1300, the poet's art added to the old refrains and burdens an 
 effective grouping of lines into stanzas or strophes. Of the 
 literary value of the later verse Vigfusson and Powell give no 
 very enthusiastic account. The Reformation hymns, as in 
 Germany, were rough affairs, but always with alliteration. 
 
 Turning to the eastern field, an interesting account of the 
 curiosities of rhyme to be found in the originals of the Quatrains
 
 72 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 of Omar Khayyam (Persian, eleventh and twelfth centuries) is 
 given in John Payne's literal translation of eight hundred and 
 forty-five of them. 1 Mr. Payne reproduces these peculiarities, as 
 far as possible, in his English version. The usual rhyme-scheme 
 is aaba, but occasionally the form is aaaa. Various metres are 
 employed, the third line sometimes being different from the other 
 three. A "throw-back" rhyme is common, there being at the 
 ends of the rhyming lines, in the original, from one to seven 
 identical syllables after the rhyming syllables. In the following 
 there are four: 
 
 " Skinker [Tapster], since ruin is of fortune planned for thee and me, 
 This nether world is no abiding land for thee and me ; 
 Yet, so the wine-cup in the midst but stand for thee and me, 
 Rest thou assured the very Truth's in hand for thee and me." 
 
 "Interior" rhyme is simply modern "internal" rhyme, as in 
 
 " With a fair-faced maid and wine rose-red, by the streamlet's brink, 
 Of ease and leisure I '11 take my pleasure nor pause to think : 
 I was not aye, but am to-day and yet will be; 
 I 've drunk of yore and drink e'ermore and yet will drink." 
 
 Virtually the same is what Mr. Payne calls " ding-dong rhyme " : 
 
 "Now the mead with the sound of the Thousand-Tales' singing is 
 
 ringing, 
 
 Take the wine the fair, tipsily to and fro swinging, is bringing : 
 Up, the rosebud of gladness hath blossomed I Awhile in the garden 
 Make merry, for life, whilst to sorrow thou 'rt clinging, is winging." 
 
 The "counter-petard" is 
 
 "They say that a tavern-besetter I am ; I am : 
 That a toper and wanton-abettor I am ; I am. 
 My outward I rede thee but little consider; in sooth, 
 Such at heart as (no worse and no better) I am, I am." 
 
 The "echo-rhyme" differs from the last in that it merely re- 
 peats the final syllables, without additional statement : 
 
 "Liquid life in the chalice we troll is flowing, flowing; 
 In the grape-blood's incorporate soul is flowing, flowing ; 
 In the heart of the frozen water [crystal cup] fluid fire is ; 
 Red ruby in crystal bowl is flowing, flowing." 
 
 1 The Quatrains of Omar Kheyyam of Nishapour, now first com- 
 pletely done into English verse from the Persian, by John Payne. 
 London, 1898.
 
 END-RHYME 73 
 
 The following Mr. Payne calls the "most curious of all " : 
 
 ." I spake, thou spakest : heart gave I thee, thou me disdain. 
 I take, thou takest, thou heart from me, I from thee pain. 
 I am, thou art, too thou merry, I for thee sad. 
 I make, thou makest, thou wrong and I patience in vain." 
 
 The Eastern usage, says Mr. Payne, "arranges an author's 
 poetical works not in the order of their composition or in accord- 
 ance with their tenor, but in mechanical alphabetical sequence, 
 according to the letters which end the rhyme-words of the various 
 pieces." 
 
 Of rhymes running down through the first syllables of the 
 stanza I find no example in any language, 1 though in Sidney 
 Lanier's The Symphony (not in stanzas) are the following con- 
 secutive lines: 
 
 "We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns, 
 We sieve mine-meshes under the hills, 
 And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank-tills, 
 To relieve, O God, what manner of ills?" 
 
 In the same poem are: 
 
 "Alas, for the poor to have some part 
 In yon sweet living lands of Art, 
 Makes problem not for head but heart. 
 Vainly might Plato's brain revolve it : 
 Plainly the heart of a child could solve it." 
 
 At the conclusion of this general view of the evolution of end- 
 rhyme in various languages, a few words may be said concerning 
 the relation of rhyme to the possibility of effective translation from 
 one language to another. 
 
 The discussion of rhyme-effects in translation is one which 
 might easily be expanded into a volume. In general, it goes with- 
 out saying that a hexameter line in a highly inflected language 
 like the Greek cannot be transferred to a pentameter line in 
 a loosely inflected language like the English, depending so much 
 upon collateral monosyllables for noun-and verb- variations of 
 meaning. If a line overruns, its unity is lost ; if one Greek line 
 is put into two English, there must be padding to fill it out ; and 
 when these two lines become a rhyming couplet, as in Pope's 
 1 See Appendix, page 208.
 
 74 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 Homer, the central idea of the verse-structure is modified almost 
 beyond recognition. A similar remark may be made concerning 
 certain English versions of the Mneid. In the Odes of Horace in 
 English rhyme, a new poem is substituted for an old one, with the 
 retention of more or less of the meaning, and less, rather than 
 more, of the form. 
 
 Again, in modern languages using end-rhyme, even where the 
 genius and word-forms of two Teutonic tongues are as nearly 
 alike as in English and German, it inevitably occurs that shades 
 of meaning, in the vocabulary of the language in which the trans- 
 lation appears, make an identical word-transfer impossible in 
 some cases ; while if a new word is substituted, the whole venue 
 is changed. Some of Bayard Taylor's renderings of German 
 lyrics are very clever, and even satisfactory; so are the line-for- 
 line versions of Poe's Raven in German. But when a sympathetic 
 and intelligent French poet like Stephane Mallarme* seeks to give 
 his countrymen an idea of The Raven, he frankly recognizes the 
 difference between strongly stressed English and almost accent- 
 less French, and puts his rendering into prose. Thus the ver- 
 sion becomes, as regards form, a paraphrase, in which, however, 
 more of the idea and even of the effect is carried over than would 
 be in any attempt foredoomed to failure to follow the 
 external form. 
 
 In the rhyme-word, of course, there is not only its usual prose 
 sense but an added emphasis of meaning due to position and 
 to contrast with another word or words, and an added pleas- 
 ure because of inherent music. How much of all this is necessarily 
 lost in a prose translation and there is also a loss if new rhyme- 
 words are set up in the other language may be seen when we 
 compare the first lyrical passage of Tennyson's Brook with the 
 French version by Professor A. Beljame : 
 
 ."I come from haunts of coot and hern, 
 
 I make a sudden sally, 
 And sparkle out among the fern, 
 To bicker down a valley. 
 
 " By thirty hills I hurry down, 
 Or slip between the ridges, 
 By twenty thorps, a little town, 
 And half a hundred bridges.
 
 END-RHYME 75 
 
 " Till last by Philip's farm I flow 
 
 To join the brimming river, 
 For men may come and men may go, 
 But I go on for ever." 
 
 "Je viens des demeures de la poule d'eau et du he'ron; je fais une 
 Bortie soudaine et apparais e"tincelant parmi la fougere, pour traverser a 
 grand fracas une valle"e. 
 
 "Le long de trente collines je me pre*cipite, ou je me glisse entre leurs 
 crates, le long de vingt hameaux, d'une petite ville, et d'une demi- 
 centaine de ponts. 
 
 "Enfin, le long de la ferme de Philip, je coule pouraller me joindre a 
 la riviere aux pleins bords ; car les hommes peuvent venir et les hommes 
 peuvent s'en aller, mais moi je vais toujours." 
 
 Examples could be multiplied indefinitely ; let us take another 
 significant one: F. Rabbe's translation (1887) of Shelley's To 
 Jane (otherwise called An Ariette for Music), the closing stanza of 
 which, in the original, is a nobly poetic statement of the mystical 
 union of all lovely things in the poet's mind. In this French 
 prose the whole thought is really transferred from language to 
 language, while the verse-form is utterly lost : 
 
 "Les pe^antes e"toiles scintillaient, et la brillante lune se 
 levait au milieu d'elles, chere Jane; la guitare re"sonnait, mais 
 les notes n'etaient pas suaves jusqu'a ce que votre voix les 
 chantat a son tour. Comme la tendre splendeur de la lune 
 s'e"pand sur la faible et froide lueur du ciel e"toile", ainsi 
 votre trs tendre voix aux cordes sans ame alors prta la 
 sienne. 
 
 "Les e"toiles s'eVeilleront, quoique la lune dorme une pleine 
 heure de plus, cette nuit; aucune feuille ne s'agitera, tandis que 
 les rose"es de votre me'lodie smeront le bonheur. Quoique 1'har- 
 monie accable 1'ame, chantez encore; que votre chre voix re"vele 
 les accents d'un monde bien loin du n6tre, ou la musique, la 
 clarte" de la lune, et le sentiment ne font qu'un." 
 
 In general the more imaginative the poem the harder it is to 
 translate. But sometimes, by a tour-de-force, unexpected results 
 are secured, as, for instance, in the more than clever rendering 
 of Hood's Bridge of Sighs, into a similarly-lilting Latin rhyme, 
 by Robert Yelverton Tyrrell, formerly professor of Greek at 
 Dublin (in the interesting volumes of Latin and Greek versions 
 entitled Florilegium Latinum, edited by F. St. J. Thackeray and
 
 76 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 E. D. Stone; London, 1899-1902). A single extract will show its 
 method and measurable success : 
 
 f Take her up tenderly, 
 Lift her with care ; 
 Fashion'd so slenderly, 
 Young, and so fair I" 
 
 "tollite facile 
 
 onus tarn bellum, 
 corpus tarn gracile 
 tamque tenellum." 
 
 Sometimes, as in Fairfax's Tasso and a recent rendering of the 
 JEneid, the Spenserian stanza is not ineffectively made the vehi- 
 cle of the version. The measure is utterly changed, but at least the 
 mellifluous continuity is repeated and to some extent re-created. 
 The "traditore, traduttore" of the Italian proverb may be more 
 apparent in an attempted line-for-line translation than in an 
 honest transfer of the thought and song into the different utter- 
 ances demanded by the genius of the translator's language. In 
 Gabriel Mourey's versions of the first series of Swinburne's 
 Poems and Ballads, in melodious half-rhythmical French prose, 
 the English reader can at times reconstruct the original metre, 
 rhymes, and all from the foreign page before him. That 
 is true translation, not the intrusion of a new poem bearing no 
 closer relation to the original than do the ornamental "tran- 
 scriptions" in music which befiddle a simple air almost beyond 
 recognition, and quite beyond enjoyment. Let the translator 
 preserve rhyme- word, line, and idea if he can; but always re- 
 member that the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. 
 
 Francis Mahony, who carried paraphrase very far, justifies his 
 course in the preface to the 1860 edition of The Reliques of 
 Father Prout: 
 
 "Prout did his best to rival him of Malmesbury, but he held 
 that in the clear failure of one language to elicit from its reper- 
 tory an exact equivalent, it becomes not only proper but impera- 
 tive (on the law principle of Cestui apres in case of trusts) to fall 
 back on an approximate word or idea of kindred import, the inter- 
 change in vocabulary showing at times even a balance in favour of 
 the substitute, as happens in the ordinary course of barter on the
 
 END-RHYME 77 
 
 markets of the world. He quite abhorred the clumsy servility of 
 adhering to the letter while allowing the spirit to evaporate; a 
 mere verbal echo distorted by natural anfractuosities, gives back 
 neither the tone nor quality of the original voice ; while the ease 
 and curious felicity of the primitive utterance is marred by awk- 
 wardness and effort ; spontaneity of song being the quintessence." 
 
 The history of English rhyme will occupy the remainder of 
 these pages. Some general remarks may here be given, as bear- 
 ing on this or that portion of the subsequent discussion. 
 
 End-rhyme, since its splendid establishment by Chaucer, has 
 virtually monopolized all English poetry save blank verse: It is, 
 says Saintsbury, to the modern ear so agreeable that it "can 
 only be expelled by deliberate and unnatural crotchet from any 
 but narrative and dramatic poetry." Indeed, narrative poetry is 
 usually rhymed, very frequently in couplets. Most unrhymed 
 non-iambic English metres, when read aloud, sound merely like 
 rhythmical prose, inferior to many parts of the Authorized Ver- 
 sion of the Bible. The really good unrhymed English lyrics are 
 few: Collins's Ode to Evening; Lamb's The Old Familiar Faces; 
 Tennyson's Tears, Idle Tears; Longfellow's The Bells of Lynn; 
 and not many more. 
 
 In the use of end-rhyme in English, for the past five hundred 
 years, the following principles have been approved as generally 
 advisable : The rhyming words should not be of the same genre, 
 as de Banville says of French rhyme. The caesura should be 
 constantly shifted, for if kept in the same place the lines would 
 be cut up into monotonous little sub-lines. The chief stress- 
 words and the rhyme-words should coincide when possible, and 
 should carry an illuminating power as the poem proceeds. In 
 no case, even in narrative poetry, should the rhyme-words be 
 insignificant. The rhyme-words should be related in thought to 
 the stress- words before the caesural pauses. Antepenultimate 
 rhymes cannot long be used, save in humorous verse. Feminine 
 rhymes are legitimate and indispensable, but cannot be intro- 
 duced consecutively save in short lyrics. More than four con- 
 secutive rhymes of any kind seem jocose. The eye objects to 
 identical though non-rhyming endings, e. g., in four-line order, 
 perfuming, spring, blooming, sing. Such rhymes as fire : higher
 
 78 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 really a monosyllable and a dissyllable are allowable. " Po- 
 etic license" also allows a stretching in the case of indispensable 
 words having few rhymes, such as heaven : given, river : ever, 
 woman : human, etc. Indeed, I have sometimes thought that an 
 essay might be written on the Morals of the Rhyming Dictionary, 
 showing how the thought of the race has been modified by the 
 lack of good rhymes to such basal words as duty, love, and 
 heaven. 
 
 Identical syllables (the French "perfect rhyme") are not gen- 
 erally permissible in English ; Chaucer's seke (seek) : seke (sick) 
 would not be allowed in modern use. 
 
 End-rhyme and thought-rhyme usually coincide, of course, in 
 the rhyming syllables, but sometimes especially when the 
 strong accent is on non-rhyming antepenultimates the thought- 
 stress pleasurably overcomes the rhyme-stress. This may occur 
 when the final syllables are identical, as in Milton's symphony : 
 harmony, or not, as in Moore's 
 
 " Down in yon summervale 
 
 Where the rill flows, 
 
 Thus said the Nightingale 
 
 To his loved rose," 
 
 which Schipper calls "unaccented rhyme." 1 
 
 1 An interesting example of identity may be found in d'Annunzio's 
 Eravamo sette sorette (song of La Sirenetta in La Gioconda) : 
 
 "La prima per filare 
 e voleva i fusi d'oro ; 
 la seconda per tramare 
 e voleva le spole d'oro; 
 la terza per cucire 
 e voleva gli aghi d'oro; 
 la quarta per imbandire 
 e voleva le coppe d'oro; 
 la quinta per dormire 
 e voleva le coltri d'oro ; 
 la sesta per sognare 
 e voleva i sogni d'oro." 
 
 "Unaccented rhyme," where the rapid thought renders the ends of the 
 lines almost negligible, is also well illustrated in Scott's Pibroch of Donuil 
 Dhu and "Where shall the lover rest," and Tennyson's Charge of 
 the Light Brigade. Drayton had anticipated it in Agincourt, at the 
 beginning of the seventeenth century.
 
 END-RHYME 79 
 
 "When few people can read," says A. J. Ellis, "rhymes to be 
 intelligible must be perfect" a surprising remark in view of 
 the fact that ballads and nursery jingles, in general, are satisfied 
 with any sort of similarity of sound. It is true, however, that 
 with the development of printing a new element came in, 
 namely, "rhymes to the eye," which have exerted some influence 
 upon poets for four hundred years. 
 
 Another writer on the subject (Tom Hood the younger, in The 
 Rhymester), lays down the rule to "use such rhymes only as are 
 perfect to the ear, when correctly pronounced" a counsel of 
 perfection to which no demur can be made; but elsewhere he 
 admits that "rhyme is a fetter, undoubtedly." With this agrees 
 Henry Newbolt, to whom "bad or partial rhymes may be some- 
 times better than good ones, because of the relief they afford to a 
 wearied sense." 
 
 Finally, the problem is slightly simplified by the fact that 
 there are some rhymeless words in the language. Andrew Lor- 
 ing, the latest compiler of a rhyming dictionary, gives a list of such 
 words (including only monosyllables or words accented on the 
 last syllable) as follows : 
 
 Aitch, alb, amongst, avenge, bilge, bourn, breadth, brusque, 
 bulb, coif, conch, culm, cusp, depth, doth, eighth, fifth, film, forge, 
 forth, fourth, fugue, gulf, hemp, lounge, mauve, month, morgue, 
 mourned, mouth (verb), ninth, oblige, of, peart, pint, porch, 
 pork, poulp, prestige, puss, recumb, sauce, scarce, scarf, sixth, 
 spoilt, swoln, sylph, tenth, torsk, twelfth, unplagued, volt |i"a 
 term in the menage"], warmth, wasp, wharves, width, with, wolf, 
 wolves. Some of these, however, as Mr. Loring adds, are 
 rhymeable because of certain permissible variations of pro- 
 nunciation, and most are not poetic words pace Browning's 
 amazing Hugues : fugues, in his Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha. 
 
 There is, of course, an indefinite number of words like unintelli- 
 gibleness, accented back of the antepenult, which have no 
 rhymes, or like injury, which can be rhymed only in the Don 
 Juan or Father Prout way, by inventing such a jocose phrase 
 as "singe your eye," etc. But all these wanderers in the outer 
 silence of rhymeland are of small importance. 
 
 For the stanza, the choice of arrangement of rhyme is wide,
 
 80 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 but not indefinite. Save in the ode, the rhyming lines should not 
 be separated by more than three lines at the most. The stanza 
 is a thought-unit, but there are "run-on" stanzas as well as lines. 
 Even so sententious a poem as Gray's Elegy has one stanza with- 
 out even a punctuation-mark at its end. 
 
 For convenience' sake I give here specimen stanzas of from 
 two to fourteen lines; for the sonnet is virtually a stanza. Be- 
 yond this it is not necessary to go (Shakespeare's Sonnet CXXVI 
 has twelve lines; his Sonnet XCIX fifteen; George Meredith's 
 quasi stanzas in Modern Love sixteen; and Spenser's Epithala- 
 mion eighteen and nineteen) : 
 
 Two lines: 
 
 "Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 't is early morn, 
 Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn." 
 
 TENNYSON : Locksley Hail. 
 
 Three: 
 
 "Whoe'er she be, 
 That not impossible She 
 That shall command my heart and me; " 
 
 SUCKLING : Wishes for the Supposed Mistress. 
 
 Four: 
 
 "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 
 The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, 
 The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, 
 And leaves the world to darkness and to me." 
 
 GRAY: Elegy. 
 
 Five : 
 
 "Go, lovely rose! 
 
 Tell her that wastes her time and me, 
 That now she knows, 
 When I resemble her to thee, 
 How sweet and fair she seems to be." 
 
 WALLER: Song. 
 
 Six: 
 
 f'He that loves a rosy cheek 
 
 Or a coral lip admires, 
 Or from star-like eyes doth seek 
 
 Fuel to maintain his fires ; 
 As old Time makes these decay 
 So his flames must waste away." 
 
 CAREW: The True Beauty.
 
 END-RHYME 81 
 
 Seven : 
 
 "Pite that I have sought so yore ago 
 
 With herte sore and ful of besy peyne, 
 That in this worlde was never wight so wo 
 With-oute dethe ; and if I shal not feyne, 
 My purpos was to Pite to compleyne 
 Upon the crueltee and tirannye 
 Of Love, that for my trouthe doth me dye." 
 
 CHAUCER : The Compleynte unto Pite. 
 
 Eight: 
 
 "Jack and Jone they thinke no ill, 
 But loving live, and merry still ; 
 Do their weeke-dayes' worke, and pray 
 Devotely on the holy day: 
 Skip and trip it on the greene, 
 And help to chuse the Summer Queene; 
 Lash out, at a country feast, 
 Their silver penny with the best." 
 
 Campion. 
 
 Nine : 
 
 "A gentle knight was pricking on the plaine, 
 
 Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde, 
 Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine, 
 
 The cruell markes of many a bloody fielde ; 
 
 Yet armes till that tune did he never wield. 
 His angry steede did chide his foming bitt, 
 
 As much disdaining to the curbe to yield : 
 Full jolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt, 
 As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt." 
 
 SPENSER : Faerie Queene. 
 
 Ten: 
 
 "Fain would I change that note 
 
 To which fond love hath charmed me 
 Long long to sing by rote, 
 
 Fancying that that harm'd me : 
 Yet when this thought doth come, 
 ' Love is the perfect sum 
 
 Of all delight,' 
 I have no other choice 
 Either for pen or voice 
 
 To sing or write." 
 
 Anon. 
 
 Eleven : 
 
 ."From depth of dool wherein my soul doth dwell, 
 From heavy heart which harbors in my breast, 
 From troubled sprite which seldom taketh rest, 
 6
 
 82 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 From hope of heaven, from dread of darksome hell 
 O gracious God, to thee I cry and yell. 
 My God, my Lord, my loving Lord alone, 
 To Thee I call, to Thee I make my moan; 
 And thou, good God, vouchsafe in full to take 
 This woful plaint, 
 Wherein I faint; 
 Oh hear me then for thy great mercies' sake." 
 
 GASCOIGNE : De Profundis. 
 
 Twelve : 
 
 "This Life, which seems so fair, 
 Is like a bubble blown up in the air 
 
 By sporting children's breath, 
 Who chase it everywhere 
 
 And strive who can most motion it bequeath. 
 
 And though it sometimes seem of its own might 
 Like to an eye of gold to be fix 'd there, 
 
 And firm to hover in that empty height, 
 
 That only is because it is so light. 
 But in that pomp it doth not long appear; 
 
 For when 'tis most admired, in a thought, 
 Because it erst was nought, it turns to nought." 
 
 Drummond. 
 
 Thirteen (roundel): 
 
 "Now welcom somer, with thy sonne softe, 
 That hast this wintres weders over-shake, 
 And driven awey the longe nightes blake ! 
 
 Seynt Valentyn, that art ful hy on-lof te : 
 Thus singen smale foules for thy sake 
 
 Now welcom somer, with thy sonne softe, 
 
 That hast this wintres weders over-shake. 
 
 Wei han they cause for to gladen ofte, 
 
 Sith ech of hem recovered hath his make ; 
 
 Ful blisf ul may they singen whan they wake ; 
 Now welcom somer, with thy sonne softe, 
 That hast this wintres weders over-shake, 
 And driven awey the longe nightes blake." 
 
 CHAUCER : The Parlement of Follies. 
 
 Fourteen (sonnet): 
 
 "Poor Soul, the centre of my sinful earth, 
 
 Fool 'd by those rebel powers that thee array, 
 Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth, 
 
 Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? 
 Why so large cost, having so short a lease, 
 
 Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? 
 Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, 
 
 Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?
 
 END-RHYME 83 
 
 Then, Soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, 
 
 And let that pine to aggravate thy store ; 
 Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross ; 
 
 Within be fed, without be rich no more : 
 So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, 
 And death once dead, there 's no more dying then." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE : Sonnet CXLVI. 
 
 The sonnet, appearing at about the same time in Proven9al 
 and Italian, was soon a favorite form in both France and Eng- 
 land, under Italian influence. The normal arrangement is four- 
 teen five-stressed lines, in which the statement is made in the 
 first eight and the application in the last six, there being but two 
 rhymes in the octet and two or three in the sextet. The first 
 part, furthermore, may be considered as composed of two 
 quatrains and the second of two tercets. The rhyme-scheme is 
 abbaabbacdcdcd, or some variant arrangement in the closing 
 six. But in the French sonnet the measure, because of the 
 genius of the language, is alexandrine, and the regular rhyme- 
 scheme is abbaabbaccdede, with frequent changes in the sextet. In 
 English, the Shakespearean sonnet forms the greatest variation. 
 Here the normal arrangement is three quatrains, which would 
 be stanzas were it not for their connected thought, rhymed 
 abab; the last two lines being an application, rhyming together. 
 From these usual arrangements the sonnet breaks away in many 
 variations; as where Milton, in his great outburst On the late 
 Massacre in Piedmont, begins in line 8 a sentence ending in line 9, 
 though preserving the abbaabbacdcdcd rhyme-system. Here his 
 indignant passion is given greater force by the overrunning, while 
 unity is preserved by strict adherence to the rhyming plan. 
 
 In the sonnet the weakness of feminine rhymes is sufficiently 
 obvious. Hartley Coleridge's sonnets suffer in this regard, and 
 so, even, does Shakespeare's "Farewell 1 thou art too dear for my 
 possessing," though the feminine rhymes are intentional and 
 carefully arranged throughout twelve of the fourteen lines. 
 
 As regards the kinds and forms of verse, the lyric expresses 
 itself in an almost indefinite series of combinations of foot, stress, 
 elision, extra syllable, hovering accent, line, masculine rhyme, 
 feminine rhyme, postponed rhyme, refrain, prose insertion, and 
 what not. Didactic verse naturally falls into the rhymed iambic
 
 84 
 
 pentameter couplet, which lends itself almost equally well to 
 description. Four-stressed measures, in iambic movement, 
 befit the varied portrayals and suggestions of the genre of U Alle- 
 gro and II Penseroso, as well as heroic-descriptive poems like 
 Marmion, and quieter presentations such as Snow-Bound. The 
 Cotter's Saturday Night, not less than The Faerie Qiieene itself, 
 employs one of the most elaborate modifications of Chaucer's 
 Troilus stanza. The Spenserian stanza has again and again been 
 used as the vehicle for translations of works as far removed from 
 Spenser's "phantasmagoria" as is the Mneid. Elegies, while 
 generally following slow iambic measures, are ode-like in their 
 variety of rhyme-arrangement. The drama, when employing 
 rhyme, finds place both for the most variant lyrics and for the 
 most mechanical end-stopped lines at the close of scenes and 
 significant paragraphs. Blank verse builds the epic, and also 
 philosophical poems like Thanatopsis, which, had it been 
 written in the eighteenth century, would probably have been 
 rhymed (as it was, in part, in its original form) ; while, on the 
 other hand, the two authors of the Lyrical Ballads ranged all the 
 way, in their respective masterpieces, from the stanza of The 
 Ancient Mariner to the freedom of line-length and rhyme- 
 distance shown in the Ode on Immortality. All that we can assert 
 with confidence is that dignity comports with iambic slowness 
 and the masculine rhyme ; while fancy may trip it as it goes, in a 
 freer use of trochaics and feminine terminations.
 
 VI 
 THE SHAPING OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 THE writings wherein Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, found ex- 
 pression are, of course, of relative rather than absolute value. 
 In the long period between the first English invasion of England 
 (449) and the Norman Conquest (1066) four works or groups of 
 works stand out, two in verse and two in prose, namely the 
 paraphrases of Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel, connected with the 
 name of the half-mythical Csedmon; the anonymous brief epic 
 narrating the deeds of Beowulf ; the translations, adaptations, or 
 suggestions of King Alfred; and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. 
 Of the two'original works in this scanty list, Beowulf possesses a 
 rugged strength and an occasional aptness of descriptive phrase, 
 chiefly due to the concise alliterative scheme which was the prin- 
 cipal mark of Old English verse; but it is too often obscure, 
 abrupt, or amorphous. As a landmark of language and life it is 
 highly interesting; as a piece of literature one would gladly 
 exchange it for a single modern English poem such as Tennyson's 
 Merlin and the Gleam. The Chronicle, however, has the peren- 
 nial importance of being the first Teutonic history in folk- 
 language; and the student of poetry finds in its heterogeneous 
 contents some welcome bits of early battle-verse. 
 
 In the whole body of Old English literature there is, it should 
 be said, no uniformity of spelling, or of accentuation to indicate 
 long vowels or differences of meaning ; for there was nothing to 
 be called, in any sense, a critical public or body of scholarship. 
 
 In the time between the cessation of the Chronicle (1154) and 
 the birth of Chaucer, the two most significant writings are, from 
 the linguistic point of view, the Ormulum (New Testament stories 
 with intricate mathematico-philosophical applications, written in
 
 86 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 lilting, unrhymed, seven-stressed verse by an ecclesiastic named 
 Ormin) ; and from the literary, the prose Ancren Riwle, or Nun's 
 Rule of Life (anonymous, and principally interesting as the ear- 
 liest successful attempt, in Old or Middle English, to introduce 
 extended figures of speech). 
 
 But even when we have reduced early English literature to this 
 meagre result, we must never forget that it was the first to emerge 
 from the intellectual chaos following the decline of Greece and 
 Rome. It is easy to criticise; it is hard to be a pioneer. Eng- 
 land led, when for dreary centuries there was no worthy follower. 
 
 Csedmon, who "flourished" about 670, 1 was probably an in- 
 mate of the abbey of Streaneshalch ; he was of humble per- 
 haps Celtic descent, and was not highly educated. Alfred, in 
 his translation of Bede's history of religion in Britain, gives the 
 following as the original of the hymn which Bede says Caedmon 
 produced when supernaturally commanded to sing: 
 
 "nu sculan herigean heofonrices weard, 
 meotodes meahte ond his m6dgepanc, 
 weorc wuldorfaeder, swa he" wundra gehwses, 
 e"ce drihten, 6r onstealde. 
 he" serest sce6p eorSan bearnum 
 heofon 16 hr6fe, halig scyppend : 
 pa middangeard moncynnes weard, 
 e"ce drihten, sefter te"ode 
 firum, foldan, fre"a selmihtig." 
 
 Richard Garnett speaks of this famous bit as "Csedmon's un- 
 doubted poem"; and at least its genuineness has never been 
 disproved. 
 
 We are not here concerned with the question or the many 
 quest : ons as to Csedmon's part in the composition of the 
 
 1 Those who wish to hunt oldest English verse farther back into its 
 fastnesses may turn to the gnomic verses in Brooke's Early English 
 Literature, 10 ; or read the alliterative earth-charm which, according to 
 Garnett (History of English Literature, I, 6-7) is "probably the oldest 
 specimen of English extant": 
 
 "Hal wes thu, folde, fira modor; 
 Beo thu growende on godes faethma; 
 Fodre gefylled firum to mytte." 
 ("Hail to thee, earth, mother of men; 
 Be thou fruitful in God's embrace ; 
 Filled with fruit for the good of men.")
 
 THE SHAPING OF ENGLISH RHYME 87 
 
 tenth-century manuscript written by at least three scribes, and 
 containing paraphrases of Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel, together 
 with stories of the fall of the angels, Christ's temptation in the 
 wilderness, his descent into hell, his resurrection and ascension, 
 and the last judgment. Parts of these may have been based on 
 Csedmon' s work; some are poor enough; others have a native 
 strength which has led enthusiastic scholars to find in them an- 
 ticipations of Milton. The orthography is West-Saxon, not 
 Northumbrian ; the alliterative and other poetic marks are of the 
 Anglo-Saxon, that is, of the early Teutonic, kind. Henry Brad- 
 ley (in the Dictionary of National Biography) calls fragments 
 235-370 and 421-851 of Grein's edition on the temptation and 
 fall of man essentially the product of Csedmon' s genius. 
 Perhaps this and the Old Saxon Heliand are translations and 
 amplifications of lost verses by Csedmon. Some parts of the man- 
 uscript are rough, others smooth to the extent of monotony. Evi- 
 dently we have in Csedmon an Old-English library of biblical 
 tales, as confused with "sources" and "redactions" as the 
 Bible itself, in the opinion of later critics. Meanwhile the student 
 of poetics notes that the verse is trochaic rather than iambic ; that 
 it is often, as Saintsbury says, little more than a "sort of half- 
 prose recitative"; and that alliteration compels a good deal 
 of explosive parallelism. 
 
 In Anglo-Saxon the half-line preferably, but by no means al- 
 ways, ends in a short syllable, aided by case-endings and verb- 
 forms. This end-mark, like that of the hexameter in classic 
 languages, makes a good termination-sign. Some scholars, it 
 will be remembered, think that the hexameter was originally an 
 indefinitely long dactylic line closed by a trochee. The regular 
 Anglo-Saxon four-measure line is 2:2, two measures in each 
 half-line, with two letter-stresses in the first half and one in the 
 second, the third letter-stress being the strongest, the first next, 
 and the second weakest. Sometimes there is only one stress in the 
 first half-line. Slurs always come at the beginning of the line or 
 half-line ; Csedmon puts them after the line-pause. 
 
 Vigfusson, in the Corpus Poeticum Boreale, tabulates the de- 
 scent of "Csedmon's Old Long Line" with impossible minute- 
 ness. Of course, in stressed alliterative verse there may be al-
 
 88 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 most every possible combination of stresses of identical or similar 
 sounds, in lines long or short, repetitious or different, poetically 
 exact or mere loose half-prose. Sometimes extra alliterations are 
 not stressed; sometimes repeated words answer the alliterative 
 purpose. Now and then a sort of two-line or couplet effect is 
 given by the endings of sentences ; this comes chiefly in dramatic 
 or sententious verse. Perhaps two average lines, in any literature, 
 are about enough for the full expression or turning of a thought. 
 Like a trumpet-call was the outburst of the first lines of 
 Beowulf (about 700 A. D.) : 
 
 "Hwset ! we Gar-Dena in gear-dagum 
 pe6d cyninga prym gefrunon, 
 hfi pa seSelingas ellen fremedon. 
 Oft Scyld Seeling sceatfena preatum, 
 monegum msegSum meodo-setta ofteah. 
 Egsode eorl, sySSan serest wear<J 
 fea-sceaft funden : he paes f r6fre gebad, 
 weox under wolcnum, weorG-myndum Sab., 
 65 pset him seghwylc para ymb-sittendra 
 ofer hron-rade hyran scolde, 
 gomban gyldan : pset waes god cyning ! 
 psem eafera waes aefter cenned 
 geong in geardum, pone god sende 
 folce t& frofre. fyren-pearfe ongeat, 
 pset hie aer drugon aldor-lease 
 lange hwile. Him paes llf-frea, 
 wuldres wealdend, worold-are forgeaf. 
 Beowulf waes breme, (blaed wide sprang) 
 Scyldes eafera Scede-Landum in." 
 
 Professor John Leslie Hall's excellent translation of Beowulf, 
 which is alliterative but not line-for-line, retains much of the 
 spirit as well as the form of the original, and may well be read by 
 those unfamiliar with Anglo-Saxon. But I will give here Profes- 
 sor John Earle's prose version of the above nineteen lines of this 
 "English epic of the fourteenth century," because of his rendering 
 of the very first word: 
 
 "What ho ! we have heard tell of the grandeur of the imperial 
 kings of the spear-bearing Danes in former days, how those ethel- 
 ings promoted bravery. Often did Scyld of the Sheaf wrest from 
 harrying bands, from many tribes, their convivial seats; the 
 dread of him fell upon warriors, whereas he had at the first been a
 
 THE SHAPING OF ENGLISH RHYME 89 
 
 lonely foundling; of all that [humiliation] he lived to experi- 
 ence solace; he waxed great under the welkin, he flourished 
 with trophies, till that every one of the neighboring peoples over 
 the sea were constrained to obey him, and pay trewage : that 
 was a good king I 
 
 "To him was born a son to come after him, a young [prince] 
 in the palace, whom God sent for the people's comfort. He [God] 
 knew the hard calamity, what they had erst endured when they 
 were without a king for a long while ; and in consideration thereof 
 the Lord of Life, the Ruler of Glory, accorded to them a time of 
 prosperity. 
 
 "Beowulf [i. e., Beaw] was renowned, his fame sprang wide; 
 heir of Scyld in the Scedelands." 
 
 Notwithstanding its roughness, this old tale of Beowulf the 
 Scylding and Beowulf the Goth shows that alliteration was 
 abundantly able to take care of itself as an indigenous and in 
 some ways powerful poetic form. 
 
 If the Phoenix, a paraphrase of the Carmen de Phenice as- 
 cribed to Lactantius, were an original piece of Anglo-Saxon verse, 
 it would be entitled to be called the most poetical product of the 
 English mind prior to 1200. How rhythmical is the following, 
 from its description of the Happy Land : 
 
 "Ne maeg Sser r6n ne snaV 
 ne forstes fnaest, ne fyres blsest,' 
 ne hsegles hryre, ne hrimes dryre 
 ne sunnan hsetu, ne sincald, 
 ne wearm weder, ne wintersctir 
 wihte gewirdan, ac se wong seomaS 
 eadig and onsund ; is Saet seSele lond 
 b!6stmum geb!6wen. Beorgas Saer ne muntas 
 stedpe ne stondaS, ne stanclifu 
 heih hlifiaS, swi h^r mid us, 
 ne dena ne daln, ne dunscrafu, 
 hlslwas ne hlincas, ne Seer hleonaS 6 
 unsm&fes wiht ; ac se seSela feld 
 wridaS under wolcnum wynnum geb!6wen." 
 
 In the above, besides alliteration and a splendid swing, are 
 assonance and a suggestion of end-rhyme. 
 
 The last lines of the poem are a curious macaronic of Anglo- 
 Saxon and Latin:
 
 90 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 " hafaS us alyfed 
 
 lucis auctor 
 Sset we motun h6r 
 
 merveri 
 g6d-dsedum begietan 
 
 gaudia in celo 
 5ser we motun 
 
 maxima regna 
 secan and gesittan 
 
 sedibus altis 
 lifgan in lisse 
 
 lucis et pacis 
 agan eardunga 
 
 alma letitiae 
 brucan blsed-daga 
 
 blandem et mitem 
 geseon sigora f rean 
 
 sine fine 
 and him lof singan 
 
 laude perenne 
 eadge mid englum 
 
 alleluia." l 
 
 From the time of Cynewulf's Crist, the Phcenix paraphrase, 
 and the fine poem Judith, all of which may be assigned to the 
 years between 750 and 780, until the end of the eleventh century, 
 
 1 "Us hath allowed 
 
 [the] Author of light 
 that we may here 
 
 deserve, 
 by good deeds obtain, 
 
 joys in heaven, 
 where we may 
 
 [the] amplest realms 
 seek, and sit 
 
 on lofty seats, 
 live in the comfort 
 
 of light and peace, 
 possess dwellings 
 
 pleasant of joy, 
 prosperous days enjoy, 
 
 bland and mild ; 
 [the] Lord of triumphs see 
 
 without end, 
 and to him sing praise, 
 
 with laud perpetual, 
 happy with angels. 
 
 Alleluia!"
 
 THE SHAPING OF ENGLISH RHYME 91 
 
 alliteration grew less obedient to its earlier rules, and was em- 
 ployed as the particular singer chose. 
 
 In the Battle of Maldon (about 991) were rudiments of end- 
 rhyme, e. g., bigstodon : lagon : lagon : gesealdon : noldon (perhaps 
 accidental) ; and many lines near each other ended with the same 
 word. 
 
 The refrain of the older Dear's Lament has a pleasing effect 
 of thought-rhyme: "Das oferode, Sisses swa maeg:" "that 
 was withstood, so may this be !" 
 
 In Old-English verse of the tenth century the rhyme of paral- 
 lelism is often present; the important sentence is continually 
 doubled in different words, almost precisely as in Hebrew. So 
 it was in later Icelandic ; the repetition causing new light to shine 
 on the idea. 
 
 End-rhyme was, in its first appearances, combined with allit- 
 eration in England, as in Iceland and Scandinavia. Accidental 
 end-rhyme [internal rhyme] is certain to appear in alliterative 
 verse, and so it is not strange that we find it in one passage of 
 Cynewulfs Elene (lines 114-5): 
 
 "peer wses borda gebrec ond beorna geprec, 
 heard handgeswing ond herga gring." 
 
 In the second of these lines there is really nothing but an eye- 
 rhyme, as -swing is not an accented syllable. 
 
 Cynewulf, whose authorship of Elene and Crist is pretty well 
 established, is thought by some to have written the Phoenix, the 
 Dream of the Rood, and even the "Rhyming Poem" of the Codex 
 Exoniensis. 
 
 The last-named apparently belongs to the second quarter of 
 the tenth century. It has alliteration and also masculine and 
 feminine end-rhymes. Of literary merit it possesses not a ves- 
 tige. Nobody knows its author, or can definitely account for its 
 multiplication of end-rhymes ; but the fashion of them was grow- 
 ing, all around, at the time of its writing ; and we have already 
 gone far enough to see that in the ninth and tenth centuries, in 
 any European country having verse of any kind, the non-appear- 
 ance of end-rhyme would have been a greater marvel than its 
 appearance. It is true, as Garnett says, that "Latin was (in the
 
 92 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 ninth century) the only language in which the literary class, apart 
 from the makers of minstrelsy, cared to express itself " ; but 
 Latin end-rhymed verse was perfectly familiar in England at that 
 time. It was constantly growing easier to write concise rhyming 
 explosives like the 
 
 "Me lifes onlah. se pis leoht onwrah. 
 and pact torhte geteoh. tillice onwrah. 
 glaed waes ic gliwum. glenged hiwum. 
 blissa bleoum. blostma hiwum," 
 
 etc., of this poem, which was probably produced for the sake of 
 the jingle. Elsewhere it has wongum : gongum ; longum : geton- 
 gum; aweaht: ofertheaht; gengdon: mengdon: lengdon: glengdon; 
 glad : inbrad : bi-glad : had : gad : rod : gebad. 
 
 Schipper suggests that it may have come from the work and in- 
 fluence of the Scandinavian poet Egil Skallagrimsson in his visits 
 to England; but he adduces no proof. 1 
 
 In the Brut of Layamon (about 1210) alliteration is weak or 
 absent, and there are some end-rhymes, such as brother : other ; 
 might: right; care: fare. Evidently the poet, writing in a transi- 
 tional period, felt at liberty to use alliteration, assonance (if, 
 indeed, he noticed it at all), and end-rhyme as he chose. Four 
 stresses are the rule. In his ear walden : duden ; daei:maei; 
 Haengest : hendest were equally good ; the scansion was the ne- 
 cessary thing. Saintsbury says that Layamon "is, so to speak, 
 staggering towards more rhyme. ... It is scarcely too wild a 
 flight to call the work of Layamon the workshop, the experi- 
 mental laboratory, of true English prosody." 2 
 
 In general, Layamon used either alliteration or end-rhyme in a 
 given line, not both together. 
 
 If this were a history of English prosody, not rhyme, much 
 would need to be said of that unique poem, the Ormulum of the 
 Augustinian monk Orm or Ormin. It is a diffuse and monot- 
 onous summary of Gospel contents as understood by the pious 
 and simple-minded author. The "Gospel's holy lore" is com- 
 
 1 Of it Thorpe, its first editor, naively said: "This poem I do not 
 understand, and am therefore unable to translate." As Stedman re- 
 marked about Browning's Bordello, it is not worth the trouble. 
 
 2 History of English Prosody, 51, 76.
 
 THE SHAPING OF ENGLISH RHYME 93 
 
 bined, according to the mediaeval fashion, with all sorts of fan- 
 cies, which are set forth as having equal force with the Bible words 
 themselves, Thus Christ fasted in the wilderness because forty is 
 four times ten. The three persons of the Trinity, the three powers 
 of the mind (insight, memory, and attention), and the four ele- 
 ments of matter (earth, air, fire, and water), added together 
 make the ten, which, multiplied by the four points of the com- 
 pass, makes forty, etc. The New Testament stories are set forth 
 with almost indefinite repetitions (the poem has twenty thousand 
 lines) of word, line, or idea ; the whole being expressed in a spell- 
 ing-reform system devised by the author, which, like so many of 
 its successors, was ignored by everybody else. But the Ormulum 
 has two great charms : the sweet simplicity of its gentle writer, 
 and its really marvellous smoothness of seven-stressed lines (or 
 four-stressed, alternating with three, as now ordinarily printed). 
 There is hardly a poem in all English literature which, unrhymed, 
 leaves so strong an impression of that finish which we generally 
 associate with rhyme. 
 
 But it is better to quote a few lines of the Ormulum than to talk 
 about it. Here is the passage in which Orm, with his usual 
 frankness, speaks of a necessity not unknown to thousands of his 
 verse-mongering followers : 
 
 "Ice hafe sammnedd o piss boc 
 pa Goddspelless neh alle, 
 patt sinndenn o pe messeboc 
 Inn all pe yer att messe. 
 3 ajj affterr pe Goddspell stannt 
 patt tatt te Goddspell menepp, 
 patt mann birrp spellenn to pe follc 
 Off pe^Jre sawle nede ; 
 D Jet taer tekenn mare inch 
 pu shallt tseronne findenn, 
 Off patt tatt Cristess hall^he ped 
 Birrp trowwenn wel 3 folljhenn. 
 Ice hafe sett her o piss boc 
 Amang Goddspelless wordess, 
 All purrh me selfenn, manig word 
 pe rime swa to fillenn; 
 Ace pu shallt findenn patt min word, 
 Ejjwhaer peer itt iss ekedd, 
 MaJS hellpenn pa patt redenn itt 
 To sen 3 tunnderrstanndenn 
 All pess te bettre hu pejjm birrp
 
 94 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME' 
 
 pe Goddspell unnderrstanndenn; 
 3 forrpi trowwe ice patt te birrp 
 Wei polenn mine wordess, 
 E^Jwhaer paer pu shallt findenn hemm 
 Amang Goddspelless wordess. 
 For whase mot to laewedd follc 
 Larspell off Goddspell tellenn, 
 He mot wel ekenn manij word 
 Amang Goddspelless wordess. 
 3 ice ne mihhte nohht min ferss 
 A^3 wipp Goddspelless wordess 
 Wel fillenn all, 3 all forrpi 
 Shollde ice wel offte nede 
 Amang Goddspelless wordess don 
 Min word, min ferss to fillenn." 
 
 In the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, according 
 to several investigators, Norman-French lyrics, produced under 
 troubadour influence, were familiar in England, and were copied, 
 to some extent, in the vernacular. But few such songs survive, and 
 those few are of small merit. Rhymes and stanzas, suggestive of 
 Romance models, there are; but the native conciseness, almost 
 bluntness, lends itself ill to the foreign forms. The gem of all 
 the English songs of the period is the most natural of all: the 
 
 lovely little 
 
 f'Sumer is icumen in, 
 Lhude sing cuccu ! 
 Groweth sed and bloweth med, 
 And springeth the wude nu. 
 
 "Awe bleteth after lomb, 
 Llouth after calve cu : 
 Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth. 
 Murie sing cuccu ! 
 
 "Cuccu ! cuccu ! wel singes thu cuccu 
 
 Ne swik thu naver nu. 
 Sing cuccu I nu, sing cuccu ! 
 Sing cuccu I sing cuccu, nu 1 " 
 
 In the romances now beginning to abound, end-rhyme was used 
 freely. In King Horn (1200-50) sometimes repetitions answered 
 the purpose; thus in lines 753-4 we have 
 
 '.' J>at him scholde londe - 
 
 In Westene londe," 
 and in 757-8 
 
 "To lond he him sette 
 
 And f ot on stirop sette ; "
 
 THE SHAPING OF ENGLISH RHYME 95 
 
 but for the most part the lines are divided into two three-stressed 
 halves by ordinary end-rhyme, as bltye : ly$e ; singe: Huge; 
 Horn : born, etc. 
 
 The six-stressed line, with or without internal rhyme, narrowly 
 escaped becoming the normal English measure at this period, 
 especially as it was used (without internal rhyme) by Robert of 
 Gloucester (flourished 1260-1300) with distinguished success. 
 Indeed, Robert was the most powerful and pleasing English end- 
 rhymer before Chaucer. His alexandrines, used in connection 
 with seven-stressed lines, have a fine swing, when at their best ; 
 and if the strong caesural pause becomes rather tiresome, the 
 genius of the language, then in an experimental state, must 
 be blamed, rather than the poet. Let him who wishes to learn 
 what vigor was possible in rhymed narrative in English of the 
 thirteenth century, read Robert of Gloucester's story of Lear 
 and his Daughters straight through. 
 
 Robert Manning, or Robert of Brunne, who wrote between 
 1290 and 1340, was the author of Handling Sin, a long dull 
 poem, partly translation, partly paraphrase, and partly original. 
 The metre is of the roughest and the literary merit of the smallest. 
 Lines have four, five, six, or seven stresses, as you may be able to 
 count them ; and the swinging regularity of Robert of Gloucester 
 is absent. But the miscellany is interesting, in the present study, 
 because Manning speaks of 
 
 "That tyme 
 That I began thys English rhyme ; " 
 
 and because he mentions, as rhyme-forms discarded because not 
 easily intelligible, " ryme couwee," "strangere," "entrelace," and 
 "baston": 
 
 " I made it not for to be praysed, 
 Bot at pe lewed menn were aysed. 
 If it were made in ryme couwee, 
 Or in strangere or entrelace, 
 pat rede Inglis it ere inowe 
 pat couthe not haf coppled a kowe, 
 pat outhere in couwee or in baston 
 Som suld haf ben fordon, 
 So pat fele men pat it herde 
 Suld not witte howe pat it ferde."
 
 96 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 " Rime couee " or " tail-rhyme," versus caudati, Schweifreim 
 meant the insertion of shorter lines rhyming together usually 
 the third, sixth, etc. The device is as ancient as it is common, 
 and may be varied in almost any way, being closely akin to the 
 refrain. The resultant merit is a certain variety; the corres- 
 pondent demerit is a hitchy monotony in the very medium intro- 
 duced for variety's sake. On the whole, no first-class work was 
 ever done in this stanza; and Chaucer's satire at its expense, 
 in Sir Thopas, still forms its just obituary. "Strangere" and 
 "baston" are of unknown meaning; some say that the latter 
 means "stanza" ; Saintsbury calls it a six-line stanza of four long 
 and two short lines ; but his specimen, ending with the word in 
 question, evidently means a stanza, not the particular form. 
 "Interlaced" is alternate. 
 
 When an idea is bound together by parallelism, antithesis, re- 
 frain, or even the completion of sense which a rhymed couplet 
 gives, the idea-group which we call the stanza is not far distant. 
 Naturally, therefore, at this time the poem entitled TJie Pearl 
 (fourteenth century) uses it with good effect. At first it seems 
 surprising that we have the creation of a twelve-line stanza in 
 the apparently complicated metre ababababbcbc, anticipating, as 
 it were, the Spenserian stanza and the sonnet; but repeated 
 rhymes were familiar, centuries earlier, in Proven9al and other 
 languages ; and we must remember that English could now look 
 to such finished models as the Vita Nuova and the Divina Corn- 
 media. Again, we are in Chaucer's century ; and in literature, as 
 in physical nature, catastrophism the sudden development of 
 long-slumbering causes must be taken into account. 
 
 The end-rhymes in The Pearl are overlaid by an elaborate 
 system of alliteration, which distracts attention from them. Not 
 even the later mellifluousness of Surrey and Wyatt could make 
 agreeable the combination of three or four alliterations in each 
 one of a succession of end-rhymed lines ; and the author of The 
 Pearl was no Surrey. 1 Alliteration, our most ancient form of 
 
 1 The reader should be referred, however, to the opinion of the chief 
 editor of the poem, Israel Gollancz. He thinks that it contains an im- 
 portant and beautiful stanza-form, without known models ; and that 
 the poem virtually constitutes a sonnet-sequence at a very early day. 
 Saintsbury is not less enthusiastic. See his History of English Prosody,
 
 THE SHAPING OF ENGLISH RHYME 97 
 
 rhyme, has never lost its beauty and value ; but its nature is so 
 strongly assertive that it does not comport with a rival, unless 
 it appear in moderation, and as an occasional emphasis or adorn- 
 ment. This fact Chaucer, who was contemporary with the au- 
 thors of The Pearl and Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, saw 
 as they did not. The best touch of poetic art given in The Pearl 
 is not its alliteration or end-rhyme, but its employment, to an ex- 
 tent previously unknown in English, of an ingeniously variant 
 refrain. 
 
 Before Chaucer and the subsequent rule of end-rhyme from 
 his day to ours, William Langland, in his Vision of Piers Ploivman, 
 was the last great recurrer to the methods of alliterative English 
 poetry, because he was the last singer of and from the common 
 people. Almost contemporary with Chaucer, Langland (1330 ?- 
 1406 ?) turned toward the past, while Chaucer led the way for all 
 the future. The transfer from alliteration to end-rhyme had come 
 before Langland's day, but he was strong enough, both as thinker 
 and poet, to revive the old rhyme art in one noble strain. Hence- 
 forward, in minor romance or battle ballad, or in the experiments 
 of the scholastic, it might lead a lingering life, but its day was 
 past, save as an adornment of its triumphant successor. After 
 the Norman conquest, new forces from the rich fields of Romance 
 poetry were too strong to be resisted in England, to which the 
 door of the Continent was now wide open. The poets of the 
 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries did not hesitate to introduce 
 French words whenever they pleased; and the exigencies of 
 end-rhyme enriched the language. Latin and French, further- 
 more, combined to influence English to use the stanza, in which 
 end-rhyme was at once servant and master. 
 
 Piers the Plowman has almost every merit properly to be de- 
 manded of a folk-poem: originality, sincerity, simplicity, in- 
 terestingness ; and the alliteration, being in full possession of the 
 field, never seems forced or unwelcome. Its double lines, like 
 those of Anglo-Saxon, sometimes have four stresses, sometimes 
 three. The freedom of the verse is helped by the survival of 
 
 107-9, for his laudation of "the most charming of all the religious 
 poems of this time," "a sort of carillon not indeed of joyful but of 
 melancholy sweetness a tangle, yet in no disorder, of symphonic 
 sound, running and interlacing itself with an ineffable deliciousness," etc. 
 
 7
 
 98 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 many feminine endings; so that the very thing which aided 
 Chaucer in his couplets was of service to Langland in the older 
 measure. Couplets do not appear in Piers Plowman, even by 
 accident; the author seems intentionally to have avoided them. 
 The fatal fault of alliteration the sacrifice of sense to sound 
 he reduces to a minimium by his very simplicity. Whether or not, 
 as some suppose, there was in existence in his England a con- 
 siderable body of popular alliterative verse, now lost, he con- 
 stantly writes as one in easy possession of his instrument and his 
 hearers. If his was the swan-song, we may be thankful that it 
 was so strong and full. Langland was loyal to his method, and 
 he avoided the mongrel notes of The Pearl and other exercises 
 in compound rhyming. In him we have right words in right 
 places; not sounds summoned to match other sounds. If he 
 lacks the variety of the newly found stanza, he also avoids its 
 monotony ; for the stanza is sometimes a woeful drag on prog- 
 ress. Had other north of England or Scottish poets shared 
 Langland's genius, alliteration might have held the field a little 
 longer; its ultimate disuse as the main rhyme-mark, in the 
 development of English as related to other European tongues, 
 was inevitable. No public of intelligence could long endure such 
 stuff as Gavin Douglas' 
 
 f'Of dreflyng and dremis quhat dow is it to endyt? 
 For as I lenyt in a ley in Lent this last nycht, 
 I slaid on a swevynnyng slummerand a lite : 
 And sone a selcouth sege I saw to my sycht, 
 Swownand as he suelt wald, soupit in site 
 Was nevir wrocht in this warld mayr wofull a wycht, 
 Ramand, ressoun and rycht is rent by falss rite, 
 Frendschip flemyt is in France, and fayth hes the flycht, 
 Leis, lurdanry, and lust ar our laid-stern; 
 
 Pece is put out of play, 
 
 Welth and weilfare away, 
 
 Lufe and lawte bayth tuay, 
 Lurkis full dern." 
 
 Not even Langland could save alliteration by such fine lines as 
 those constituting the famous beginning of his poem : 
 
 " In a somer sesun : when softe was the sonne, 
 I schop me into a schroud : a scheep as I were ; 
 In habite of an hermite : unholy of werkes, 
 Wende I wydene in this world : wondres to here.
 
 THE SHAPING OF ENGLISH ^RHYME 99 
 
 Bote in a Mayes morwynge : on Malverne hulles 
 
 Me bifel a ferly : a feyrie, me thouhte ; 
 
 I was weori of wandringe : and wente me to reste ] 
 
 Undur a brod banke : by a bourne syde, 
 
 And as I lay and leonede : and lokede on the watre^, 
 
 I slumberde in a slepyng: hit sownede so murie." 
 
 With the passing of Langland and his school, and with the 
 coming of Chaucer, there arises the still vexed question of the 
 terminology of English scansion. As one approaches it, he 
 finds not a debatable land, but confusion worse confounded. So 
 many authorities, so many systems. There are no feet in English, 
 say some. Doctors disagree instantly in marking any consecutive 
 four lines in our verse. One uses the entire scheme of classical 
 prosody; another rejects it. The dactylic movement may as 
 well be called anapaestic, if you get to counting it that way, 
 just as the sound of a railway train is either one two three one two 
 three, or one two three one two three, as you begin. English 
 entirely lacks quantity, aver some confident prosodists; but on 
 the other hand the learned A. J. Ellis, the investigator of early 
 English pronunciation, gravely sets down nine varieties of stress, 
 nine degrees of length, nine of pitch, and nine of silence. This 
 leads the equally learned J. B. Mayor to say that "life is not long 
 enough to admit of characterizing lines when there are forty-five 
 expressions for each syllable to be considered." 
 
 Nearly the whole truth is packed into these admirable words 
 by Mr. Stedman, who had an advantage not possessed by most 
 of those who have written on poetics that of being a poet : 
 "English verse is characteristically accentuate instead of being 
 quantitative the reverse being true of classical. . . . Although 
 it is often the more melodious when the more quantitative, its 
 quantity is incidental and derived from the gift of the poets; 
 while stress of accent, as differing from syllabic length, deter- 
 mines its metrical system." 
 
 In other words, stress, not quantity, is the basis of English 
 verse; foot, line, and rhyme must follow it. Time, quantity, 
 stress, accent, beat, all plainly exist in English poetry, and 
 coincide more than half of the time enough to give the law 
 and make anything else the exception. The first line of Gray's 
 Elegy is sufficient to show this. We do not, and cannot, say
 
 100 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 "The" curfew tolls the" knell 6f parting day." Hence, for con- 
 venience, we may as well use a few accepted names of feet, 
 spondee, iambus, anapaest, trochee, dactyl. The foot has been 
 well defined as "a group of times which by repetition, with or 
 without variation, characterizes and measures a longer series." 
 But we must always remember that the trained ear, not rule, is 
 the final authority ; we must proceed inductively, not deductively. 
 The law must follow the product, not the product the law. The 
 poet does not begin by thinking of feet. Taste, the cultivated "I 
 think so," governs both metre and rhyme, in this English of ours. 
 Let the "thousand warring sects" of the scansion-mongers have 
 their way, with their devices for recording questionable sounds ; 
 but do not forget that English, in all its splendid freedom, bears 
 within it poetical powers as great and as varied though not 
 the same as those of any other language in which man ever 
 sang. Still, it is chiefly the iambus and the anapaest, not the 
 trochee and the dactyl, the "ascending, "not the "descending," 
 rhythm that swing the lilt of our song. Swinburne says that 
 English is "a language to which all variations and combinations 
 of anapaestic, iambic, or trochaic [doubtless he includes the 
 trochaic as an occasional substitute] metre are as natural and 
 pliable as all dactylic and spondaic forms of verse are unnatural 
 and abhorrent." We cannot admit that the dactylic and spondaic 
 movements are "unnatural and abhorrent" ; but must recognize 
 that they play but a subordinate or occasional part in English 
 verse. ^ 
 
 In form as in spirit, in rhyme as in poetic creation, Chaucer 
 was the true leader of our song. His follower Occleve declared 
 him to be "the first fynder of our faire langage," while a recent 
 writer in Blackwood's Magazine claims that he "created the 
 noble instrument of speech which can hardly be matched save 
 in ancient Greece." As we have seen, rhyme, and end-rhyme, 
 were no invention of Chaucer's ; but no Englishman before him 
 had rhymed so fluently, so variedly, so effectively; and in no 
 subsequent English poet is there a smaller proportion of imper- 
 fect or objectionable rhymes. He saw that the iambic pentameter 
 was the indispensable measure in English verse; by none of his 
 successors has it been better applied to narration and description ;
 
 THE SHAPING OF ENGLISH RHYME 101 
 
 with French models, he was the shaper of the English stanza; 
 and in his splendid originality he made us forget his predecessors 
 and his contemporaries. 
 
 Perhaps the first thing to attract the attention of students of 
 Chaucer's rhymes is the fact that in his practice, as in Dante's 
 (e. g., Paradiso, XIII, 89, 91) identical sounds of different 
 meanings form permissible rhymes, as in lye (rest) : lye (falsify) ; 
 seke (seek) : seke (sick). In Troilus and Cressida, V, 104-5, are 
 mene (noun) and mene (verb) ; while in The Book of the Duchesse, 
 171-2, are song (song) : song (singing). 
 
 Rhymes like the following abound in Chaucer (the final 
 syllable of course being stressed) : 
 
 "That speces of thynges and progressiouns [-ouns] 
 Shullen enduren by successiouns " (Knight's Tale, 3013-4). 
 
 So disposicioun : excucioun ; conclusioun : confusioun ; queyntely : 
 fetously; pridelees : rewthelees ; giltelees, etc. 
 
 Something of the pun or joke strikes the modern ear in 
 
 "Of tymes of hem, ne of the causis 
 For- why this is more than that cause is " (House of Fame). 
 
 and 
 
 " If thou noon aske, so soore artow y-woundid 
 That verray nede unwrappeth al thy wounde hid " 
 
 (Man of Laws' Tale). 
 
 Such rhymes as lyte is:dytees; vices: vyce is illustrate the 
 indifference to minor variations in vowel sounds which has charac- 
 terized English poetry from the first, and which prevents nice 
 deductions concerning pronunciation from rhymes in Chaucer or 
 any other of our poets. Endings such as vileynye: cowardye; 
 crye : envye, in consecutive lines, are unusual ; but in the stanza 
 comprehended in lines 299-307 of The Compleynte of Faire 
 Anelida and False Arcite the rhymes, in order, are womanhede: 
 dede : nede : lede : drede : bede : mede : sede : hede. 
 
 "For curs wol slee, right as assoiling savith; 
 And also war him of a Significavit" (Prologue, 661-2). 
 
 reminds us that the so-called Roman pronunciation (v like w) 
 was not in vogue in Chaucer's day.
 
 102 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 Chaucer used alliteration as an ornament, not an obligation. 
 End-rhyme was henceforth to be the rule, and everything else 
 an accessory. Now and then he made large use of alliteration, as, 
 for instance, in the Knights Tale, 1747 ff. But to him it was 
 neither a necessity nor an aversion, but a convenience. The 
 famous words of the Parson : 
 
 "But trusteth wel, I am a Southren man, 
 I can nat geste rum, ram, ruf by lettre " 
 
 cannot be considered as anything more than a sign that allitera- 
 tion, the once prevalent rhyme-art, had passed from general to 
 forced use, especially in the north. 
 
 By Chaucer, as by Dante, the word "rhyme" was sometimes 
 used as synonymous with verse in general : 
 
 "He hath bitrayde folkes many tyme; 
 Of his falshede it dulleth me to ryme " 
 
 (Canon's Yeoman's Tale, 1092-3). 
 
 Chaucer's alleged separation, in his rhyme-groups, of vowels 
 open and close, or long and short, is not worth extended discus- 
 sion, notwithstanding the deductions of over-confident editors. 
 Authorities even as painstaking as Skeat and Ten Brink 
 hopelessly disagree ; and we may well be cautious in laying down 
 the law when we remember present-day variations of pronuncia- 
 tion, on the part of persons of culture, of so familiar words as 
 therefore and wherefore. Our lack of absolute knowledge of the 
 range of sounds given by Chaucer to any vowel is too great to 
 allow dogmatism as to his rhyme-uses. It is not surprising that 
 the latest of Chaucerian critics (R. R. Root, A Study of Chaucer, 
 Boston, 1907) concludes that "for practical purposes it may be 
 well to disregard the distinction between the 'open' and 'close' 
 sounds of e and o." To be sure of Chaucer's rhyming of e's and 
 o's we would need 
 
 1. an undoubted text; 
 
 2. an invariable pronunciation in his day (Lydgate was appar- 
 ently a looser rhymer and pronouncer than Chaucer) ; 
 
 3. an unquestionable knowledge of that pronunciation, five 
 hundred years afterward;
 
 4. a certainty that Chaucer intended to bind his rhymes with 
 absolute strictness. 
 
 The wonder is that he apparently made so little variation in 
 rhyme-sounds; but let us not be sure of his finer sound-values 
 until we are certain that we could make him understand our own 
 reading of a page of his poems. 
 
 When we turn to the larger results of Chaucer's rhyme-art, we 
 find that he, for the first time in English, normally used the five- 
 stressed iambic rhythm, in rhymed form, blank verse being a 
 later development. Why the iambic pentameter, rhymed or 
 unrhymed, is the great English line is not easily to be explained. 
 But it is of a length sufficient for the expression of a complete 
 thought or considerable element of thought; and it follows the 
 disposition of the language to proceed from an unstressed unim- 
 portant sound to a stressed important one. Again, it avoids the 
 sharp caesura in the middle of the line, which is akin to the 
 genius of the French and alien to that of the English. As soon 
 as Chaucer had shown the commanding suitability of this meas- 
 ure, the hexameters of Robert of Gloucester and his successors, 
 down to Longfellow, became mere tours-de-force. 
 
 Chaucer's use, however, was not limited to the pentameter 
 rhymed couplet. The tetrameter couplet was largely employed 
 by him, for the first time in English, and in The Compleynte unto 
 Pile and Troilus and Cressida he used the rhyme-royal or seven- 
 line stanza, rhymed ababbcc. This, by an easy modification, 
 became the Spenserian stanza, which will be considered in its 
 proper place. In the ABC and the Monk's Tale is an eight-line 
 stanza : ababbcbc which, again, is the Spenserian save for the 
 ninth alexandrine c-line. In the Compleynte to his Lady two 
 stanzas are in rhyme-royal, and then Dante's terza rima is used 
 (the first of its few and unsuccessful appearances in English verse), 
 followed by a ten-lined stanza: aabaabcddc. In the Compleynt 
 in Anelida and Arcite are varying stanzas with strophe and 
 answering antistrophe. In the ballade form of Truth, Gentilesse, 
 and Lack of Stedfastnesse the rhymes of the first seven-line stanza 
 are repeated in several stanzas. Merciles Beauty is a French triple 
 roundel, and there is a roundel in the Parlement of Foules. In some 
 of these are twelve rhyming words, without loss of ease in effect.
 
 104 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 Chaucer makes large use of feminine endings, made necessary 
 by the survival of the e-termination, which was the remainder 
 of a dozen inflections in Anglo-Saxon. In rounding out his lines, 
 or even his stanzas, he shows easy mastery of the arts of finishing 
 or running-on, as the case demands. 
 
 In Anelida and Arcite (272-80 and 333-41) are internal 
 rhymes. 
 
 "Cadence" in the following (House of Fame) is a puzzle to 
 the Chaucerians (for one conjecture see Skeat's edition of the 
 works, III, 257) : 
 
 "And neverthelesse hast set thy wyt 
 (Although. that in thy heed ful lyte is) 
 To make bookes, songes, or dytees 
 In ryme or elles in cadence." 
 
 Tone-color, that elusive thing, midway between the highest 
 aesthetic fact and the merest imaginative self-deception, beauti- 
 fully appears in the "O Alma Redemptoris" passages of The 
 Prioress' Tale, in the key-phrase of which Chaucer introduced 
 the two most melodious of vowel-sounds, o and a. 
 
 Finally, this master of heroic couplet, octosyllabic couplet, 
 stanza, and 
 
 "many an ympne for your halydayes, 
 That highten Balades, Roundels, Virelayes " 
 
 (Legend of Good Women, 422-3). 
 
 illustrates his facile knowledge of all the prosody of his day by 
 the jocose Rime of Sir Thopas, so swiftly interrupted by the 
 gentle penalty of the poet's prose: 
 
 "Here the Hoost stynteth Chaucer of his Tale of Thopas: 
 
 "'Na moore of this, for Goddes dignitee !' 
 Quod oure Hoste, 'for thou makest me 
 So wery of thy verray lewednesse 
 That, also wisly God my soule blesse, 
 Min eres aken of thy drasty speche. 
 Now swich a rym the devel I biteche I 
 This may wel be rym dogerel,' quod he. 
 'Why so,' quod I; 'why wiltow lette me 
 Moore of my tale than another man, 
 Syn that it is the beste ryme I kan?' 
 'By God,' quod he, 'for pleynly, at a word, 
 Thy drasty ryming is not worth a toord;
 
 THE SHAPING OF ENGLISH RHYME 105 
 
 Thou doest noght elles but despendest tyme ; 
 Sire, at o word, thou shalt no lenger ryme. 
 Lat se wher thou kanst tellen aught in geeste, 
 Or telle in prose somwhat, at the leeste, 
 In which ther be som murthe, or som doctryne.' " 
 
 No pioneer poet of any language can show in his verse-forms 
 such a variety of commanding and influential achievements. It 
 is, accordingly, amusing to remember that the late Professor 
 Earle, on the basis of the well-known lines in the Compleynte of 
 Venus (which is in three ballades, with one envoy) 
 
 "And eek to me hit is a greet penaunce, 
 Sith rym in English hath swich scarsitee, 
 To folowe word by word the curiositee 
 Of Graunson, flour of hem that make in France " 
 
 gravely assured us that " Chaucer felt the difficulty of rhyming in 
 English; he could not keep pace with the French rhymers." 
 Chaucer really left the English rhyme-art, in all of its essen- 
 tials, in no need of improvement. 
 
 After Chaucer, not the deluge, but dwindling rills. Gower 
 used the octosyllabic couplet with fluency, though not always 
 with poetic beauty. His Confessio Amantis is as dull and wordy 
 as the Ormulum, without Orm's excuse of pioneer toils, and 
 without the naive'te' which gives the Ormulum a certain charm. 
 Saintsbury thinks that Gower's octosyllables were written con 
 amore, while Chaucer's were written against the grain ; he adds 
 the conjecture that Gower's tetrameter form probably influenced 
 Wither, possibly Keats, and certainly William Morris, "the 
 actual author of the greatest examples of it in English, taking 
 bulk and merit together." If anybody is inclined to think that 
 Keats was influenced by Gower, let him turn from Gower to 
 The Eve of St. Mark. 1 There is, however, a curiously Morris- 
 like swing in the quotation from Gower's Medea story, cited by 
 Saintsbury (History of English Prosody, 141). 
 
 1 There seems to be something unlucky in comments on this metre, 
 Mr. R. L. Alden, in his English Verse, says that "in modern English 
 poetry this short couplet has rarely been used for continuous narrative 
 of a serious character, except by Byron and Wordsworth," a remark 
 which shows how easily one forgets the most obvious things of all, such 
 as Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and 
 Snow-Bound.
 
 106 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 To Puttenham (1589) Gower was especially odious; Putten- 
 ham goes so far as to call him a bungler and not a poet, and to 
 say that "to make up his rhyme" he "would for the most part 
 write his terminant syllable with false orthography," which is, 
 of course, a great exaggeration. 
 
 Gower, like Chaucer, rhymes indentical sounds with different 
 meanings : laste (endure) : laste (end) ; ungood : good. 
 
 In the fifteenth century spelling and pronunciation were in so 
 changeable a state that poets were both advantaged and dis- 
 advantaged by the consequent freedom given them. In Skelton 
 one finds at times a rudeness of rhymes almost as wayward as 
 that in the anonymous ballads of bis century, and amounting to 
 little more than haphazard assonance, for example, gentle : 
 mantle ; nept : set : violet ; health : wealth : himself ; jug : luck : 
 chuck. Skelton put on record the fact that he did not care 
 whether his 
 
 "rime be ragged, 
 Tattered and jagged, 
 Rudely raine-beaten, 
 Rusty and moth-eaten," 
 
 so long as people understood and liked it; and his rapidly run- 
 ning verse bears out his easy theory. But his "voluble breathless 
 doggerel," as John Churton Collins calls it, was meant, in part, 
 to be dramatic, as put into the mouths of the common folk. At 
 its worst it is dull and clumsy; at its best it shows the variety 
 and force of an experimenter seeking greater freedom in number 
 of accents, in internal rhymes, in the number of lines ending with 
 the same rhyme, ,and in novel words. Skelton was a rude 
 anticipator of Butler, Barham, and Mahony. 
 
 In the ballads of the fifteenth and following centuries, as in 
 the popular sentimental songs and music-hall jingles of our own 
 day, no nicety of rhyme was asked or given ; it was enough that 
 the ear be caught by any recurrent similarity. In Barbara Allen 
 we have the assonantal dwellin' : Allen (compare Scott's Hel- 
 vellyn : yelling and Wordsworth's sullen : pulling) ; in Fair 
 Helen green : e 'en : tying ; in Sir Patrick Spens deep : feet ; mourn : 
 storm; in The Dragon of Wantley warrant ye: Wantley ; and so 
 on, indefinitely. In the gem of all the English ballads, A Lyke
 
 THE SHAPING OF ENGLISH RHYME 107 
 
 Wake Dirge, the beauty of thought and word is such that even 
 the modern reader does not stop to notice the rhyme passe : last. 
 Everything was subordinated to the prime requisite of a lyric: 
 the effective expression of feeling; and so it made no difference 
 whether there were the prodigality of internal rhyme, or scarcely 
 any good rhyme at all ; or what number of syllables occurred in 
 the line, so long as the number of beats was usually preserved. 
 Coleridge's insistence that the line should be measured by its 
 stresses, not its syllables, was anticipated in the old English 
 ballads over and over again. So, too, was the "common metre" 
 of the later hymn- writers ; virtually a seven-stressed iambic line, 
 indifferently with or without rhymes at the fourth stresses. It was 
 not strange that the ballads, when repopularized by Percy and 
 Scott, were the very groundwork of the Romantic revival in Eng- 
 land at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 1 The great charm 
 of the ballads is the charm of all romantic poetry in English, 
 when at its best : the combination of unity with variety, of fixity 
 with freedom, in which English verse is supreme in all literature. 
 
 The refrains of the ballads are sometimes bound to the stanzas 
 by rhyme, but usually, and preferably, not ; for the refrain, like 
 Hebrew parallelism, is in itself an idea-rhyme. 
 
 Perhaps the worst constructive fault chargeable against the 
 ballads is an occasional excessive use of internal rhyme, which so 
 easily degenerates into doggerel, as in the later American religious 
 "classic" of the seventeenth century: Michael Wigglesworth's 
 Day of Doom. Internal rhyme, when freely used, demands the 
 genius of a Coleridge or a Poe to make it endurable. And Cole- 
 ridge and Poe, unlike the authors of the Nutbrowne Maide and 
 the Day of Doom, knew enough to vary it. All iterations, too 
 near together, become wearisome after a little, like Gawain 
 Douglas' "Vertew, quhais trew sweit dew ouirthrew al vice" or 
 Swinburne's "sad bad mad glad" Villon. Tricks should be con- 
 cealed, not magnified. 
 
 1 Sometimes the modernness of old folk-poetry is startling, as in the 
 beautiful swing of a stanza from the part of Eve in a Coventry play : 
 "Alas that ever that speech was spoken 
 
 That the false angel said unto me ; 
 Alas, our Maker's bidding is broken, 
 For I have touched his own dear tree."
 
 VII 
 
 THE ELIZABETHANS AND THE RHYME 
 CONTROVERSY 
 
 EVERY reader of Palgrave's Golden Treasury has recognized, a 
 hundred times, the appropriateness of giving the first page to 
 Thomas Nash's poem on Spring. In its artless spontaneity it 
 suggests the first song-sparrows, twittering on the trees before 
 the snow has melted beneath. The general scansion of most of 
 the lines, if you must hunt it out, is the familiar iambic pentam- 
 eter; but the start is a trochee, and the voice falls, here and 
 there, into three strong stresses in each half-line, the caesura 
 emphasized by the prodigal internal-rhymes. It is the very ex- 
 pression of that license in law of which each springtide reminds 
 us anew: 
 
 "Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king; 
 Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring, 
 Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing, 
 Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo ! 
 
 Free as the poem is, the mono-rhymes are perfect, according 
 to the modern standard, with the exception of meet : sit. Nash's 
 contemporaries, however, suggest an earlier method. In Wyatt 
 we have cruelty : liberty : extremity ; washeth : departeth : per- 
 ceiveth : plainetk : fleeth : appeareth : feareth; reason : season : con- 
 dition : fashion ; forgetfulness : cruelness : readiness: fearfulness 
 (in every case the accent on the last syllable). If Wyatt and 
 Surrey had had their way, the eye would have had as much to do 
 with rhyme as the ear. Some of Wyatt's lines seem to the modern 
 reader almost unscannable. Here, for instance, is a part of his 
 translation of Petrarch's sixty-first sonnet : 
 
 " I will not m my grave be biirie'd, 
 
 Nor 6n my t6mb your name have fixed fast, 
 
 As cruel cause that did the spirit soon haste 
 
 From th' unhappy bones, b^ great sfghs stirre'd."
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 109 
 
 If anybody is dissatisfied with this scansion, let him make his 
 own. Intelligibility is barely saved, but beauty is lost. 
 
 Wyatt at his best, though no Surrey, was a poet ; but when to 
 Italianization of thought he added every kind of violation of 
 rhyme-accent, the result is not "precious." Also: grow; com- 
 fort: sort; are natural enough ; sum: doom; leche : wretch ; alas: 
 space; last: waste; and even streams : Thames : dreams ; are to 
 be explained by the pronunciation of his time; but in harbour: 
 banner; or suffer: displeasure, as well as in some of those already 
 quoted, it is easy to see that to the lingering utterance of the time 
 Wyatt undertook to add the idea that the rhymer was privileged 
 to make pronunciation, so long as the lines contained the re- 
 quisite number of syllables. Fortunately, as he wrote at the 
 beginning of a great period, this method did not approve itself 
 to other poets. Perhaps his most astonishing rhyme is contrary- 
 ing : countre-weighing. Once, in a sonnet, he gives the un- 
 expected assonance y filed : beguiled : smiled : misguided. 
 
 Wyatt experimented with the terza rima, and, as usual in 
 English, without success. The metre, in our ears, has no unifying 
 effect; the reader or hearer goes doubtfully along, uncertain 
 where the rhymes fall, and whether he is given ordinary alternate 
 rhymes or not. Much more important was Wyatt's service in 
 introducing into English the Italian sonnet and ottava rima 
 (abababcc), in the latter of which he was pleasantly successful. 
 Later poets, however, found the metre less capable of inclusive- 
 ness and of variation than the similar Spenserian stanza, and it 
 never was widely used. His sonnets, marred by the artificial 
 syllable-counting and wrenched accents just mentioned, are 
 heavy reading, and much inferior to Surrey's. An original 
 experiment of Wyatt's was what Saintsbury calls "intertwisted 
 decasyllabics" (ababcbcdcdede, etc.), which, as the same authority 
 says, "has more the effect of blank verse than of any rhyme 
 whatever." The English ear cannot, or will not, carry changing 
 rhymes very far. With the exception of the octave of the sonnet, 
 and the In Memoriam metre, we decline, as a rule, any greater 
 separation or longer continuance than alternate rhymes. 
 
 Another metre of Wyatt's was the "poulter's measure" (alter- 
 nate iambic hexameter and iambic heptameter) rhymed aabb,
 
 110 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 etc. The name was given it by Gascoigne, on the ground that it 
 proffered twelve for one dozen and fourteen for another. He 
 calls it, exaggeratingly, the "commonest sort of verse which we 
 use nowadays"; but at least it was not unfamiliar to the minor 
 versifiers of the time. Just why it pleased the popular ear for a 
 while is hard to discover, for it made a rule out of what was an 
 exception in Middle English ballad-chronicles, and seems to 
 belong to crude rather than Italianized days. 
 
 It is glory enough for Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey the 
 greatest poet from Chaucer's day to his own, to say that he was 
 the pioneer, and a successful one, in the use of blank verse in 
 English. The investigation of this great form from Surrey to 
 "Marlowe's mighty line," and from Marlowe to Tennyson's 
 Idyls of the King does not belong here. It is enough to say 
 that Surrey's translation of the second and fourth books of the 
 Mneid is a landmark in the history of English poetry. 
 
 The Italians were at that time beginning their movement to 
 remand rhyme into the suburbs of their good pleasure, as a 
 modern and rather discreditable thing, in comparison with un- 
 rhymed quantitative verse after the classical Latin model. Hence 
 the unrhymed Italia Liber ata of Trissino, etc, in versi sciolti 
 (freed from end-rhyme and depending on scansion) ; and hence, 
 as we shall see presently, the great onslaught on rhyme by a very 
 active school of English poets, poetasters, and critics. Just how 
 far Surrey, a constant student of Italian models, was influenced 
 by them in his use of blank verse is difficult to say; but so 
 sonorous and majestic a vehicle for poetic thought dramatic, 
 philosophical, and even narrative was bound to come. It is at 
 any rate improbable that Marlowe, though a translator from 
 the Latin, was influenced by the anti-rhymers. 
 
 Surrey, like Wyatt, sometimes counted syllables to fill the verse, 
 and threw forced accents on syllables unable to bear it; but 
 in both faults he was a less sinner than Wyatt. He did not rhyme 
 -eth :- eth, -ing : -ing, or -on : -on. Y (indifferent with i or e} rhymes 
 of course occur in him, and have come down through the cen- 
 turies. A few of his more unusual rhymes are wolf : gulph; rest: 
 beast; assays : ease ; face : alas the two last words undoubtedly 
 representing the same pronunciation in his day.
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 111 
 
 The gem in Surrey's rich, if small, volume is the famous allit- 
 erative sonnet on Spring, in which the lingering utterance 
 belonging to most descriptive and meditative verse makes en- 
 joyable even the unusual accent of his day and school : 
 
 "The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings, 
 
 With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale : 
 The nightingale with feathers new she sings ; 
 
 The turtle to her mate hath told her tale. 
 Summer is come, for every spray now springs : 
 
 The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; 
 The buck in brake his winter coat he flings; 
 
 The fishes flete with new repaired scale. 
 The adder all her slough away she slings; 
 
 The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale ; 
 The busy bee her honey now she mings; 
 
 Whiter is worn that was the flowers' bale. 
 And thus I see among these pleasant things 
 Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs." 
 
 At this period of almost universal curiosity, novelties in verse 
 were appearing on every hand: now imported from Italy, and 
 now invented like Nash's pretty poem by the very prodigal- 
 ity of freshly-singing genius. Thus we have Turberville writing 
 eighteen-line stanzas, partly in dimeters, and with pleasure: 
 treasure : leisure : measure-rhymes that seem a century away 
 from Wyatt's heavy endings. Turberville also had the originality 
 to rhyme aaaxbbbx, the intentional abandonment of rhyme 
 making a good because unexpected finish, especially as coming 
 at the end of the shorter lines. 
 
 Spenser, the "poet's poet," the creator of what Taine calls a 
 "phantasmagoria," was a master-rhymer in two ways : the mellif- 
 luous felicity of his rhymes themselves, and the skill with which 
 they were made the means of binding verses together in beauti- 
 fully unified stanzas, of which the "Spenserian," that fine 
 expansion of the rhyme royal and the ottava rima, is of course the 
 chief. It is out of fashion now, but as long as English poetry is 
 read it will hold its place, not only in Spenser himself but also in 
 Thomson and now and then in Byron. Its other users failed 
 fully to catch its art. I will not enrich these pages with needless 
 specimens ; turn to your Spenser, take the Faerie Queene to the 
 brookside, and sit down and yield to the charm of the musical 
 steady flow.
 
 112 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 Spenser knew the rhyme-advantage of a long and sometimes 
 variant burden, as in the "That all the woods may answer, and 
 your echo ring" of the Epithalamion, or the "Sweet Thames, run 
 softly, till I end my song" of the Prothalamion. His sonnets, in 
 two forms, are inferior to many produced by his contemporaries, 
 even by men of an ability much inferior to his own. As good as 
 any is "One day I wrote her name upon the strand" (in 
 ababbcbccdcdee form). This interlacing destroys both the Italian 
 and the Shakespearean schemes; but Spenser, who invented it, 
 sometimes so uses it as to preserve the sonnet-unity in a nice way. 
 
 It seems almost inexplicable that this master of rhyme should 
 have joined, though not very effectively, in the Elizabethan attack 
 on the art ; and that the creator of what has been called the most 
 perfect of all stanzas should have turned out unrhymed alleged 
 hexameters that would discredit a fairly bright schoolboy to-day. 
 
 Regarding the externalities of rhyme, he employed, but not 
 often, feminine endings, and sometimes forced the final accent so 
 that it fell upon this or that syllable of the closing word ; but this 
 license is far less common than in Wyatt, or even in Surrey. Of 
 identical rhymes one finds stor'd: stor'd: restor'd; play (verb): 
 play (noun); night : knight ; ornament: monument. At one ex- 
 treme we have girldnd: riband; and at the other perfection: in- 
 f Action (at the ends of pentameters). The following illustrate 
 differences in pronunciation between his day and ours : gras : 
 was; cast:plast (placed); heate: threate; envy: spy; wars: 
 years. But in the following the pronunciation is sundered: 
 mourne: learne; cherisht : florisht. Spenser sometimes resorted 
 to dialectal forms for rhyme-exactness ; e. g., swim : dim (climb) ; 
 jawes : wawes (waves) ; grieffe : clieffe. Assonance is found in 
 deckt:set; strains : became ; shepherd : bettered. 
 
 The remark is not exactly germane to the present discussion ; 
 but I cannot dismiss Spenser without reminding the reader that 
 the author of the greatest English narrative poem after Chaucer 
 could not scan the Canterbury Tales, but entirely missed the 
 measure, trying to make the Prologue go in four feet because he 
 did not understand the final e. 
 
 Examples of rhyme-freedom abound in the poets of the period. 
 Drummond has prescrib'd : depriv'd. The anonymous Elizabethan
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 113 
 
 lyrics are almost as wayward and for the same reason as the 
 ballads of the previous century. In them we find bitter: sweeter; 
 else : excels ; there : sphere ; surpass : was ; remorse : force ; fast : 
 waste; have: save; do: so; dainty : beauty ; meadows : willows ; 
 do you : wi' you. Some of these are once-current pronunciations ; 
 some are permissible stretchings of vowels ; some are assonances. 
 Sidney's one : groan was current vowel-use ; but his peace : 
 release : press : cease shows that he, like almost all English poets 
 who have ever written, was willing to force the sound under the 
 necessities of multiplying rhymes. He gives love : prove, as 
 Marlowe love : move. Love, in the sixteenth century, was 
 probably luv; but whatever its pronunciation at any time, the 
 poets have been compelled to treat it liberally, on account of its 
 necessity as an expression, and its few rhyming companions, on 
 any theory of utterance. 
 
 Herrick, who was virtually an Elizabethan, though he wrote in 
 the seventeenth century, was generally as accurate as any 
 modern rhymer, though of course some of his old pronunciations 
 make readers pause. His come : home appears in Scott, Moore, 
 and Emerson, home being almost in the position of love, as 
 regards its rhyming necessities. Pope, it may be remarked by 
 the way, has dome : come ; and Dryden home : plum and home : 
 comb : gum. Lark : clerk, in Herrick, survives in England but 
 not in the United States. No theory really justifies his 
 
 ."Some ask'd me where the rubies grew; 
 
 And nothing did I say, 
 But with my finger pointed to 
 The lips of Julia." 
 
 A chapter might be given to Herrick as true poet and facile 
 rhymester. I will only quote a stanza from his clever iambic 
 monometer Upon his Departure Hence : 
 
 ."Thus I 
 Pass by 
 
 And die 
 As one 
 Unknown 
 
 And gone." 
 
 Crashaw and Cowley, too, seem to belong with the Elizabethan 
 choir. In the Wishes for the Supposed Mistress of the former we 
 
 8 ,
 
 114 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 have great freedom lie : eye : destiny ; birth : forth : earth ; 
 wishes : blisses : kisses ; beauty : duty : shoe-tie ; up : shop : ope ; 
 here : clear : character; this is : wishes : kisses ; glory : before ye : 
 story. Here, as so often, jocosity leads to rhyme-freedom. In 
 his pronunciation survived the sixteenth-century perfect rhyme 
 now : you. 
 
 Cowley has envy' 'd: side; one: legion (on in both words); 
 sought : vault and sought : fault (old dropping of the / sound) ; 
 come: home (see above); heat: great; yet: bit. His tell .'un- 
 speakable suggests the nineteenth-century pre-Raphaelites, or 
 Whittier's "Pisa's leaning miracle," rhyming with tell. 
 
 In Crashaw's know : no we have a late survivor of the old 
 custom, so often mentioned. 
 
 Herbert has one poem (Easter Wings) in the shape of alleged 
 wings, and another (The Altar) in the form of a table with central 
 pillar, supporting a mensa. On the whole, his verse-tricks, 
 among which appears an anagram in shocking taste, seriously 
 impair the pleasure taken by the modern reader in the work of one 
 who, in occasional thought and phrase, was certainly a true poet. 
 Herbert makes frequent use of short rhyming lines, and in one 
 case (Heaven) he employs the echo device : 
 
 f Oh who will show me those delights on high? 
 Echo: I," etc. 
 
 In Paradise the rhymes of the successive stanzas drop a letter 
 after the first line: Grow : row : ow; charm : harm : arm ; start: 
 tart: art; spare: pare: are; friend: rend: end. Thrown: stone: 
 one, in the Sepulchre poem, proves the long o pronunciation of 
 one in Herbert's day. Venture: centre indicates the contem- 
 porary sound of the former word. In the Jesu poem, in which, 
 according to the whimsical fashion of the time, the title- 
 word is resolved into "I ease you," the characters I and J 
 are used interchangeably, as is shown by the rhyme J: 
 instantly. 
 
 A curiosity in Herbert unmatched elsewhere, as far as I 
 know is the significance given to a rhyme-word by its delib- 
 erate transference from its proper place (in the last stanza 
 of Home):
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 115 
 
 " Come, dearest Lord, pass not this holy season, 
 
 My flesh and bones and joints do pray: 
 And even my verse, when by the rhyme and reason 
 The word is Stay, says ever, Come. 
 Oh show thyself to me, 
 Or take me up to thee I" 
 
 The Elizabethan lyrists so used end-rhyme as to give, in a great 
 variety of forms, a combined pleasure, as of the best Italian art 
 and the truest English freedom. The range is long and the 
 achievement high. To the general division belong masterpieces 
 as far apart as Shakespeare's "Poor soul, the centre of my sinful 
 earth" the highest personal expression he ever gave the 
 world; his tripping three-stressed "Crabbed age and youth"; 
 his tender "Fear no more the heat o'the sun" ; Lodge's Shelley an 
 "Like to the clear in highest sphere"; Constable's "Diaphenia 
 like the daffadowndilly," where the syllables scamper to catch 
 the metre, in the very sport of joyousness ; Wyatt's best poem, 
 "Forget not yet the tried intent," with its simply effective re- 
 frain ; Barnefield's "As it fell upon a day" ; and the stately eight- 
 een-line groups, half stanza, half strophe, of the Prothalamion. 
 
 In regard to the rhymes of Shakespeare, an interesting and 
 patient study of the subject has been made by the German 
 phonologist Wilhelm Victor, with the intention of determining 
 the pronunciation of the poet. He has classified, by evident or 
 supposed sounds, all the rhymes in the poems, and has prefixed 
 to his phonetic dictionary thereof an elaborate discussion of the 
 questions involved, with many allusions to rhymes in the plays. 
 
 Here, as in all delicate questions of pronunciation from 
 Chaucer's day to ours, uncertainties confront one at every step. 
 Victor's own ear, as shown by his phonetic devices and tables of 
 sounds, does not invariably seem, to the English student, suffi- 
 ciently trustworthy to enable him to determine close differences 
 which to many appear imperceptible or imaginary. "What," 
 indignantly exclaimed a Scotch divine transferred to a New York 
 pulpit, when his more Americanized daughter was endeavoring 
 to correct his dialectal pronunciation of the word in question, 
 "what is the dufference, anyway, between dufference and duf- 
 ference?" 
 
 Most of Victor's suggestions do not affect the essential quality
 
 116 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 of the rhyme at all ; and his nice arrangements of closely pairing 
 sounds, though some of them are unquestionable, are offset in 
 Shakespeare, as in nearly every English poet, by other rhymes in 
 which he evidently cared for nothing save a general similarity. 
 The book, however, is a valuable finding-list, and must grate- 
 fully be accepted as a body of salient suggestions. To it the 
 interested student may turn for himself; only a few points can 
 be considered here. 
 
 Victor deems significant the rhyming, by themselves, of aim, 
 exclaim, maim, as over against the separate group of blame, came, 
 dame, defame, fame, frame, inflame, lame, name, same, shame, and 
 tame. That is, he thinks that Shakespeare differentiated between 
 modern simple long a in blame and a semi-diphthongal ai in aim 
 ("a in can followed bye in be") as also in aid, etc. But the 
 New English Dictionary gives ei for both blame and aim; the list 
 of aim-rhymes is too short to prove much ; and we have dame : 
 remain in The Passionate Pilgrim. Such uncertainties in the 
 crucial points of Victor's arguments even in the poems, more 
 accurately rhymed than the rhyming lines in the plays tend to 
 throw us back upon A. J. Ellis's conclusion that Shakespeare's 
 puns and rhymes illustrate nothing save his general way of 
 speech, and cannot enable us to reconstruct a system of Eliza- 
 bethan phonetics. One or two such rhymes as wretch, : scratch or 
 neck : back (Venus and Adonis) offset a hundred alleged niceties 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Lined: mind: wind: Rosalind, in As You Like It, are made I 
 by Victor and 81 by Sweet and Ellis ; but in Love's Labor 's Lost 
 we have Longaville : compile and Longaville : ill, indifferently. 
 So long as the letter is the same or the sound somewhat similar, 
 Shakespeare cares little for the second rhyming word; thus we 
 have quickly : unlikely ; enrich' d: beseech' d; shift: theft; wit: 
 yet; imprinted : contented ; spirit : merit ; commission : impres- 
 sion. Such cases as these Victor frankly recognizes as not being 
 close rhymes ; indeed, he once states that his general contention 
 is only that Shakespeare used a greater number of "perfect" 
 rhymes than is generally supposed. The percentage of perfect 
 rhymes in Shakespeare is smaller than in Chaucer, but larger 
 than in such a modern romantic poet as Keats.
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 117 
 
 Shakespeare's groin : swine suggests the universal eighteenth- 
 century pronunciation of join, toil, etc., as a*. Probably 
 Shakespeare's joined: coined; boil: spoil and foiled: toiled were 
 also 9i. 
 
 On the old monosyllabic-dissyllabic fire: higher question, 
 Shakespeare throws no light save in the rhymes relier : desire ; 
 relier : retire. 
 
 Are: care and were: appear remind 'us that er and wzr are 
 probable Shakespearean pronunciations. A and e, in a long list 
 of similar words, have always been in an uncertain state. The 
 same remark may be made of granting : wanting. Wanting (a) 
 is probably Shakespearean; but, on the other hand, a recent 
 American phonetician gives 9 for grant as the present normal 
 pronunciation. Rhyme, after all, goes but a short and uncertain 
 way as a guide to pronunciation. Been: seen (i) and rather: 
 father (a) are heard in twentieth-century England ; while in the 
 United States one hears been: sin (i) and rather: gather (se). 
 Thomas Lovell Beddoes, in one of his letters, says that "the best 
 use of rhyme is that it teaches pronunciation"; but if no half- 
 dozen people, even in the same environment, may be trusted to 
 pronounce literature, news, girl, water, in precisely the same way, 
 how can we dogmatize when we undertake to settle, by their 
 rhymes, the pronunciation of Chaucer and Shakespeare ? When 
 intentional variability, which we have found from the first use 
 of end-rhyme, is added to this difficulty of establishing even 
 contemporary speech on any basis of phonetic unity, it behooves 
 us to be modest. 
 
 The / in balk had perhaps disappeared in Shakespeare's day, 
 and he rhymes balk: hawk. But he also has the surprising 
 assonantal rhyme talk: halt. 
 
 Leap : reap appears but once in the poems, and leaps : steps 
 once; in Merry Wives is leap: unswept suggestive of the 
 modern dialectal preterite swep ("he swep the crossink" 
 Thackeray's Yellowplush). Dread: bed and dreadeth : leadeth 
 also illustrate Shakespeare's constant indifference in the use of ea 
 and e. Great rhymes with defeat and get, and greater with better. 
 Eats : gets reverses the tense of Milton's feat : eat (preterite) ; but 
 the pronunciation and orthography of eat, in the present and past
 
 118 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 tenses, have been shaky for three centuries. Defeated : created, 
 as Victor says, "looks like an eye-rhyme." 
 
 Interesting, in one way or another, are publisher : singular : 
 orator; enter : venture ; departure : shorter ; heard : regard ; art: 
 convert; read (present tense) : indeed, and also o'er-read: (present) 
 dead; again: brain, and also again: pen; grapes: mishaps; 
 water : flatter ; dally : folly ; moan : upon ; noon : son ; adder : 
 shudder. 
 
 Shakespeare pronounced o in almost any way : e. g., roaming : 
 coming; no man: woman; Rome: room; Jove: love; man: one; 
 one : shoon ; noon : son ; store : poor ; propose : lose ; sycamore : 
 hour. Still greater indifference is shown by daughter : slaughter 
 and daughter: after, while elsewhere are caught her: slaughter: 
 halter. 
 
 Finally, of queer rhymes, sometimes mere assonance, we have 
 blemish: replenish; remember' d: tender' d; empty: plenty; be- 
 time: Valentine; him: win; dooms: moons; come: sung; open: 
 broken; teeth: with; and the astonishing only in: 6f good women, 
 which has caused the commentators to sit up o' nights. 
 
 Shakespeare, in general, observed the usual prosodic and 
 melodic laws of his day. He was at the farthest remove from 
 deserving the remark of a recent critic that "Shakespeare, that 
 royal libertine, could not be expected to reverence the laws." 
 Save as he treated English rhyme as a free, not a fettered, thing 
 he was orderly throughout. To his rhymes he gave full value. 
 Even in his eccentricities he was not the most wayward of the 
 Elizabethans. Alliteration is moderately used; he knew the 
 unwisdom, in an age devoted to end-rhyme, of carrying "raging 
 rocks and shivering shocks" too far. Thought-rhyme and tone 
 color appear everywhere, as needed. 
 
 The fact that rhymes and "end-stopped" lines occur much 
 more frequently in the earlier plays than in the later is too well 
 known to need amplification, even in a study of English rhyme. 
 In Love's Labor 's Lost there are two rhymed lines to one of blank 
 verse. In The Comedy of Errors there are 380 rhymed lines and 
 1150 unrhymed; in The Tempest only two rhymed lines; in A 
 Winter's Tale none (Dowden). The same student reminds us 
 that A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, i, 169-77, is all rhyme
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 119 
 
 (it is monorhyme) ; that Richard III was, more than any other 
 of the plays, "under the influence of the great master of blank 
 verse, Marlowe" ; that "in so late a play as Othello Shakespeare 
 introduces rhyme to fulfil a special purpose when he sees fit" 
 (e.g., I, iii, 201-19; II, i, 141-69); that "in All's Well rhyme 
 is employed as a vehicle for generalizing reflections"; and that 
 blank verse, run-on lines, and light endings increased as Shake- 
 speare gained in mastery. 
 
 In the plays rhyme is used to mark ends of scenes, or " asides," 
 to be noticed by the audience. E. A. Abbott (Shakespearean 
 Grammar) says that Shakespeare uses prose for comic scenes, 
 letters, etc., "where it is desirable to lower the dramatic pitch"; 
 for colloquial parts ; for frenzy (Othello, IV, i, 34-44) ; for mad- 
 ness (Lear, IV, vi, 130); and for "the higher flights of the 
 imagination" (Hamlet, II, ii, 310-20). 
 
 Sometimes Homer nods, and sometimes Shakespeare writes the 
 poorest of prose in rhymed form, e. g. : 
 
 f Do not say so, Lysander, say not so, 
 What though he love thy Hermia? Lord, what though?" 
 
 A curious variation for the sake of the rhyme is to be found in 
 the well-known song in Much Ado, where (First Folio) one 
 stanza begins "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more," rhyming 
 with shore; and the next "Sing no more ditties, sing no mo," 
 rhyming with so. 
 
 The Shakespearean sonnet (ababcdcdefefgg) is undoubtedly 
 inferior to the Italian in form, and is really three four-line stanzas 
 and a two-line coda. But Shakespeare made it the vehicle of 
 some of the noblest and most beautiful of his thoughts ; he never 
 wrote anything greater than Sonnet CXLVI. Sonnet XCIX 
 has fifteen lines, rhyming ababacdcdefefgg ; and CXXVI twelve, 
 rhyming aabbccddeeff really not a sonnet at all, but six heroic 
 couplets. Sonnet XX is in feminine rhymes alone, a device 
 successful here, by intention, but one which the author did not 
 repeat. In general, Shakespeare's success in giving a true sonnet- 
 effect, while discarding the Italian plan of making a statement in 
 the octet and an application in the sextet, is a constant surprise, 
 coming as it did, at a time when Italian influences were para-
 
 120 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 mount. A certain similarity of application or climax may 
 naturally be found between the closing couplets of the sonnets 
 and those of Shakespeare's six-line stanzas (ababcc) in Venus and 
 Adonis, or the rhyme royal (ababbcc) of The Rape of Lucrece. 
 
 Shakespeare's rhymes fairly cover those of his contemporaries, 
 which need not here be discussed in extenso. As regards rhyme, 
 there was a large similarity among the Elizabethan writers, 
 looking back, as they did, to Chaucer and forward to Dryden. 
 Italian influences, and necessary lyrical freedom, affected verse- 
 forms rather than rhyming uses. Marlowe's 
 
 or his 
 
 f'By shallow rivers, to whose falls 
 Melodious birds sing madrigals," 
 
 "The shepherd swains shall dance and sing 
 For thy delight, each May morning," 
 
 would not have been foreign to Keats or Shelley; while the 
 correct but rather wooden heroic couplets of his Hero and Leander 
 did not differ from eighteenth-century work, save that the rhymes 
 were somewhat less forced. Out of 82 consecutive lines in this 
 poem the only ones not absolute, in our modern speech, are 
 blood: stood; throne: upon; none: moan; sphere : there ; wand: 
 hand; taste: surpast; tell ye: belly; suffice: eyes; his: kiss; 
 and at least three of these were probably correct according to 
 the pronunciation of his time. 
 Marston's wretched 
 
 f'But, Punicus, of all I '11 bear with thee, 
 That fain would be thy mistress' smug monkey" 
 
 illustrates the point that lingering or forced rhymes do not befit 
 unimportant syllables or mean words. 
 
 Jonson's wishing: kissing is like Crashaw's wishes: kisses. 
 To him gunpowder: quicksilver was an allowable rhyme. His 
 abounding fondness for the whimsical appeared even in his 
 commemorative ode "To the Immortal Memory and Friendship 
 of that Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Gary and Sir H. Morison," the 
 first "regular Pindaric" ode in English, duly equipped by the 
 author with "turn," "counter-turn," and "stand," each three
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 121 
 
 times repeated. In this he split his own name between what 
 earlier or later would have been called the III 2 (antistrophe) 
 and III 3 (epode) divisions : 
 
 f'He leaped the present age, 
 
 Possess'd with holy rage, 
 To see that bright eternal day; 
 Of which we priests and poets say 
 Such truths as we expect for happy men: 
 And there he lives with memory, and Ben 
 
 "Jonson, who sung this of him, ere he went, 
 
 Himself, to rest, 
 Or taste a part of that full joy he meant 
 
 To have express'd 
 In this bright asterism. 
 Where it were friendship's schism, 
 Were not his Lucius long with us 'to tarry, 
 To separate these twi- 
 Lights, the Dioscuri; 
 And keep the one half from his Harry. 
 But fate doth so alternate the design, 
 Whilst that in heaven, this light on earth must shine." 
 
 We should remember that in the age of "conceits" it was con- 
 sidered proper to introduce almost any kind of fancy into carved 
 epitaphs themselves, and of course into mortuary poetry. 
 
 Jonson, the blank-verse tragedian of Sejanus, was also the 
 light comedian of The Knight of the Burning Pestle; and in 
 one of his jovial moods of not unkindly satire he enlivened the 
 literary criticism of his day by 
 
 ."A FIT OF RHYME AGAINST RHYME 
 
 f Rhyme, the rack of finest wits, 
 That expresseth but by fits 
 
 True conceit, 
 
 Spoiling senses of their treasure, 
 Cozening judgment with a measure, 
 
 But false weight ; 
 
 Wresting words from their true calling, 
 Propping verse for fear of falling 
 
 To the ground ; 
 
 Jointing syllables, drawing letters, 
 Fastening vowels, as with fetters 
 
 They were bound ! 
 Soon as lazy thou wert known, 
 All good poetry hence was flown, 
 
 And art banished ;
 
 122 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 For a thousand years together 
 All Parnassus green did wither 
 
 And wit vanished. 
 Pegasus did fly away; 
 At the wells no muse did stay 
 
 But bewailed. 
 So I see the fountain dry 
 And Apollo's music die, 
 
 All light failed. 
 
 Starveling rhymes did fill the stage 
 Not a poet in an age, 
 
 Worthy crowning; 
 Not a work deserving bays, 
 Nor a line deserving praise, 
 
 Pallas frowning. 
 
 Greek was free from rhyme's infection; 
 Happy Greek, by this protection, 
 
 Was not spoiled, 
 
 Whilst the Latin, queen of tongues, 
 Is not yet free from rhyme's wrongs, 
 
 But rests foiled. 
 
 Scarce the hill again does flourish, 
 Scarce the world a wit doth nourish, 
 
 To restore 
 
 Phoebus to his crown again, 
 And the muses to their brain 
 
 As before. 
 
 Vulgar languages that want 
 Words and sweetness, and be scant 
 
 Of true measure, 
 Tyrant rhyme hath so abused 
 That they long since have refused 
 
 Other pleasure. 
 He that first invented thee, 
 May his joints tormented be, 
 
 Cramped forever; 
 Still may syllables jar with time 
 Still may reason war with rhyme, 
 
 Resting never I 
 
 May his sense, when it would meet 
 The cold tumor in his feet, 
 
 Grow unsounder; 
 And his title be long Fool, 
 That in rearing such a school 
 
 Was the founder." 
 
 At the close of the sixteenth century the impact of the Revival 
 of Learning upon England was so strong that a number of poets 
 and critics made a determined effort to follow those Italians 
 Alberti, Trissino, and others who had endeavored to cast out
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 123 
 
 rhyme from vernacular poetry and substitute classical measures. 
 As Greek and Latin verse depend upon quantity and English 
 verse upon stress or accent (usually coinciding with quantity) 
 these attempts were foredoomed to failure. If the rules of 
 classical quantity alone were applied to English verse, accent 
 parted company, and the lines would not scan. If, on the other 
 hand, English accent were substituted for classical quantity the 
 result was so unclassical that there seemed no reason why rhyme 
 should not be added. In fact, from Sir Philip Sidney's " Asclepia- 
 dics" to Swinburne's " Choriambics " and Tennyson's " Hendeca- 
 syllabics" the only classical measure that has become more than a 
 scholarly amusement in any Teutonic language has been the 
 hexameter. Goethe in German, and Clough, Kingsley, and 
 Longfellow in English have won at least a succes d'estime in this 
 form of verse; but their hexameters have been accentual 
 throughout. 
 
 As the hexameter was the measure of Homer and Virgil, the 
 Elizabethan classicists made it their rallying point. Some were 
 willing that it should be rhymed ; most wished to discard rhyme 
 as a vulgar and intrusive invention. In English and mediaeval 
 Latin rhyme they found little save a multitude of cheap jingles ; 
 for to them Chaucer was antiquated and partly unintelligible; 
 Shakespeare had not come to his own; and Spenser, whose 
 earlier work they admired, at one time joined the anti-rhyme 
 crusade. But the masters of Greece and Rome loomed large, in 
 the glory of the Renaissance; therefore their methods, down to 
 the minutest detail, should be the final models for English poetry. 
 Dante, for some reason, was strangely ignored in the argument. 
 
 The battle began with the publication of Roger Ascham's 
 The Scholemaster (1570). Ascham was sympathetic with 
 Puritanism, but looked with favor upon Italian humanistic 
 canons. Somewhat inconsistent in his criticisms of the Morte 
 Darthur and the poems of chivalry, for immorality, while he com- 
 mended Virgil, Ascham felt that poetry should be artistic, not 
 merely natural. He was a pioneer in believing classical metres 
 transferable into English; yet, he said, English must not be a 
 mere imitator. Ascham's position was really due to his inability 
 to appreciate romance or romantic sources an inability which
 
 124 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 has survived, in some places, to our own day, and sometimes has 
 ruled the whole literary field. His grand thesis, which was copied 
 as indefinitely as ignorantly by many of his successors, was that 
 "our rude beggarly rhyming" was "brought first into Italy by 
 Goths and Huns, when all good verses and all good learning too 
 were destroyed by them, and after carried into France and 
 Germany, and at last received into England by men of excellent 
 wit indeed, but of small learning and less judgment in that be- 
 half." In wiser times, he said, men should follow wiser that 
 is, classical examples. It is foolish "to eat acorns with swine, 
 when we may freely eat wheat bread amongst men." Chaucer, 
 Surrey, Wyatt, and others were commendable for translating 
 some Latin authors, but if they had been "directed to follow 
 the best examples, and not have been carried by time and custom 
 to content themselves with that barbarous and rude rhyming, 
 amongst their other praises, which they have justly deserved, 
 this had not been the least, to be counted amongst men of learn- 
 ing and skill more like unto the Grecians than unto the Gothians 
 in handling of their verse." Quintilian, said Ascham, did not 
 like rhyme, and Quintilian's company was good enough for him. 
 
 But Ascham was not to blame for the miserable verse produced 
 by the English manufacturers of "classical" metres. He per- 
 ceived that the monosyllabic character of English lent itself ill 
 to the dactyl, which was indispensable in Greek and Latin scan- 
 sion. Yet, although "carmen exametrum doth rather trot and 
 hobble than run smoothly in our English tongue," he saw no 
 reason why English could not "receive carmen iambicum as 
 naturally as either Greek or Latin." It would take some work 
 and care, but work was the very thing that had been neglected by 
 the authors of the "lewd and rude rhymes" which filled the shops. 
 
 Ascham's dislike of rhyme, he went on to assure his readers, 
 did not begin "of any newf angle 1 singularity," but had long been 
 shared by many wise men. The defence of rhyme had been due, 
 in part, to the rhymers' ignorance, and in part to their jealousy 
 of the superior powers of those who could write in unrhymed 
 classical measures. 
 
 Ascham praised Surrey for dropping rhyme in his translation 
 1 "New-fangelnesse" is in Chaucer.
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 125 
 
 of the fourth book of the Mneid, but frankly said that Surrey's 
 "feet" were "feet without joints," "that is to say, not distinct by 
 true quantity of syllables; and so such feet be but numb feet." 
 Admitting this, he returns to his charge, and urges his readers to 
 avoid ignorance and idleness, the parents of English rhyme, and 
 study Virgil and Horace as Virgil and Horace studied Homer 
 and Euripides. Then, without giving any proof of the priority, 
 aside from the name of Surrey, he rejoices "that even poor 
 England prevented Italy first in spying out, then in seeking to 
 amend, this fault in learning." 
 
 In 1575 appeared George Gascoigne's Ceriayne Notes of 
 Instruction concerning the Making of Verse or Ryme in English, 
 written at the request of Master Edouardo Donati. It is interesting 
 if only for its usually correct diagrams of scansion. 
 
 Gascoigne aristocratically discriminated between "English 
 rhymes" and "English verses," and deplored the fact that the 
 rhymers so prevalently used the "foot of two syllables, whereof 
 the first is depressed or made short, and the second is elevate or 
 made long." Excessive alliteration he denounced, and said: 
 "Ne quid nimis" ; though this "figure," "being modestly used, 
 lendeth good grace to a verse." Keep the words in their proper 
 pronunciation and order, unless "rhyme enforceth"; but even 
 then yield sparingly. "Do not let rhyme run away with reason, so 
 that the sense is twisted by a second word which mars your idea, 
 or you go back and spoil the first word for the sake of the second ; 
 . . . but do you always hold your first determined invention, 
 and do rather search the bottom of your brains for apt words 
 than change good reason for rumbling rhyme." 
 
 With the naivete which makes his treatise delightful in the 
 acrid controversy of the time, he gives us a little rhyming dic- 
 tionary, as follows : 
 
 "To help you a little with rhyme (which is also a plain young 
 scholar's lesson), work thus : when you have set down your first 
 verse take the last. word thereof and count over all the words of 
 the self-same sound by order of the alphabet: as, for example, 
 the last word of your first line is care, to rhyme therewith you 
 have bare, dare, dare, fare, gare, hare, and share, nare, snare, rare, 
 stare, and ware, etc. Of all these take that which best may
 
 126 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 serve your purpose, carrying reason with rhyme ; and if none of 
 them will serve so, then alter the last word of your former verse, 
 but yet do not willingly alter the meaning of your invention." 
 
 Finally, "I had forgotten a notable kind of rhyme, called riding 
 rhyme, and that is such as our Master and Father Chaucer used 
 in his Canterbury tales, and in divers other delectable and light 
 enterprises; but, though it come to my remembrance somewhat 
 out of order, it shall not yet come altogether out of time, for I 
 will now tell you a conceit which I had before forgotten to write : 
 you may see (by the way) that I hold a preposterous order in my 
 traditions ; but, as I said before, I write moved by good will, and 
 not to show my skill. Then to return to my matter, as this riding 
 rhyme serveth most aptly to write a merry tale, so rhyme royal is 
 fittest for a grave discourse. Ballads are best of matters of love, 
 and rondlettes most apt for the beating or handling of an adage 
 or common proverb ; sonnets serve as well in matters of love as of 
 discourse; dizaynes and sixaines for short fantasies; verlayes 
 for an effectual proposition, although by the name you might 
 otherwise judge of verlayes; and the long verse of twelve and 
 fourteen syllables, although it be nowadays used in all themes, 
 yet in my judgment it would serve best for psalms and hymns." 
 
 The correspondence (1579-1580) between Edmund Spenser 
 and Gabriel Harvey on "Reformed Versifying" and related 
 topics is of interest because of the eminence of the former and 
 the activity of the latter. Harvey, as a prose writer, was sometimes 
 turgid and inelegant, and always without charm. No poet him- 
 self his verse is for the most part atrocious he was a poor 
 advocate of poetic reforms. He may be described as a sort of 
 Cotton Mather in the field of aesthetics. In his letters he em- 
 phasized, as had Ascham, the superiority of the long-prized 
 masterpieces of classical antiquity over the crude jingling 
 ballads and romances of the new European literatures. 
 
 Harvey was a "hexametrist," but failed to understand blank 
 verse, probably because it was not classical in form. Though a 
 classicist and anti-rhymer, Harvey was an advocate of stress as 
 over mere quantity. To him accent was the important thing, 
 and syllables were made long or short only by "the common 
 allowed and received prosody, taken up by a universal consent
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 127 
 
 of all, and continued by a general use and custom of all." Yet 
 he thought that English verse could be improved by the further 
 application of classical methods to its rhythm. Incidentally, he 
 hoped to diminish the divergences between rhythmical stress, 
 accent, and quantity by securing "one and the same orthog- 
 raphy" for English. Harvey's denunciations of the attempts 
 made by some of his fellow-classicists of the extremer order to 
 justify "majestic, royaltie, honestie, sciences, faculties, excellent, 
 tavernour, manfully, faithfully, . . . bargdineth, following, har- 
 rowing, thoroughly," etc., show that rhyme and accent cannot 
 always be taken as a proof of contemporary pronunciation. 
 "Say you suddalnly, if you like; by my certainly and certainty 
 I will not. You may perceive by the premises (which very word 
 I would have you note, by the way, too) that the Latin is no rule 
 for us." "The majesty of our speech" he accounted "the only 
 infallible and sovereign rule of all rules." "In short, this is the 
 very short and the long : position neither maketh short nor long in 
 our tongue, but so far as we can get her good leave." 
 
 With so much of common sense in his idea of English versifica- 
 tion, it would seem strange that Harvey produced so much bad 
 non-rhyming verse and so severely criticised the rhymes of better 
 poets than himself, did we not remember that he prided himself 
 on being "the inventor of the English hexameter, whom learned 
 M. Stanihurst imitated in his Virgil, and excellent Sir Philip 
 Sidney disdained not to follow in his Arcadia and elsewhere." 
 The beauty of his hexameters may be illustrated by a very few 
 lines the fewer the better : 
 
 f Virtue sendeth a man to Renown; Fame lendeth Abundance; 
 Fame with Abundance maketh a man thrice blessed and happy; 
 So the reward of famous Virtue makes many wealthy, 
 And the regard of wealthy Virtue makes many blessed : 
 O blessed Virtue, blessed Fame, blessed Abundance, 
 O that I had you three with the loss of thirty commencements." 
 
 It will be noticed that "blessed" is accented in two ways 
 twice by quantity and once by pronunciation in the same line. 
 
 These are a fair specimen, not the worst. The reader will be 
 surprised to learn that 
 
 ."For squibbing and declaiming against many fruitless " 
 is a hexameter, in the opinion of its proud author.
 
 128 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 In various letters and prefaces, in later years, Harvey continued 
 to air his views and his personal grievances ; but added little to 
 his previous argument. The hexameter was "the sovereign of 
 verses and the high controller of rhymes"; it was good enough 
 for Homer and Virgil, and of it neither Alexander in conquest 
 nor Augustus in majesty was ashamed, "but accounted it the 
 only gallant trumpet of brave and heroical acts." "And I wis 
 the English is nothing too good to imitate the Greek or Latin." 
 
 In view of the fact that he was the greatest English poet be- 
 tween Chaucer and Shakespeare, Spenser's letters show an 
 amazing difference between critical theory and mellifluous 
 practice. They are fortunately few and short, being rather wordy 
 and whimsical; and they seem to indicate that the writer was 
 dabbling in a kind of criticism in which he felt no very deep 
 interest. There can be no doubt, however, that Spenser, who 
 was recognized by his contemporaries as a great poet, and was 
 himself pretty thoroughly Italianated, notwithstanding his origi- 
 nality, lent the influence of his name to the anti-rhyme crusade. 
 He went farther than Harvey in claiming that "carpenter" could 
 be sounded "carpenter" in verse, as bound by classical laws 
 of quantity. This was stoutly denied by Harvey. Spenser's 
 original work in unrhymed classical metres is barely scannable, 
 even according to Latin laws, and not at all according to his own 
 English practice in his real (rhymed) poems. It must be ad- 
 mitted, however, that some of the lines are rather pleasing prose, 
 or even poetry, in their balance of contrasted ideas. Spenser's 
 theory, at this time, was that we should "measure our accents by 
 the sound, reserving the quantity to the verse." The difficulty 
 with this neat maxim may be briefly stated : Quantity is either 
 sounded or it is not. If sounded, it destroys the ordinary pronun- 
 ciation; if not sounded, nobody will stop to think of it at all. 
 Whatever Greek or Latin quantity was, it must have had some 
 pleasurable and regulating effect on the ear ; but the quantity in 
 Spenser's line : 
 
 " Say th&t ragfng love d6th appl the we"ak stomdch " 
 
 certainly regulates nothing. 
 In 1579 "E. K." (name not known) addressed a letter to Gabriel
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 129 
 
 Harvey in praise of the Shepheprdes Calender of Spenser : " To 
 the most excellent and learned, both orator and poet, Master 
 Gabriel Harvey, his very special and singular good friend E. K. 
 commendeth the good liking of this his labor and the patronage 
 of the new poet." As regards rhyme, "E. K.'s" chief grievance 
 is that it leads to the misuse of the English language by the un- 
 warrantable introduction of "pieces and rags of other languages, 
 borrowing here of the French, there of the Italian, every where 
 of the Latin," making "our English tongue a gallimaufry or 
 hodgepodge of all other speeches." But "what in most English 
 writers useth to be loose, and as it were ungirt, in this author is 
 well grounded, finely framed, and strongly trussed up together. 
 In regard whereof, I scorn and spue out the rakehelly rout of 
 our ragged rhymers (for so themselves used to hunt the letter), 
 which without learning boast, without judgment jangle, without 
 reason rage and foam, as if some instinct of poetical spirit 
 had newly ravished them above the meanness of common 
 capacity." 
 
 In 1582 Richard Stanyhurst published in Leyden a translation 
 of the first four books of the Mneid, in fearsome hexameters of 
 the Harvey style. In his preface he made the now usual attack 
 on the "wooden rhymers" who swarmed in the stationers' shops ; 
 never instructed in any grammar school, and satisfied with the 
 commendation of the ignorant. But Stanyhurst, though he 
 undertook to scan by quantity, agreed with Harvey in saying 
 that "the ear, not orthography, must decide the quantity as near 
 as is possible." "Why should we, with the strings of the Latin 
 rules, cramp our tongue more than the Latins do fetter their 
 speech, as it were, with the chains of the Greek precepts?" 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie, written about 1583 and 
 printed 1595, is the only one of the critical treatises of the period 
 which has become a classic. It was immediately accepted as 
 important, and influenced all succeeding Elizabethan students of 
 poetry. This sweet-tempered critic and creator of verse stood 
 serenely between the two schools in the rhyme controversy, mainly 
 ignoring it. The lack of esteem of poetry in England was, he 
 thought, the fault of "poet-apes, not poets" ; and he conjured his 
 readers "no more to laugh at the name of poets as though they 
 
 9
 
 130 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 were next inheritors to fools, no more to jest at the reverent title 
 of a rhymer." 
 
 Sidney's "quantitative" verse, though inferior to his original 
 work, is much better than that of the classical reformers already 
 noticed. 
 
 " Ane schort Treatise conteining some reulis and cautelis to be 
 observit and eschewit in Scottis Poesie" (1584), by the illustrious 
 and all-wise King James the Sixth of Scotland and King James 
 the First of England the President Roosevelt or Kaiser Wil- 
 helm of his day is interesting in several ways. He was the 
 latest to advise alliteration: "Let all your verse be Literall, sa 
 far as may be, quhatsumever kynde they be of, bot speciallie 
 Tumbling verse for flyting. Be literall I meane that the maist 
 part of your lyne sail rynne upon a letter, as this tumbling lyne 
 rynnis upon F : 
 
 " ' Fetching fude for to feid it fast furth of the Fane.' " 
 
 King James's rule, "that ye rhyme not twice in one syllable; 
 as, for example, that ye make not prove and reprove rhyme to- 
 gether," may be regarded as the chronological end of a once per- 
 missible custom. Question and digestion he gives as examples of 
 words accented on the antepenult. He advises against lines com- 
 posed entirely of monosyllables, "because the most part of them 
 are indifferent, and may be in short or long place as ye like. 
 Some words of divers syllables are likeways indifferent, as 
 
 "'Thairfore, restore. 
 I thairfore, then.' 
 
 In the first thairfore, thair is short and fore is long ; in the other, 
 thair is long and fore is short; and yet both flow alike well." 
 This bit of common sense is interesting, coming as it does in the 
 middle of the period of the attempted revival of quantity in 
 English. 
 
 "A Discourse of English poetrie. Together with the authors 
 judgment, touching the re-formation of our English Verse. By 
 William Webbe, Graduate" (1586), was a violent but consistent 
 attack on the "rude multitude of rustical rhymers who will be 
 called poets," and an attempt to teach them the "right practice
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 131 
 
 and orderly course of true poetry." Webbe who would deserve 
 scant attention had not his treatise been given serious considera- 
 tion by student after student found the country "pestered, all 
 shops stuffed, and every study furnished" with "innumerable 
 sorts of English books, and infinite fardels of printed pamphlets." 
 He knew "no memorable work written by any poet in our English 
 speech until twenty years past." By this he must definitely have 
 meant to belittle Chaucer, for he proceeded to discuss (apparently 
 without first-hand knowledge) Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate, 
 whom he regarded as poets of about equally low rank. He 
 denounced the "brutish poetry" "whereby the natural property 
 of the sweet Latin verse" had been converted into "a bald kind 
 of rhyming," the infection whereof would, he thought, never be 
 rooted up in England: "I mean this tinkerly verse which we 
 call rhyme." Then followed Ascham's Goth-Hun theory of the 
 origin of rhyme. The author of Piers Plowman was the first 
 known to Webbe to have "observed the quantity of our verse 
 without the curiosity of rhyme." 
 
 Webbe, on the whole, was a rather ignorant imitator; and 
 the rest of his treatise largely consisted of paraphrases of what 
 had already been said by Ascham and others, eked out by original 
 diatribes against "the uncountable rabble of rhyming ballad- 
 makers and compilers of senseless sonnets." But though rhyme 
 was a poor thing in itself, of barbarous origin and vulgar use, 
 it had become so ingrafted in English, and had borne such 
 good fruit at the hands of the best poets, that Webbe would 
 retain it, as of necessity, and dignify it by better practice. Rhyme 
 or rhythm ought to be a just proportion in any kind of composi- 
 tion ; and especially in verse should it be guarded by all possible 
 limitations, "bettered, and made more artificial, according to 
 the worthiness of our speech." Rhyme, with all its faults, "in 
 our English tongue beareth as good grace, or rather better, 
 than in any other." There should be, however, a "far more 
 learned manner of versifying," which Webbe proceeded to ex- 
 plain. Verses should be answerable to each other, or to the ac- 
 companying tune; words should not be wrested from their 
 "natural inclination or affectation," "or more truly the true 
 quantity thereof"; and they should be made to "fall together
 
 132 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 mutually in rhyme, that is, in words of like sound, but so as the 
 words be not disordered for the rhyme's sake, nor the sense 
 hindered. These be the most principal observations which I 
 think requisite in an English verse"; and certainly nobody can 
 object to them. But Webbe was not aware that he was exactly 
 describing the practice and the triumph of Chaucer himself. 
 
 Apparently Webbe started with the intention of attacking 
 rhyme as such, but, made timorous by the fame and excellence 
 of Spenser's Shepheardes Calendar, then esteemed the ne plus 
 ultra of poetic attainment, he changed his course and declared 
 himself merely a judicious reformer, on classical lines. He 
 then proceeded to give schemes of feet and verses of various 
 lengths, rhyme-arrangements, etc., in the course of which he 
 sensibly and clearly indicated the naturalness of the iambic 
 movement in English, and the impossibility of transposing it 
 for the sake of quantity, real or alleged. Wrest no word, unless 
 its accent be indifferent, from "his natural propriety." Further- 
 more, do not obscure or twist the fit grammatical order for the 
 sake of rhyme. Then, having in one catholic paragraph attacked 
 rhyme as the cause of "the greatest decay of that good order of 
 versifying which might ere this have been established in our 
 speech," and also apologized for it as deserving "praise, especially 
 where it is with good judgment ordered," Webbe gave the ele- 
 ments of a rhyming-dictionary, even advising the memorizing 
 of words for the sake of fluency in extempore rhyming, and took 
 time to explain certain "rare devices and pretty inventions" 
 wherewith rhymers might amuse their readers and hearers; 
 but yet for it was time for his pendulum to swing back again 
 he was "fully and certainly persuaded that if the true kind 
 of versifying in imitation of Greeks and Latins had been practised 
 in the English tongue, and put in use from time to time by our 
 poets, who might have continually been mending and polishing 
 the same, every one according to their several gifts, it would 
 long ere this have aspired to as full perfection as in any other 
 tongue whatsoever." 
 
 Some of Webbe's quantities, as given in his illustrative ex- 
 amples of feet and verses, are interesting. Omitting those which 
 are common in present use, we find goodness called a spondee
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND] RHYME CONTROVERSY 133 
 
 ( ) ; hitJier a pyrrhic (w w) ; dying an iambus (v/ -) ; forgive- 
 ness a molossus ( ) ; -merrily a tribrach (v/ w v) ; travel- 
 lers an anapaest (^ w -) ; remembers a bacchius (w ) ; 
 accorded a palimbachius ( w) ; dangerous a cretic ( - w -) ; 
 rejoiced an amphibrach (w - w). The -&/ of gladly (adverb) is 
 short, and the -lie of goodlie (adjective) long. Surrey's hexam- 
 eters seemed to Webbe to be "without regard of true quantity 
 of syllables." He included in his treatise hexameters and sap- 
 phi cs of his own; but his idea of hexameters showing "the very 
 perfection" of "all the rules and observations of the best versify- 
 ing" is shown by his citing, from "one Master Watson, fellow 
 of St. John's College in Cambridge, about 40 years past," the 
 following melodious and easily-scanned lines : 
 
 "All tr3,v611ers do gladlfe rgport great praise t8 Ulysses, 
 For that h6 knew manle men's manners, and saw many citties." 
 
 It was by such means that Webbe trusted to "have English 
 poetry at a higher price in a short space: and the rabble of 
 bald rhymes shall be turned to famous works, comparable (I 
 suppose) with the best works of poetry in other tongues." 
 
 In 1589, with his preface to Robert Greene's "Menaphon: 
 Camilla's Alarum to slumbering Euphues in his melancholy 
 cell at Silexdra," the preface being addressed "to the Gentle- 
 men Students of both universities" appeared Thomas Nash, 
 the most violent of all the controversialists, on either side of the 
 rhyme discussion. Nash vigorously opposed Harvey and 
 his school. Like Campion, who was to follow, he utterly dis- 
 believed in the possibility of the hexameter in English, as taking 
 the place it occupied in ancient literatures; but he did not 
 share Campion's urbanity. He was so angry that he could not 
 stop to be grammatical, when he thought of the "idiot art 
 masters" who "think to outbrave better pens " with the "swell- 
 ing bumbast of a bragging blank verse. Indeed, it may be the 
 ingrafted overflow of some kilcow conceit, that overcloyeth 
 their imagination with a more than drunken resolution, being 
 not extemporal in the invention of any other means to vent 
 their manhood, commits the digestion of their choleric incum- 
 brances to the spacious volubility of a drumming decasillabon."
 
 134 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 Stanyhurst, he says, in his hexameter Virgil "revived by his 
 ragged quill such carterly variety as no hodge ploughman in a 
 country but would have held as the extremity of clownery;" 
 in proof of which Nash quoted these two lines from a descrip- 
 tion of a tempest: 
 
 "Then did he make heaven's vault to rebound, with rounce hobble 
 
 hobble 
 Of ruff raff roaring, with thwick thwack thurlery bouncing." 
 
 Nash returned to the subject of poetry in The Anatomy of 
 Absurdity, issued the same year. Here rhyme was not his special 
 theme, but he agreed with the anti-rhymers in denouncing 
 "those exiled Abbie-lubbers" from whose idle pens proceeded 
 "those worn-out impressions of the feigned nowhere acts of 
 Arthur of the Round Table, Arthur of Little Britain, Sir Tris- 
 tram, Huon of Bordeaux, the Squire of Low Degree, the Four 
 , Sons of Amon, with infinite many others." Nor could he be 
 patient with the old romancers who made "scambling shift" 
 to end their verses alike ; and he cited some of the rougher lines 
 in Sir Bevis of Hampton. 
 
 Nash was merely a literary soldier of fortune, to whom it 
 made little difference whether he were attacking Puritanism or 
 hexameters, rhyme or no-rhyme. 
 
 Full in its view and refreshingly temperate in its manner was 
 the famous Art of English Poesy which George Puttenham 
 published in 1589. In thoroughness and real helpfulness there 
 had been nothing so good in previous English criticism. Its 
 modesty, and its technical rather than general purpose, gave 
 it a practical value for those who did not care for the crotchets 
 of Harvey and the Harveyans, or for the eloquent generalities 
 of Sidney. Puttenham once more declared accent to be the final 
 arbiter, but readily admitted the serviceability of the study of 
 Latin masters. On the other hand, he allowed romantic poems 
 in unclassical forms. If English had not, and never could have, 
 Greek and Latin feet, it had "instead thereof twenty other 
 curious points in that skill more than they ever had, by reason 
 of our rhyme and tunable concords or symphony, which they 
 never observed."
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 135 
 
 Indeed, he anticipated many of the scholarly conclusions con- 
 cerning rhyme which were to be newly set forth in our own day. 
 Over against Greek and Latin quantity, he tells us, and earlier 
 than that art, was a "metrical poesy" and a "manner of rhyme" 
 used by the Hebrews and Chaldees. So "our vulgar running 
 poesy" was "the first and most ancient poesy, and the most 
 universal." "The American, the Perusine, and the very Can- 
 nibal do sing and also say their highest and holiest matters in 
 certain rhyming versicles, and not in prose, which proves also 
 that our manner of vulgar poesy is more ancient than the arti- 
 ficial of the Greeks and Latins, ours coming by instinct of 
 nature, which was before art or observation, and used with 
 the savage and uncivil, who were before all science or civility. 
 The natural poesy, therefore, being aided and amended by art, 
 and not utterly altered or obscured, but some sign left of it 
 (as the Greeks and Latins have left none), is no less to be 
 allowed and commended than theirs." This statement could 
 not be bettered to-day; its idea lies at the foundation of the 
 present review of the history of rhyme in England and 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Puttenham then proceeds to take up in order, and in a singu- 
 larly agreeable style, the decline of classical verse; the rise of 
 end-rhyme in Greek and Latin, under Northern influences, 
 until it "altered and almost split their manner of poesy"; and 
 the popularity of all sorts of rhyming Latin jingles political, 
 medical, proverbial, satirical, etc. in Charlemagne's time 
 and after. Even Ovid had rhymed by chance, and Puttenham 
 quotes the well-known "Quot coelum stellas," as he had already 
 given examples of mediaeval rhymes. Then comes one of the 
 "defences" of poetry so common at that day, with an appeal 
 to keep verse from "vain conceits, or vicious, or infamous," 
 and to limit it to wise or properly witty ideas, "the praise 
 of virtue and reproof of vice." Ancient forms of poetry are 
 reviewed at length, but without much originality; next the 
 author turns to the "vulgar makings" or imitations of the verse 
 of former times: "interlude, song, ballad, carol, and ditty" 
 terms borrowed from the French, but the word "song" is "our 
 natural Saxon English word." The chief native poets, as known
 
 136 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 to the writer, are characterized by name, Chaucer being "the 
 most renowned of them all." 
 
 The two following books of the treatise consist of a detailed 
 poetical rhetoric, under the divisions of "proportion poetical," 
 or form, and "ornament." All the arts appeal to various senses 
 by different but related means, "verses or rhyme by a kind of 
 musical utterance, by reason of a certain congruity in sounds 
 pleasing to the ear." The monosyllabic character of English 
 prevents the adoption of classical feet. Ancient quantity was 
 "a certain numerosity in utterance." "Take this away from 
 them I mean the running of their feet there is nothing of 
 curiosity among them more than with us, nor yet so much." 
 
 As for English measures, the caesura at the end of the eighth 
 syllable in a line of fourteen "is tedious, for the length of the 
 verse keepeth the ear too long from his delight, which is to hear 
 the cadence or the tunable accent in the end of the verse." But 
 the caesura ought to be kept precisely, in any long verse, if but 
 as a law to "correct the licentiousness of rhymers," who, if 
 allowed to go without rule, produce nothing better than "rhyme 
 doggerel." Though English has a "numerosity" or a "certain 
 flowing utterance by slipper words and syllables," something 
 like Greek or Latin quantity, it must chiefly rely upon "tunable 
 consents in the latter end of our verses," for which the monosyl- 
 labic nature of English is excellently fitted. Puttenham preferred 
 the rhyme-accent on the ultimate, and endured the penultimate, 
 but thought the antepenultimate suitable only for light, trivial, 
 or comical vise. Rhymers who wrench accent or orthography 
 (as in rhyming restore : door : poor; ram : came ; bean : den) have 
 not mastered their art. Rhymes both in the middle and at the 
 end of verses are cloying, trivial, and objectionable, save in bal- 
 lads or tavern-poetry; "in our courtly maker we banish them 
 utterly." Skelton, who was fond of them, was but a "rude rail- 
 ing rhymer," pleasing only the popular ear. 
 
 "Situation" is Puttenham's term for length and arrangement 
 of words, lines, and rhymes, which he declares to be of large 
 influence in the poetical result. His diagrams of couplets, 
 stanzas, etc., are numerous and clever. He wastes one chapter 
 by giving all sorts of devices of rhymes in the form of eggs,
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 137 
 
 lozenges, triangles, columns, pyramids, anagrams, posies, etc.; 
 but we must remember that he could hardly perceive that he 
 was thereby playing into the hands of the anti-rhymers by mak- 
 ing the subject ridiculous. After all, it was near the beginning 
 of the century in which even the sensible Sir Thomas Browne 
 was deeply interested in quincunxes. 
 
 Some of his illustrations of feet give countenance to the 
 quantitative attempts of the Harveyans, as patience (dactyl); 
 persisting (molossus); manifold (anapaest); lamenting (bac- 
 chius); forsaken (antibacchius) ; excellent (amphimacer). But 
 Puttenham admitted that "by usurpation" some words were 
 in his time accented even back of the antepenult, of which he 
 instances honorable, mdtrimony, pdtrimony, and miserable, 
 which "neither make a sweet cadence, nor easily find any word 
 of like quantity to match them." 
 
 Sir John Harington's preface to his own translation of the 
 Orlando Furioso (1591) "in English heroical verse," defended 
 the use of two-syllabled and three-syllabled rhymes, to which 
 some critics had taken exception. To him civility rhymed as 
 properly with facility, gentility, and eight other cited words as 
 with see, or decree, which he calls the "ancient manner of rhyme." 
 He justifies himself by the French feminine rhyme, and by Sir 
 Philip Sidney, who, he says, not only uses but affects such 
 rhymes as signify : dignify ; hide away: bide away. 
 
 In Francis Meres' "Palladis Tamia; Wit's Treasury" 
 (1598), a rambling note-book in catalogue style, merely com- 
 pendious of other men's opinions, Piers Plowman is mentioned 
 as "the first that observed the true quantity of our verse with- 
 out the curiosity of rhyme " ; and Surrey is commended for avoid- 
 ing "the fault of rhyming" in his translation of the fourth book 
 of the Mneid. 
 
 An interesting remark is that of George Chapman, in the 
 preface (1598) to an installment of his rhymed hexameter trans- 
 lation of Homer: "Let the length of the verse never discourage 
 your endeavors; for talk our quidditical Italianists of what 
 proportion soever their strutting lips affect, unless it be in these 
 couplets into which I have hastily translated this Shield, they 
 shall never do Homer so much right in any octaves, canzones,
 
 138 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 canzonets, or with whatsoever fustian epigraphs they shall entitle 
 their measures." 
 
 Professor Gregory Smith, in the introduction to his Eliza- 
 bethan Critical Essays, makes two effective quotations suggest- 
 ing the downfall of the anti-rhyme movement. One is from 
 the Hymnus in Cynthiam of Chapman's The Shadow of Night : 
 
 "Sweet poesy 
 
 Will not be clad in her supremacy 
 With those strange garments (Rome's hexameters), 
 As she is English ; but in right prefers 
 Our native robes (put on with skilful hands 
 English heroics) to those antic garlands." l 
 
 The other is from Bacon's De Augmentis: 
 
 "Illud reprehendendum, quod quidam antiquitatis nimium studiosi 
 linguas modernas ad mensuras antiquas (heroicas, elegiacas, sap- 
 phicas, etc.) traducere conati sunt; quas ipsarum linguarum fabrica 
 respuit, nee minus aures exhorrent. In hujusmodi rebus sensus judi- 
 cium artis praeceptis praeponendum. . . . Neque vero ars est, sed 
 artis abusus, cum ilia naturam non perficiat sed pervertat." 
 
 Thomas Campion's Observations in the Art of English Poesie 
 (1602) is chiefly interesting, like Spenser's letters, because of the 
 wide divergence between the poet's theory as an anti-rhymer 
 and his success as a rhymer. Campion was no Spenser, but he 
 was a true lyrist; and the rediscovery, or reglorification, of 
 his lyrical poems has been one of the characteristic features of 
 the past thirty years in literary criticism. In his dedication 
 Campion says that "the vulgar and unartificial [inartistic] 
 custom of rhyming hath, I know, deterred many excellent wits 
 from the exercise of English poesy." 
 
 In this treatise Campion leaves no doubt of his position. 
 "That vulgar and easy kind of poesy . . . which we abusively 
 call rhyme and meter" began in "lack-learning times, and in 
 barbarized Italy." Alliteration he leaves to its "own ruin," and 
 proceeds to set forth the faults of the rhymers. They do not 
 know the difference between an iambus and a trochee; they 
 put a pyrrhic in place of an iambus ; and they turn their backs 
 
 1 Curiously, this last line, with its "antfc garlands," is almost as far 
 from modern pronunciation as are some of the twists of the anti-rhymers.
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 139 
 
 on the glorious triumphs of classical verse. The "childish titil- 
 lation of rhyming" is a poor thing to set against "the divinity of 
 the Romans and Grecians," which was all in verse. Would not 
 the rhyming Italians, Frenchmen, and Spaniards, if it were 
 possible, gladly see their work "translated into the ancient 
 numbers" ? He bids such "numbers" 
 
 "Tell them that pity or perversely scorn 
 Poor English poesy as the slave to rhyme, 
 You are those lofty numbers that revive 
 Triumphs of princes and stem tragedies." 
 
 But he admits that "the Heroical verse [hexameter] that is dis- 
 tinguished by the dactyl hath been oftentimes attempted in our 
 English tongue, but with passing pitiful success ; and no wonder, 
 seeing it is an attempt altogether against the nature of our 
 language." 
 
 In little chapters on iambics, "the iambic dimeter, or the 
 English march," trochaics, the "English Elegeick," sapphics, 
 ditties and odes, and anacreontics, Campion sets forth his 
 theories, with numerous original examples, of which many are 
 clever or even musical; only the epigrams being atrocious. 
 "Some ears," says he, "accustomed altogether to the fatness 
 of rhyme, may perhaps except against the cadences of these 
 numbers ; but let any man judicially examine them, and he shall 
 find they close of themselves so perfectly that the help of rhyme 
 were not only in them superfluous but also absurd." 
 
 Campion said definitely, like several of his predecessors, that 
 accent was diligently to be observed, "for chiefly by the accent 
 in any language the true value of the syllables is to be measured." 
 But, like them, he disobeyed this sound law, and in his lists 
 of quantities stretched the natural pronunciation until it became 
 unrecognizable. The wonder is that he so often escaped, in his 
 original unrhymed verse, the corduroy-road effects of most of 
 his fellows. Here are some of his tabulated quantities : miseries, 
 duties (because "the last syllable of all words in the plural 
 number that have two or more vowels before s are [sic] long") ; 
 divining. The following are short if the word following do 
 begin with a vowel: "doth, though, thou, now, they, too, fly, die, 
 true, due, see, are, far, you, thee" ; but "these monosyllables are
 
 140 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 always short : a, the, thy, she, we, be, he, no, to, go, so, do." This 
 is of course purely arbitrary. Campion abruptly closed with the 
 very just remark that " as the grammarians leave many syllables 
 to the authority of the poets, so do I likewise leave many to their 
 judgments ; and withal thus conclude, that there is no art begun 
 and perfected at one enterprise." 
 
 That Campion published his Books of Airs, in rhyme, ten or 
 fifteen years after this disquisition, may fairly be taken as an 
 abandonment of bis theories. The whole of his anti-rhyme 
 argument is confuted by one such stanza as 
 
 f Shall I come, sweet love, to thee, 
 When the evening beams are set? 
 
 Shall I not excluded be? 
 Will you find no feigned lett? 
 
 Let me not, for pity, more, 
 
 Tell the long hours at your door." 
 
 When, says Carlyle, Napoleon planted his cannon in front of 
 the church of St. Roch, he "blew the French Revolution into 
 space." Something similar might be said of Samuel Daniel's 
 A Defence of Rhyme, which appeared about 1603, were it not 
 for its good temper and quiet style. It marked the end with 
 one sporadic exception of the movement against rhyme 
 which succumbed before its common sense. 
 
 This Defence was in the form of a letter in reply to Campion's 
 Observations, and was addressed to "a learned gentleman," 
 that is, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke; and afterwards, 
 when printed, to "all the worthy lovers and learned professors 
 of rhyme within his majesty's dominions." The author's origi- 
 nal purpose, he tells us, was to defend his "own undertakings 
 in that kind." 
 
 Daniel's command of the subject is so full, and his "sweet 
 reasonableness" so refreshingly unlike the acrid temper of some 
 of his predecessors, that one is tempted to quote half his tractate. 
 But as it is now accessible in Professor Gregory Smith's volumes, 
 a brief summary will suffice. 
 
 He had thought that rhyme was to be accepted "as if from a 
 grant of nature" ; but it seemed that it too, in a time when many 
 things were challenged, was to be decried by some as barbarous,
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 141 
 
 and defended by others as fit and right. He himself must either 
 quit the use of rhyme, or defend its practice. Every rhymer in 
 the kingdom was interested in the case, and for them, as well as 
 for himself, Daniel would speak. All languages have their 
 own metrical characteristics and uses ; and English has as good 
 a right to employ what befits its own nature as has any other 
 tongue, ancient or modern. Accent, harmony, and numbers in 
 English so combine as to give as musical results in rhyme as 
 any language can show. Rhyme is so widespread a thing that 
 it seems "an hereditary eloquence proper to all mankind." 
 Then follows a list of sixteen other peoples using it. Even Latin 
 was not satisfied until it had adopted so good a vehicle of poetic 
 expression. 
 
 Rhyme had been universally influential in expressing and 
 arousing the deepest feelings of humanity; whereas the new 
 metrical experiments had not delighted, stirred, or satisfied, nor 
 did Daniel think they ever would "in our climate, if they show 
 no more work of wonder than yet we see. " In fact, the new quan- 
 titative verses were "laboured measures," and for "the general 
 sort" "but as an orderly prose when we have all done." Art 
 ought not to be a thing to confound the understanding. Rhyme 
 calls for the highest and best efforts, and is wings, not an impedi- 
 ment. 
 
 The stanza, with its rich variety and effective climax, was 
 never attained by the Greeks and Latins ; but all our understand- 
 ings are not to be built by the square of Greece and Italy. We 
 are the children of nature as well as they; we are not so placed 
 out of the way of judgment but that "the same sun of discretion 
 shineth upon us." The attempts of the quantitative poets in 
 Italy had been as unsuccessful as those in England, and un- 
 rhymed verse had been let alone by such true poets as Petrarch 
 and Tasso. The classical reformers' eight new numbers in Eng- 
 lish, when examined, proved to be either old measures under 
 new names, or else dependent on strained accents. It is useless 
 to try to "turn the fair stream and full course of her [English] 
 accents into the shallow current of a less uncertainty, clean out 
 of the way of her known delight." 
 
 But though Daniel undertook to "defend the sacred monu-
 
 142 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 merits" bf the national genius, as expressed in time-honored 
 forms, he frankly admitted that there were some things in rhyme 
 which he did not like. One was "these continual cadences of 
 couplets used in long and continued poems," which he found 
 "very tiresome and unpleasing, by reason that still, methinks, 
 they run on with a sound of one nature, and a kind of certainty 
 which stuffs the delight rather than entertains it." To pass 
 over the rhyme, when the violence of the matter will break 
 through, "is rather graceful than otherwise." Tragedies, too, 
 best comport with blank verse and dispense with rhyme, save 
 in choruses, or "where a sentence shall require a couplet." 
 Daniel's own experiments in putting rhymes more than one line 
 apart he hardly regarded as successful, "alternate or cross 
 rhymes holding still the best place in my affection." Feminine 
 rhymes should not carelessly or at random be mixed with others ; 
 they are best for ditties. 
 
 Yet there can be no absolute law in these matters. All things 
 change; and poets are proverbially self-willed and self-satisfied. 
 Even good satisfactory English words are displaced by poor 
 foreign substitutes. "But this is but a character of that per- 
 petual revolution which we see to be in all things that never 
 remain the same : and we must herein be content to submit our- 
 selves to the law of the time, which in a few years will make 
 all that for which we now contend Nothing." 
 
 This was the end, save that sixty years later Milton himself 
 Milton, the "mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies" in the 
 preface to his masterpiece, ranged himself with the opponents 
 of rhyme, and against his own triumphant practice as one of 
 the greatest masters of rhyme who ever lived. The rhymed 
 English stanza had never been brought to higher excellence 
 than in the ode On the Morn of Christ's Nativity; no sonnets 
 had spoken in mightier music than that of 
 
 ."Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
 Lie scattered on the Alpine summits cold ; " 
 
 while L' Allegro and II Penseroso had shown the capabilities of 
 the four-stressed rhymed measure to turn with infallible effec- 
 tiveness from iambic to trochaic and back again, according to
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 143 
 
 the demands of the thought, and had forever created a new 
 genre in English : that of the idyllic combination of description 
 and reflection. His other triumphs in rhyme need no new chronicle 
 here, nor his work in the two foreign languages most concerned 
 in the rhyme-controversy, namely, the Italian and the Latin. 
 It is enough to cite the definite words which he prefixed to our 
 great blank- verse epic: 
 
 "The measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that 
 of Homer in Greek and of Virgil in Latin, rhyme being no 
 necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in 
 longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, 
 to set off wretched matter and lame metre ; graced indeed since 
 by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by 
 custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and con- 
 straint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part 
 worse, than else they would have expressed them. Not without 
 cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime 
 note have rejected rhyme both in longer and shorter works, as 
 have also long since our best English tragedies, as a thing of 
 itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight ; 
 which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, 
 and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, 
 not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by 
 the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory. This 
 neglect then of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect, though 
 it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be 
 esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty 
 recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern 
 bondage of rhyming." 
 
 But we must remember that nobody had denied the majesty 
 or the necessity of blank verse in English, which was neither a 
 novelty nor a heresy; and it is significant that Milton never put 
 himself on record as favoring or practising the "quantitative" 
 writing of the hexametrists. 1 He was a free inheritor and user 
 
 1 Landor, in one of his Imaginary Conversations, makes Milton say 
 to Marvel: "My nephew reads Latin to me; and he reminded me one 
 day that Sir Philip Sidney tried his hand at turning our English into 
 Latin hexameters. Some of the Germans have done likewise. English 
 and German hexameters sound as a heavy cart sounds bouncing over
 
 144 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 of English as it had been used by his predecessors who were 
 true and great poets: by Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare. The 
 rhythm in Paradise Lost itself is not more important than in 
 the rhymed Ode on the Nativity ; if the monosyllabic blank- 
 verse ... 
 " Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death " 
 
 needs no supporting rhyme, neither does the sonnet-line 
 " They also serve who only stand and wait." 
 
 Whether Milton was rhyming or writing blank verse, he was 
 simply making the best use of means toward ends. Thought- 
 rhyme and end-rhyme in the splendid 
 
 f'Ring out, ye crystal spheres, 
 Once bless our human ears, 
 
 If ye have power to touch our senses so; 
 v And let your silver chime 
 Move hi melodious time ; 
 
 And let the base of heaven's deep organ blow; 
 And with your ninefold harmony 
 Make up full consort to the angelic symphony" 
 
 were une in his creating mind. 
 
 Omitting many technical points, I must call attention, in this 
 Ode, to a few important indications of contemporary pronuncia- 
 tion : unsufferable : council-table ; began : ocean ; alone : union ; 
 said : made ; great : set ; sweat : seat ; fast : haste. 
 
 In Lycidas, which is rhymed throughout, the effect is curiously 
 rhymeless until the closing passage doubtless because of the 
 variant line-lengths in an essentially slow movement, and the 
 frequency of run-on lines, such as 
 
 "Comes the blind fury with the abhorred shears 
 And slits the thin-spun life." 
 
 This has a distinctly Shakespearean swing, and so does 
 
 "And when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
 Grate on their scrannel-pipes of wretched straw." 
 
 boulders." Crump's ed., VI, 39. Elsewhere Landor said of the 
 hexameter (writing in the measure itself) : " Latin and Greek are alone 
 its languages. We have a measure fashioned by Milton's own hand, a 
 fuller, a deeper, a louder."
 
 ELIZABETHANS AND RHYME CONTROVERSY 145 
 
 Milton, in the chorus of Samson Agonistes, used lines of differ- 
 ent stresses and lengths (sometimes almost unscannable recita- 
 tive), with rhymes at random, and apparently accidental asso- 
 nances. Such freedom is roughly suggestive of Greek choral 
 methods. 
 
 10
 
 VIII 
 FORMAL RHYME 
 
 One two, three four, five six, seven eight, nine ten, 
 One two, three four, five six, seven eight, and then 
 Add here an adjective, perhaps a thought, 
 Start with a trochee, and your couplet 's wrought. 
 
 SOME such formula as this was the rule of most English verse 
 from Dryden's Religio Laid, at the close of the seventeenth 
 century, to the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge, 
 at the" end of the eighteenth. 
 
 The history of the heroic couplet has been traced many times ; 
 never better than in Gosse's From Shakespeare to Pope. In 
 one sense Waller was its earliest promoter; in another sense 
 Donne. There is a curious priority in Donne's 
 
 "How sits this city, late most populous, 
 Thus solitary, and like a widow thus? 
 Amplest of nations, queen of provinces, 
 She was, who now thus tributary is" 
 
 (The Lamentations of Jeremy.) 
 
 it is a sort of reminiscence of Wyatt and anticipation of 
 Dryden. Donne who always, it is evident, pronounced his 
 verses very slowly rhymes humorist: chest; here: philosopher; 
 tye:body; earnest : best ; gone : dissolution ; there: tear. Once 
 he has the assonance other : lover. 
 
 But in a truer sense nobody can be picked out as the chrono- 
 logical leader of the procession. The iambic pentameter rhymed 
 couplet was nothing new in our poetry. It was Chaucer's vehicle 
 for the greater part of the Canterbury Tales; it formed an 
 integral element in Shakespeare's earlier plays; it closed the 
 Shakespearean sonnet. Yet the "heroic couplet" from Waller
 
 FORMAL RHYME 147 
 
 to Pope was a different thing from the previous rhymed aa 
 pentameters. In it the line expressed an idea, or a unified part 
 of an idea; and the couplet brought the thought, or the clearly 
 individualized part of a thought, to a symmetrical close.. Seldom 
 did the meaning of a line run on into its successor, and still 
 more seldom did a couplet fail to carry its own proper burden. 
 The line was just long enough for a neat statement, the couplet 
 just adequate to give that statement a turn. The merit of the 
 product was its finish; the demerit its sacrifice of imagination 
 to thought. 
 
 When French regularity seemed altogether delightful in Eng- 
 land; when, in the non-original critical and observant eight- 
 eenth century, all Britain considered reflection superior to imagi- 
 native creation; this old form, revised in the manner already 
 noted, proved to be the very thing needed. 
 
 If the highest function of poetry were to philosophize or to 
 describe, nothing better than such a vehicle could be asked. 
 Tens of thousands of pleased and instructed readers have found 
 Pope's Essay on Man the ne plus ultra of prosodic utterance. 
 In my native New England town at that time having say two 
 thousand inhabitants two separately printed editions were 
 issued seventy years after Pope's death ; and its popularity else- 
 where was not less. That popularity continues to-day. Those 
 who read little or nothing know many parts of the Essay on Man 
 and the Essay on Criticism from their mere currency in familiar 
 quotation. They are coin of the intellectual realm. Many a 
 modern reader finds their practical philosophy, expressed with 
 absolute clearness, better worth while than Wordsworth's 
 "mooning" about nature, or Poe's wandering in the mystic mid- 
 region of Weir. In some ways Pope is the most successful man 
 who ever wrote English verse; and he is successful because 
 nobody else so well caught the very pulse of the machine. 
 
 But it was, after all, a machine and nothing more. Upon that 
 fact rests its triumph, and therein lies its fatal limitation. The 
 rhymed couplet of the eighteenth century was preeminently the 
 vehicle for uninspired didacticism and superficial description. 
 Here "An honest man's the noblest work of God" ; here "Hope 
 springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always
 
 148 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 to be blest;" here rivers and poems are "Strong without rage, 
 without o'erflowing, full"; here, on every topic, 
 
 " The relish of the Muse consists in rhyme; 
 One verse must megt another like a chime." 
 
 In the English eighteenth-century couplet, neither the first 
 nor the second line regularly gave the law to the other. The 
 couplet virtually became a stanza, and the string of couplets a 
 poem of few stanzas or many, as the case required. If three 
 pentameters were strung together and duly marked by a bracket, 
 or if the alexandrine added a decorous variation, it was still 
 true that "English poetry seemed bound in a ten-linked chain." 
 But we need have no quarrel with what its master, Pope, called 
 (in Dryden) 
 
 " The varying verse, the full resounding line, 
 The long majestic march, the energy divine." 
 
 For the full resounding line we may be duly thankful, though 
 the energy divine, in the jEschylean or the Shakespearean or the 
 Shelleyan sense, is the one thing lacking. 
 
 Among the "dull sweets of rhyme," which Dryden by turns 
 tasted and rejected, he gave us stand: England; clangor: anger; 
 Jehoshaphat : fate ; come : doom ; indignation : passion ; scorn : 
 return ; choose : depose ; break: weak; halves : knaves ; fit: sweet; 
 forth: mirth; pretence : prince ; express : cease ; rock: smoke; and 
 (consecutive) state: treat; flash: dish; dress' d: feast, these last 
 a pretty good illustration of the freedom in which he believed. 
 Once he has again: plain; at another time again: then. This 
 word has long had both rhyme-sounds, according to the 
 exigencies of the sense. 
 
 Dryden's greatest rhyme-achievement dwarfing the once- 
 read dramas and the didactic-propagandist Religio Laid and 
 The Hind and the Panther, is to be found in the two Saint 
 Cecilia's Day odes, which, in their thought, onomatopoeia, femi- 
 nine rhymes, and rapidly changing measures, seem to overleap 
 a hundred years and take their place in the poetry of the Ro- 
 mantic revival. Dryden's odes are modern in their very essence : 
 while other poets were slavishly imitating classical models
 
 FORMAL RHYME 149 
 
 and were to do so for nearly a hundred years to come Dryden 
 was here as unfettered as Wordsworth or Keats. 
 
 Indeed, if ever a man was born too late and too early it was 
 "glorious John." Parts of his plays are unexcelled by the work 
 of any Elizabethan dramatist save Shakespeare; and when 
 reading them we seem to be "betwixt and between" the 
 very charm of 1600 and all the freshness of 1800. Read, 
 for instance, the passage in (Edipus giving Tiresias' incan- 
 tation of the ghost of Laius ; or the song in The Spanish Friar 
 beginning : 
 
 '.' Farewell, ungrateful traitor, 
 
 Farewell, my perjured swain, 
 Let never injured creature 
 
 Believe a man again. 
 The pleasure of possessing 
 Surpasses all expressing, 
 But 't is too short a blessing 
 
 And love too long a pain." 
 
 Dryden, notwithstanding his rhyme-triumphs in two schools 
 of composition, the didactic and the lyric, was at one time, in 
 respect to one form of poetry, apparently inclined to join the 
 company of the decriers of rhyme. In 1678 he wrote that he 
 had "disencumbered" himself of it, finding blank verse more 
 suitable to tragedy, an unquestionable truth. Rhymed 
 dramas like Dryden's earlier plays were a passing fashion at the 
 beginning of the last quarter of the seventeenth century. In 
 brief, Dryden had defended rhyme for comedies because of its 
 fitness for effective sallies or repartees ; and for tragedies because 
 it was farther removed from prose. But experience soon con- 
 vinced him and the other best critics of the time which, at 
 Dryden's death in 1700, was able to show but a few coarse 
 comedians as the sole representatives of major English literature 
 
 that blank verse was the dignified vehicle for English dra- 
 matic expression. Rhyme, indispensable to the French stage, 
 has never long been welcome to the English. 
 
 At the time (1663) when Milton's work was at its height and 
 Dryden's had not yet reached its period of greatest productivity, 
 
 between the days of Shakespeare and those of Pope, the 
 rollicking rhymes of Butler, like some of the more serious verbal
 
 150 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 music of Dryden, anticipated modern freedom. Butler was 
 constrained by nothing save his own whims, and invented rhymes 
 as he chose, or twisted them out because of the necessities of 
 thought. False : tails was a good enough rhyme for him, and 
 sun : down entirely satisfactory. Indeed, he evidently felt that 
 part of the fun was the wrenching of sounds from their accustomed 
 laws. His rattling octosyllables "Hudibrastic" verse were 
 so well suited to his jocose plan that many years elapsed before 
 this measure was turned once more to serious uses of narration 
 or description. Butler's frequent use of feminine rhymes 
 inclined to: mind to; disparage : plum porridge, etc., did for 
 satirical poetry what Milton's, in L' Allegro and II Penseroso, had 
 done for idyllic. 
 
 The general freedom of rhyme-use between Butler and Gray 
 may be illustrated by a few examples, chronologically arranged. 
 Prior has errs: cares; complaint: elephant. Addison, east : west; 
 faint : pant. Watts, led : spread : shade. Young, great : complete. 
 Gay, ermine : charming. Pope, toast: lost; devil: civil; re- 
 mained: land; descant : per cent ; mayors: wars; waves : receives ; 
 sour: poor; hair: sphere; feast: guest; air: star; boast: lost; rise: 
 precipice; fry : jealousy ; said: laid; said: head. Seldom does 
 he use such a rhyme as side : subside, but he is not afraid of it. 
 His come : room ; Rome : dome ; Rome : doom ; Rome : come 
 like Dryden's come : doom, just mentioned are reminders not 
 only of an old pronunciation of o but of the coupling of different 
 vowel-sounds in necessary words having few rhymes, a practice 
 in vogue all the way from Shakespeare to Lowell. 
 
 Two things which Pope thought undesirable in the heroic 
 couplet were, in his own words: "The repeating [sic] the same 
 rhyme within four or six lines of each other, which tire the ear 
 with too much of the like sound" ; and "the too frequent use of 
 alexandrins, which are never graceful, but where there is some 
 majesty added to the verse by them, or when there cannot be 
 found a word in them but what is absolutely needful." His 
 advice is better than his English. 
 
 Regarding the subject matter, even Pope clearly saw the evils 
 into which the heroic couplet fell so easily and so often; and 
 in the Essay on Criticism he denounced those versifiers who
 
 FORMAL RHYME 151 
 
 "ring round the same unvaried chimes, 
 With sure returns of still-expected rhymes; 
 Where'er you find ' the cooling western breeze,' 
 In the next line it 'whispers through the trees.'" 
 
 Aside from love, Rome, etc., some other essential words have 
 few rhymes, and therefore similarly sounding words must be 
 forced to go in their company. Such a word is blood, which 
 Dryden rhymes with stood; Butler with stood; Pope with stood, 
 good, and wood; Gay with wood; Byron with stood; Scott with 
 stood; Keble with rude; and Tennyson with good. Wind (noun) 
 has few companions in sound, hence wind, in poetry said or sung. 
 Such rhymes as those just cited led Mitford, in despair, to exclaim 
 that "the harmony of English poetry, from Shakespeare to 
 Cowper," was in "danger of becoming shortly as problematical 
 as that of Chaucer." 
 
 Mitford incidentally gives us some interesting information 
 concerning eighteenth-century pronunciation. To his ear "the 
 middle sound of a, in can, fallow, father, example," was the same. 
 He pronounced e in merchant, Derby, Hertford, Berkshire, and 
 Berkeley as a in jar. Of these the four last survive in England, 
 but none of the words is likely to appear in rhyme. Nearer to 
 our subject is his allusion to "the diphthongal characters ea, ei, 
 ey, as in bear, heir, grey" To journey he gave the same sound as 
 in rough, young ; a pronunciation now dialectal and rare. More 
 interesting is his charge that the poets of the eighteenth century 
 were largely responsible for making join and point, for instance, 
 rhyme with fine and pint. That the former was the deliberate 
 use of the best poets of his time is clear. Pope has line : join ; 
 join: divine; joined: mankind; Shenstone, entwind : joined : 
 unkind; Gray, shine: join; Cowley, join. "vine; Dry den, join: 
 design; declined : joined ; Butler, join: design; Falconer, join: 
 line; Addison, find: join' d; Beattie, join: shine. This is iden- 
 tity, not similarity, of sound, and proves the pronunciation, 
 which, indeed, survived in poetry until Coleridge's joined : mind, 
 Wordsworth's joined: kind, and Bulwer's mind: enjoined. 
 Equally clear is Gray's toil : smile, fortified by Dryden's defile : 
 spoil; Falconer's soil: smile; and Byron's aisle: recoil and aisles: 
 toils. Byron, it will be remembered, was an admirer of Pope.
 
 152 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 Other once perfect rhymes, now impermissible, are Donne's 
 enter : venture (venter is Yankee dialect to-day) ; Donne's waste : 
 wast; Waller's haste: last; Dryden's plac'd: last; cast:plac'd; 
 unbought : draught ; Pope's past: waste; away: sea; Swift's 
 survey : tea; Warton's convey : sea; Dryden's way : sea; Cowper's 
 survey: sea; Moore's sway: sea; Gay's display: sea; nature: 
 satire; nature: creature; Gray's satire: nature (nater is, of course, 
 in full dialectal use to-day). A similar proof, by rhyme, of the 
 existence of a now discarded (or but local) pronunciation is 
 Halleck's saw: hurrah, in Marco Bozzaris (1827). 
 
 Great was long one of the uncertain words. Gay has seat: 
 great; great: cheat; conceit : great. Young has great: compete. 
 Pope's state : great, with Rowe's seat : great, led Johnson to say, 
 in the plan of his dictionary: "Some words have two sounds 
 which may be equally admitted as being equally defensible by 
 authority" a remark which has not lost its force. 
 
 A few rhymes which may here be noted, almost at random, 
 are Thomson's issued: brew' d; Shenstone's yield : field : wield : 
 filled; Akenside's urn : mourn ; year: share; Goldsmith's arms: 
 warns; and Warton's come : tomb ; eve: grave. 
 
 The poems of Gray and Collins are the oases in the classical 
 verse of the century. Their odes, and many of their other pieces, 
 strongly show the prevalent influences of the day; but much of 
 their work is touched by the romantic spirit. If Gray wrote 
 Pindaric odes, he was also interested in Welsh and Norse themes 
 and methods; and Collins was the author of How Sleep the 
 Brave as well as the Ode to Evening which, though ultra- 
 classical and unrhymed, is thoroughly natural in sentiment. 
 
 Gray, rather than his predecessors, Davenant and Dryden, in 
 his Elegy popularized the alternately rhyming iambic pentameter, 
 thus combining dignified stability and easy variety in a way 
 which was influential in shortening the reign of the couplet. 
 Furthermore, since the measure is manifestly unsuitable for 
 narrative, Gray did not hesitate to use run-on lines and run-on 
 stanzas ; in one instance a narrative stanza of the Elegy does not 
 end even with a comma. 
 
 On the whole, Gray succeeded better when bound by frequently 
 recurring rhymes than when, as in the Pindaric odes, he used
 
 FORMAL RHYME 153 
 
 rhymes farther separated. Cowley's Pindaric strophes, so 
 popular until Gray's time, were denounced by Johnson as con- 
 cealing deficiencies, flattering laziness, and starting boys and 
 girls to "write like Pindar"; but the irregularly rhymed and 
 divided English ode, Pindaric or other, is much harder to pro- 
 duce than the heroic couplet, and has been less abused. In 
 general, as we have seen, the English ear does not carry rhymes 
 more than three lines apart; and even then they must appear 
 at stated intervals. The rhymes of Wordsworth's great ode are 
 sometimes forgotten before their companions are reached. 
 
 In the Elegy are 128 lines, of which 114 have rhymes that are 
 still perfect (including muse: strews). Toil: smile was, as we 
 have seen, perfect at the time. Rove: love; borne: thorn, would 
 attract no attention in a modern poem. This leaves withstood: 
 blood; obscure : poor ; beech: stretch, and abode: God; of which 
 none, probably, with the possible exception of the second 
 was a perfect rhyme in Gray's day. Gray's ear did not object to 
 the assonances relies : requires : cries : fires, in consecutive lines. 
 In his sonnet On the Death of Richard West he has also in con- 
 secutive lines, shine, fire, join, attire, repine, require, mine, ex- 
 pire. If this was intentional, it shows that repeated assonances 
 have become less pleasing to the English ear since Gray's time. 
 In the Elegy "The breezy call of incense-breathing morn" is 
 objectionable to some modern readers, but must have seemed 
 musical to the author. The day : lea : way : me of the first stanza 
 he at any rate allowed to stand ; and the twentieth century takes 
 pleasure at least in the internal alliterations and assonances 
 
 "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 
 
 The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, 
 The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, 
 And leaves the tcorld to darkness and to me." 
 
 Most of Gray's rhymes call for no mention ; among the excep- 
 tions are men : complain : vain ; cheer : bear : hear ; car: bear. 
 
 The ultimate purpose of rhyme of any kind and of end- 
 rhyme in all modern languages is to give an added and 
 pleasurable emphasis to the thought of the poet. Hence the 
 rhyme-words should be the significant turning-places of the 
 thought, or the climax to which it leads. An unusual illustration
 
 154 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 of this fact is found in a statement once made to William Winter 
 by Edmund Clarence Stedman, that it was his custom to select 
 with care the particular form of verse that he designed to use, 
 and sometimes to invent the rhymes and write them at the ends 
 of the lines which they were to terminate, thus making a skeleton 
 of a poem as a ground-work on which to build. Some poets 
 have gone so far among them the French de Banville * as 
 to declare that there can be but one right word for the rhyme- 
 place, and that its use is not so much a matter of selection, on 
 the singer's part, as of downright inspiration. Thus the American 
 religious poet Jones Very felt that he was directly led by the 
 Spirit of God to compose his sonnets in their existing form. 
 Poetic practice is, of course, a refutation of such extreme views 
 for many a writer of a genius far exceeding that of de Banville or 
 Very has left rhyme-revisions on record. But in the most 
 felicitous verse and in direct proportion to its felicity is to 
 be found a lightness of word which goes far to leave on the 
 hearer's mind the impression that nothing else would have suf- 
 ficed. This rightness is especially necessary, and especially 
 welcome, in terminational rhymes. Take, for instance, Collins' 
 Ode Written in MDCCXLVI : 
 
 "How sleep the Brave, who sink to rest 
 By all their Country's wishes blest ! 
 When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, 
 Returns to deck their hallow'd mould, 
 She there shall dress a sweeter sod 
 Than fancy's feet have ever trod. 
 
 "By fairy hands their knell is rung, 
 By forms unseen their dirge is sung: 
 There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray, 
 To bless the turf that wraps their clay: 
 And Freedom shall awhile repair 
 To dwell a weeping hermit there ! " 
 
 Perfection rests upon the whole; and it was not an accident 
 that led Collins to use no rhyme that was not fit in thought and 
 perfect in correspondence of sound. Here was no place for ex- 
 perimentation or uncertainty. 
 
 A similar verbal felicity may be found in parts of his To 
 1 See page 19.
 
 FORMAL RHYME 155 
 
 Evening, the last elaborate attempt at an unrhymed classical ode 
 
 a poem with many variant effects of alliteration, assonance, 
 and tone-color, but without end-rhyme, though carefully written 
 in stanzas of two iambic pentameters followed by two iambic 
 trimeters. Here we have 
 
 "Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-eyed bat 
 With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, 
 Or where the beetle winds 
 His small but sullen horn," 
 
 very suggestive of the second stanza of the Elegy; "some 
 wild and heathy scene"; "hamlets brown, and dim-discovered 
 spires," with their "simple bell" ; while Evening's "dewy fingers 
 draw the gradual dusky veil" the same figure as that in the 
 ode just quoted. But this experiment in rhymeless quasi- 
 Horatian stanzas cannot be called successful, as regards its form. 
 When listened to, the hearer does not distinguish it from blank 
 verse, save that he feels that he is somehow losing the count of 
 feet and the balance of lines. The accidental rhyme vale: hail 
 of stanza 5 throws him off the track ; and scene : gleams in 
 stanza 8 and all : drawl in stanza 10 are no help. This is not 
 hypercriticism ; for a poem that does not make its scheme 
 apparent is defective. Over and over again have the poets 
 proved that while quantity sufficed in Greek and Latin, it does 
 not in English ; therefore other devices must be used to give the 
 effect of finish and completeness. Yet, when all is said, the form 
 of Collins' interesting experiment is more poetically satisfying 
 than that of Marvell's Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland, 
 correctly written in rhymed iambic tetrameters (two lines) 
 followed by two rhymed iambic trimeters. The lines in the 
 latter are too short for rhyme, and the effect is so jerky that the 
 poem owes much of its endurance to the popular passage 
 
 "He nothing common did or mean 
 Upon that memorable scene." 
 
 The stanza 
 
 "Nature, that hateth emptiness, 
 Allows of penetration less, 
 
 And therefore must make room 
 When greater spirits come " 
 
 is not poetry at all ; nor is
 
 156 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 f'And now the Irish are ashamed 
 To see themselves in one year tamed." 
 
 The lesson of these two "Horatian" odes, taken together, one 
 without rhyme and the other with, is that poetic words however 
 arranged are better than prosy words arranged in perfect rhyme ; 
 and that, in English, rhyme cannot be added to a Horatian 
 metre in such a manner as to retain either Latin or English 
 beauty. 
 
 Johnson and Goldsmith went too far in their dislike of blank 
 verse as being pedantic, or verse only to the eye, which it 
 certainly is not, in Milton or Tennyson ; but there was truth in 
 their opinion in so far as it applied to shorter lines. 
 
 Goldsmith's fault : sought is a good example of many words 
 which have changed their pronunciation within a comparatively 
 short time. The New English Dictionary says that fault, in 
 Pope and Swift, rhymes with thought, wrought; and Johnson, 
 1755, says that in conversation the / is generally suppressed. 
 In many dialects the pronunciation is still (fpt). When French 
 introduced the word from Latin it discarded the I, and so did 
 the imitating English; but both languages re-introduced it in 
 the fifteenth century. 
 
 The heroic couplet came down the years to Rogers, who died 
 in 1855, but who, notwithstanding his life in the nineteenth 
 century and his "Mine be a cot beside a hill," belongs to the 
 classical rather than the romantic school. For the purpose of 
 the present discussion his oftentimes excellent verse needs no 
 examination. Nor does that of Crabbe, which is mainly prose, 
 whether its nominal form be blank verse, couplets, triplets, or 
 stanzas. Perhaps, of all poets considered eminent by anybody, 
 Crabbe is the most conspicuous example of the dangerous 
 tendency of the heroic couplet to lead to a twisting of the sense 
 for the sake of the rhyme. Take, at random, his observations on 
 books, in which every other line is so ground out that one hears 
 the squeak of the crank. Books, says he, 
 
 "soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise, 
 Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise ; 
 Their aid they yield to all : they never shun 
 The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone;
 
 FORMAL RHYME 157 
 
 Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud, 
 They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd; 
 Nor tell to various people various things, 
 But show to subjects what they show to kings." 
 
 Here "chastise," "shun," "crowd," and "things" are the obedi- 
 ent followers of "wise," "undone," "proud," and "kings"; 
 only the last line leaving any sense of that moderate talent 
 which, so often in the eighteenth century, used to assume the 
 garb of genius. 1 
 
 On the whole, though many later poets even including 
 Holmes and Lowell have used it, the great period of the 
 heroic couplet ended with Goldsmith. No lovelier or more 
 triumphant finale could be given than that afforded in The 
 Deserted Village, from its first line to its last. Nor is it, as some 
 have said, a composite of pensive reflection and political economy ; 
 there is mere poetry in such lines as 
 
 "No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, 
 But, choked with sedges, works its weedy way; 
 Along thy glades, a solitary guest, 
 The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest ; 
 Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, 
 And tires their echoes with unvaried cries. 
 Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all, 
 And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall." 
 
 1 Crabbe "was always ready to write 'meanly,' in a kind of rhyming 
 prose, if the phrase is allowable, in which not the prose but the 
 rhyme seems to be the intruder. He could write 
 
 '." Mamma look'd on with thoughts to these allied; 
 She felt the pleasure of reflected pride'; 
 
 or even thus 
 
 i" But how will Bloomer act 
 
 When he becomes acquainted with the fact?' 
 
 Much of the meanness of such passages is due to their thick and lumber- 
 ing rhymes. Act, fact; all, scrawl; aunt, grant; flood, mud! The whole 
 weight of a couplet lies upon its rhymes, and Crabbe does not mind 
 making the worst of them. " OLIVER ELTON, in Blackwood's Magazine, 
 January, 1909.
 
 IX 
 ROMANTIC RHYME 
 
 THE eighteenth century in English poetry was a time of comment, 
 the nineteenth, of creation. To the eighteenth belonged reflection, 
 obvious description, rhetoric, the heroic couplet, and formality of 
 rhyme; to the nineteenth, imagination, world- wide curiosity, 
 originality, stanzas of every kind, and rhymes of the utmost 
 freedom. At the beginning of the romantic movement came 
 Burns, who cared not for form, and Blake, who knew not form. 
 Furthermore, at the time of the appearance of the Lyrical 
 Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge, in 1798 that "discovery 
 of a new world in English poetry" the influence of the old 
 border ballads was powerful : poems in which the expression of 
 passionate feeling was everything, and stresses, line-lengths, 
 alliterations, assonances, and end-rhymes of every sort merely 
 means toward the one desired end. 
 
 Cowper, to whom blank verse and rhyme were almost indiffer- 
 ent, spoke of "the clock-work tintinnabulum" of the latter; 
 but the author of The Loss of the Royal George certainly knew 
 how to employ it with a directly musical effectiveness which might 
 have been envied by any of the romantic poets. The old ballad- 
 ists used no freer rhyme than the overset : complete of the poem 
 just named, or the plain: man; man: again; and thought: lot 
 of The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk. 
 
 In Blake, at the very start of the romantic movement, freedom 
 was almost anarchy. Mrs. Browning might have envied his 
 lamb: name; lambs: hands; tomb: come; song: among; valley: 
 melancholy; dawn: scorn; blessing : ceasing ; blossom: bosom; 
 dreadful : heedful ; nest: beast. Vault: fraught; and poor: door 
 were possibly good rhymes in his day, but field .'beheld could 
 hardly have been. Once he used read : reed.
 
 ROMANTIC RHYME 159 
 
 Blake harked back to his favorite Ossian, and anticipated not 
 only the Coleridge of 1798, but also the Walt Whitman of 1855. 
 Between semi-rhythmical prose and the pure lyric he ranged at 
 will, his language being as kaleidoscopic as his thought. While 
 reading him we think now of the King James' Bible, now of 
 Swedenborg, now of Emerson. His visions were as far-reaching 
 as Dante's, but of Dante's almost mathematical self-control he 
 had hardly a trace, changing suddenly from lucidity to utter 
 obscurity. 
 
 Like the old balladists, he was fond of seven-stressed loose 
 movements, but, unlike them, he was willing to omit rhyme. 
 His America is a characteristic example of this measure. As 
 regards thought-rhyme, no better illustration can be found in 
 his works than the five lines of the inscription to his Ghost of 
 Abel (1822), which W. M. Rossetti calls "a compendious 
 example of the union of quaintness, profundity, and mysticism 
 which the prophetical books exhibit." 
 
 ."To Lord Byron in the Wilderness. What dost thou here, Elijah? 
 Can a poet doubt the visions of Jehovah? 
 Nature has no outline, but Imagination has; 
 Nature has no time, but Imagination has; 
 Nature has no supernatural, and dissolves; Imagination is eternity." 
 
 In Burns the influence of dialect was added to that of the 
 ballads. He evidently fretted under the trammels of exact 
 rhyme. Thus to choose almost at random we have morn- 
 ing : wand' ring ; returning : morning ; beauty : duty : true to ; 
 feather : beaver ; farthing : regarding ; determine : farming ; mind: 
 syne; befriend me: sustain me; wander : slumber ; money: upon 
 me ; beastie : breastie ; hasty : chase thee ; dominion : union : com- 
 panion; nibble .'trouble. His eye: joy; untried : enjoy it; and 
 soil: toil: vile: while: aisle, are the correct eighteenth-century 
 pronunciation, already noted in Gray and others. Creature: 
 nature; ardour : farther ; and farther : regard her remind us 
 of the antiquity of pronunciations still surviving. 
 
 The Spenserian stanza of The Cottar's Saturday Night was 
 of course common property; it had been used by Shenstone, 
 Thomson, and Akenside before Burns, as it was by Byron, 
 Keats, Shelley, and Tennyson after him. On the whole, it
 
 160 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 proved less suitable for a folk-idyl than Goldsmith's heroics or 
 Whittier's octosyllabics. The peculiar "Burns metre " of To a 
 Lmise on a Lady's Bonnet, To a Field Mouse, etc., is first found 
 in the fifteenth century; it is a wearisome measure to all but 
 Burns enthusiasts, and has been discarded save by his avowed 
 imitators. 
 
 Wordsworth, though more methodical than most of his con- 
 temporaries, did not hesitate to use such rhymes as echo : cuckoo ; 
 come: home; weather : hither ; stroke : clock : shock ; and kettle: 
 metal. He unquestionably dropped his g in words ending in -ing, 
 as, witness daring : pairing : war in (Hint from the Mountains), 
 and sullen : pulling (Ode on Immortality). Yankees are supposed 
 to be peculiar in the omission of this guttural-terminant ; but 
 its lack is equally noticeable in the speech of Englishmen of 
 culture. Wordsworth probably sounded four consecutive lines 
 of the Ode 
 
 " evil day ! if I were sullen 
 While earth herself is adornin' 
 This sweet May mornin' ; 
 And the children are pullin' 
 On every side 
 
 In a thousand valleys far and wide, 
 Fresh flowers." 
 
 Neither was Scott a purist in these matters, as he showed in the 
 Helvellyn : yelling of his well-known poem. Wordsworth's 
 rhyme for the same mountain was dwelling. Another Words- 
 worthian bit of verbal music is robin : sobbing. On the other 
 hand his dames: Thames makes the American wonder whether 
 he has carefully been mispronouncing the name of the river, all 
 these years. 
 
 The highest attainment of Wordsworth in blank verse is the 
 final passage of The Recluse, which, in idea, is perhaps the 
 mountain-peak of poetic aspiration in English. Among his 
 rhymed poems, notwithstanding the majesty of some of the 
 sonnets, and the new music and the new thought of the best 
 nature-lyrics, the Ode on Immortality is supreme. In it most of 
 the rhymes are normal. Sea: jollity (especially as it comes in 
 the middle of gay : May : holiday) marks the end of the
 
 ROMANTIC RHYME 161 
 
 eighteenth-century e in the first word, which survived as late as 
 Cowper's survey : sea. Call : festival : coronal : all, and festival : 
 funeral (compare Milton's festival: hall) show the beauty of 
 lingering pronunciation which was so clearly to be displayed, 
 again and again, by Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. He who 
 does not read the greater English romantic poets almost with a 
 drawl at times, loses much of their music. Warm: arm; one: 
 upon : gone ; come : home ; splendid : attended ; song : tongue : 
 long ; belie : immensity ; sympathy : be ; eye : mortality ; immor- 
 tality : by (a rhyme never disused since Shakespeare's day) ; 
 creature : nature ; weather : hither all these illustrate the fact 
 that a reasonable similarity of sound was the only thing asked 
 by the rhymer. 
 
 Some lines are left unrhymed; and one of them, I think, is 
 "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," though boy comes two 
 lines below and joy two lines farther on. The length of the lines 
 varies from two feet to six; the greatest number of lines between 
 rhymes is six. 
 
 Wordsworth does not object to forgetfulness : nakedness ; in 
 which, as in almost every English rhyme of the sort, there is a 
 pairing of ideas back of the last syllables, which satisfies the 
 reader as well as a sound-rhyme. Nor does he take any pains 
 to avoid assonances in adjoining lines feet : repeat : gleam : 
 dream, etc. 
 
 A late survival of identical rhyme is one: won (The Happy 
 Warrior). 
 
 Sir Walter Scott is significant in the history of rhyme for two 
 reasons: he searched out, popularized, and made models of, 
 the old ballads of the border, and he made the rhymed octo- 
 syllabic couplet (iambic tetrameter) a more important poetic 
 vehicle than it had ever been. In variety and melody his songs 
 were unsurpassed by any others of the romantic school. He 
 caught the spirit of the old ballads and in some ways improved 
 upon their form, as for instance, in the return, rather than 
 refrain, of " Oh Brignall banks are wild and fair." Swift fusion 
 of thought and sound has never, in English poetry, beten better 
 illustrated than in this poem, in which perfect and imperfect 
 end-rhymes, internal rhymes, assonances, and thought-rhymes 
 
 11
 
 162 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 are combined in such a way that the very imperfections of the 
 verse leave the desired impression of irresistible speed. 
 
 The four-stressed rhyming couplets of Mormon, The Lady of 
 the Lake, and The Lay of the Last Minstrel were made by Scott 
 to seem almost the indispensable means of combining vivid nar- 
 ration and idyllic description. If others have not been able to 
 repeat his success, as, indeed, he himself failed to do in Rokeby, 
 it remains the more significant. 1 
 
 An unusual rhyme-arrangement (aaabbbccc) was effectively 
 used by Scott in the Lament in The Lady of the Lake. A curious 
 rhyme in the same poem is 
 
 "And now to issue from the glen, 
 No pathway meets the wanderer's ken, 
 Unless he climb, with footing nice, 
 A far-projecting precipice." 
 
 1 Oliver Wendell Holmes, in a short essay under the attractive title 
 The Physiology of Versification, presents the thesis that as there are, for 
 the average man, twenty inspirations of breath and eighty heart- 
 pulsations per minute, the octosyllabic measure of Scott and others is 
 the normal English line (with twenty lines and eighty accents to the 
 minute), the five-stressed iambic pentameter being too long and the 
 hexameter worse yet. " It is plain, therefore, that if one reads twenty 
 lines in a minute, and naturally breathes the same number of times 
 during that minute, he will pronounce one line to each expiration, taking 
 advantage of the pause at its close for inspiration." On the other hand, 
 in the ten-syllable or heroic line of Pope's Homer, "if a breath is allowed 
 to each line the respiration will be longer and slower than natural, and a 
 sense of effort and fatigue will soon be the consequence." To the 
 common metre of the hymn-books he allows "a line to each expiration," 
 which makes "exceedingly easy reading." The twelve-syllable line is 
 "too much for one expiration and not enough for two," and is therefore 
 "almost intolerable." Again, "one can hardly doubt that Spenser 
 breathed habitually more slowly than Prior, and that Anacreon had 
 a quicker respiration than Homer." But "these are only suggestions to 
 be considered and tested; the relations of verse to the respiratory 
 rhythm will be easily verified and extended by any who may care to 
 take the trouble." 
 
 Now, Dr. Holmes was not only one of the most naturally lyrical of 
 American poets, but also an accomplished physiologist; so that his 
 conclusions are entitled to more respect than those of the layman in 
 verse and medicine ; but all that I will do is to ask the reader to utter 
 the lines mentioned and see if he can, without inconvenience, even 
 force himself to inhale and exhale according to Dr. Holmes's plan. He 
 will be much more likely to read two lines of Gray's Elegy, or three of 
 Marmion, with one breath, while a single inspiration will be enough for 
 the fifteen-syllable lines of Locksley Hall.
 
 ROMANTIC RHYME 163 
 
 War is a necessary word with few rhymes, therefore Scott 
 rhymes it with far; Gray and Wordsworth with afar; Cowper 
 with are; Coleridge with far; and Byron with car. 
 
 In Scott and the romantic poets generally, final y has no fixed 
 sound, being either the sound in high or that in see, as the rhyme 
 demands; thus Scott has eye: vacancy; Hogg e'e: sea; Byron 
 and Wordsworth eye: Emily; Keats key : minstrelsy ; Rogers 
 eye : minstrelsy. As I have already said, in English unlike 
 Italian or French the variety of pronunciation, and also of 
 rhyme-pairing, has always been so great as to make it 
 difficult to prove a given pronunciation by rhyme-uses at a 
 given time. 
 
 "The master of masters, who is Coleridge" (Swinburne) is 
 a good illustration of the liberty with which the greater English 
 poets have used many means toward the one result of the en- 
 richment of the world by imaginative expression. He was in- 
 fluential because of his insistence upon that old freedom which 
 he mistakenly regarded as a discovery. "The metre of Christa- 
 bel," said he in the preface to that poem, "is not, properly speak- 
 ing, irregular, though it may seem so from its being founded on 
 a new principle : namely, that of counting in each line the accents, 
 not the syllables. Though the latter may vary from seven to 
 twelve, yet in each line the accents will be found to be only four." 
 This was nothing but the "tumbling verse " of the sixteenth 
 century, mentioned by King James. 
 
 Such intentional freedom was not accompanied by extraordi- 
 nary variations from rhyme-usage. We have forced : burst ; 
 gusht:dust; heart : desert ; brow: glow; yesternight : knight ; 
 but as a rule Coleridge's ear seemed naturally to guide him to 
 those rhymes which fastidious usage calls "perfect." It would 
 be hard to find, in a poem of equal length, a less criticisable list 
 than those in Love, which, in order, are as follows : frame : flame ; 
 hour : tower ; eve : Genevieve ; knight : light ; Genevieve : grieve ; 
 story : hoary ; grace : face ; brand : land ; tone : own ; grace : face ; 
 knight : night ; shade: glade; bright : knight ; band: land; vain: 
 brain ; away : lay ; ditty : pity ; Genevieve : eve ; throng : long ; 
 shame : name ; stept : wept ; embrace : face ; art : heart ; pride : 
 bride. But, though sparingly, this leader did not hesitate to
 
 164 
 
 use "the half-rhyme, or incomplete rhyme, which has an irre- 
 sistible charm." Taste, after all, is the arbiter of beauty. 
 
 Southey's Lodore illustrates that prodigality in rhyme-effects 
 which was a characteristic of the romantic revival, and which 
 was to appear later in the humorous work of Barham, Mahony, 
 and Lowell. In general, unusual or forced rhymes, such as his 
 gentleman : cane, or care I : Mary, are suitable only for light or 
 jocose work, or for semi-satirical poems like Byron's Don 
 Juan. 
 
 George Ticknor traces the "riotous waste of rhymes " in 
 Southey's Curse of Kehama which Southey himself called 
 " crypto-rhymes," "uniting the advantage of rhyme with the 
 strength and freedom of blank verse in a manner peculiar to 
 itself " back to the Spanish poet Garcilasso's rhymes between 
 the end of one line and the middle of the next : 
 
 f'Albanio, si tu mal comunicdros 
 Con otro, que pensdras, que tu pena 
 Juzgara como agena, o que esto fuego," etc. 
 
 Concerning this Ticknor says: "Wherever the rhyme is quite 
 obvious the effect is not good, and where it is little noticed the 
 lines take rather the character of blank verse." 
 
 A rhyme in Campbell of a sort not noted hitherto is AcJiaians: 
 defiance. 
 
 Lamb, in his few verses, chiefly deserves notice because of the 
 surprising triumph of The Old Familiar Faces one of the few 
 admirable unrhymed lyrics in the language, with a nobly used 
 refrain, and written in melodious six-stressed measure. The 
 rhymes in his tender lyric Hester are free ; thus he gives endeavor : 
 together; spirit : inherit ; rule : cool : school ; blest her: Hester. 
 Dash : wash, elsewhere, is one of his rhymes that seems pecu- 
 liarly objectionable, notwithstanding our general historic plea 
 for freedom. 
 
 It is natural to find in Moore, by intent, the dropping of g's : 
 
 '.' I have found out a gift for my Erin, 
 
 A gift that will surely content her; 
 Sweet pledge of a love so endearing ! 
 
 Five millions of bullets I 've sent her,"
 
 ROMANTIC RHYME 165 
 
 or an occasional laurel : moral, etc. ; but in general he was not 
 unconventional. Regarding the larger question of his music, I 
 cannot do better than quote from his latest biographer : 
 
 "It is Moore's great distinction that he brought into English 
 verse something of the variety and multiplicity of musical 
 rhythms. When the Irish Melodies began to appear, it is no 
 wonder that readers should have been dazzled by the skill with 
 which a profusion of metres were handled ; and the poet showed 
 himself even more inventive in rhythms than in stanzas. The 
 most curious part of the matter is that Moore was really import- 
 ing into English poetry some of the characteristics of a literature 
 which he did not know. He had not a word of Gaelic, and (like 
 O'Connell) desired to see it die out. He observes that Spanish 
 alone of European metrical systems employs ' assonantic ' in- 
 stead of consonantic rhyme, though he was bred in a country 
 where rhyme of this order had been brought to an extraordinary 
 pitch of perfection. But he based his work upon Irish tunes, 
 composed in the primitive manner, before music was divorced 
 from poetry. One may say, virtually, that in fitting words to 
 these tunes, here produced in English the rhythms of Irish folk- 
 song." * 
 
 Byron's management of the Spenserian stanza, in Childe 
 Harold's Pilgrimage, was marked by a freedom of rhythm and 
 rhyme distinctly modern, as compared with that of all previous 
 users of the stanza. The ottava rima of Don Juan was made to 
 lend itself to jocosity and satire of every kind, written almost as 
 an improvisatore might have done. Such rhymes as Acropolis: 
 Constantinople is : metropolis ; laureate: Tory at: are ye at; in- 
 tellectual : hen-pecked you all; appearance : year hence, may be 
 taken as specimens of hundreds. To Byron's conscious and 
 unconscious imitators, during the Byronic period, they were a 
 constant model or temptation. Tame beside them appeared his 
 sword : lord ; appendix : index ; faith : death ; mood : blood ; 
 athwart : part ; none: stone; gone: sun; beneath : breathe ; wolf: 
 gulf; owl: soul; he: Nineveh (suggestive of Rossetti). 
 
 In particular, Byron deserves praise for the new melody he 
 drew from feminine rhymes in English. The following (distinctly 
 
 1 STEPHEN GWYNNE: Thomas Moore (English Men of Letters series).
 
 166 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 a forerunner of Swinburne) is in itself enough to confute the old 
 idea that they are necessarily trivial : 
 
 "We sate down and wept by the waters 
 
 Of Babel, and thought of the day 
 When our foe, in the hue of his slaughters 
 
 Made Salem's high places his prey; 
 And ye, oh her desolate daughters, 
 
 Were scattered all weeping away." 
 
 Still more anticipatory of Swinburne's most characteristic 
 devices of metre, alliteration, and alternate arrangement of 
 feminine rhymes in an eight-line stanza are the Stanzas to 
 Augusta, of which I quote the first and the last : 
 
 f Though the day of my destiny 's over, 
 
 And the star of my fate hath declined, 
 Thy soft heart refused to discover 
 
 The faults which so many could find ; 
 Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted, 
 
 It shrunk not to share it with me, 
 And the love which my spirit hath painted 
 
 It never hath found but in thee." 
 
 "From the wreck of the past, which hath perished, 
 
 Thus much I at least may recall, 
 It hath taught me that what I most cherished 
 
 Deserved to be dearest of all : 
 In the desert a fountain is springing, 
 
 In the wide waste there still is a tree, 
 And a bird in the solitude singing 
 
 Which speaks to my spirit of thee." 
 
 The aptness of rhyme and stanza in The Destruction of Sen- 
 nacherib ; Oh talk not to me of a name great in story ; the Shelleyan 
 There be none of beauty's daughters; There 's not a joy the world 
 can give; or When we two parted, shows that Byron, with all 
 his superficiality and limitations, left English verse much richer 
 than he found it. 
 
 Shelley was one of the larger influences toward rhyme-freedom 
 in the nineteenth century. In his rhymes, more than in those of 
 the majority of poets, we are reminded of the necessity of that 
 slow pronunciation which gives full value to each sound. If 
 rapidly read, To a Skylark which may be called the credo of 
 the romantic school loses half its beauty. Take, for instance, 
 the first and fourteenth stanzas:
 
 ROMANTIC RHYME 167 
 
 "Hail to thee, blithe spirit 1 
 
 Bird thou never wert 
 That from heaven or near it, 
 
 Pourest thy full heart 
 In profuse strains of unpremeditated art." 
 
 "Chorus hymeneal 
 
 Or triumphal chaunt 
 Matched with thine would be all 
 
 But an empty vaunt 
 A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want." 
 
 Again a kind of lingering lusciousness of utterance seems to be 
 demanded by, and to inhere in, such rhymes as intense: omni- 
 presence; dread : entered ; floods : solitudes ; clear : traveller : hair ; 
 song : strung ; stone : frown ; appear : despair : bare ; pursuing : 
 ruin ; higher : fire ; not : blot : thought : what ; standard : wan- 
 dered; ray: array; motion : emotion. 
 
 Another element in Shelley's rhymes is a silvery clearness of 
 sound which seems to give new value to consonants, not only in 
 such obvious places as 
 
 "Sound of vernal showers 
 
 On the twinkling grass, 
 Rain-awakened flowers, 
 
 All that ever was 
 Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass," 
 
 but in such a stanza as 
 
 "Swiftly walk over the western wave, 
 
 Spirit of Night ! 
 Out of the misty eastern cave 
 Where, all the long and lone daylight, 
 Thou wo vest dreams of joy and fear 
 Which make thee terrible and dear, 
 
 Swift be thy flight!" 
 
 In this poem To the Night alliteration, assonance, and end- 
 rhyme are so blended that the reader scarcely notices where one 
 or another of them is introduced. 
 
 Although, in such a line as the fourth of the stanza just quoted, 
 Shelley never hesitates to alter a final accent for the sake of an 
 effective rhyme, his feminine rhymes are usually unwrenched 
 from their normal accents. Thus in The Flight of Love, the 
 feminine rhymes, in order, are shattered : scattered ; broken:
 
 168 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 spoken ; splendour : render ; dirges : surges ; min gled : sin gled ; 
 bewailest : frailest ; rock thee:mock thee; rafter : laughter. The 
 very rhymes themselves, without the rest of the poem, remind us 
 how strong was Shelley's influence upon many later nineteenth- 
 century poets. After him, at any rate, nobody could say that the 
 feminine rhyme was inconsistent with seriousness, dignity, 
 beauty, or even melancholy. By demanding freedom in all 
 matters of accent, number of syllables in the line, rhyme-sound, 
 and rhyme-arrangement, Shelley, not less than the great leader 
 Coleridge, left in the minds of subsequent English poets the 
 thought that the wing of rhyme, like that of Love in Campbell's 
 poem, 
 
 "moults when caged and captured; 
 Only free, he soars enraptured." 
 
 In Adonais are six identical rhymes. The Cloud is a compara- 
 tively early example of copious internal rhyme. 
 
 To the student who would get the quintessence of Shelley's 
 methods as poet, versifier, and rhymer, I commend the lines 
 beginning "Life of life, thy lips enkindle" (Voice in the Air, 
 Singing," in Prometheus Unbound, II, v, which Palgrave calls 
 "Hymn to the Spirit of Nature" x ) ; or To Jane. 
 
 The rhymes of Keats are strongly illustrative of romantic 
 freedom. Take St. Agnes' Eve as an example: we find Made- 
 line: divine and also Madeline: unseen; was: grass; cavalier: 
 otherwhere; foul: soul; beyond : bland ; moon: crone; ears: 
 bears; secrecy : privacy. In the Ode to a Nightingale are die: 
 ecstasy; abroad: sod; path: hath. In the Ode on a Grecian 
 Urn are Arcady : ecstasy ; on: tone; priest: drest; unheard: 
 endear' d; moon: return. In the Ode to Psyche are too: adieu; 
 hierarchy : sky ; none: moan. In To Autumn are trees: bees: 
 cease. In the Ode on Melancholy are yewberries: mysteries; 
 be .'drowsily; owl: soul; peonies: eyes. Some other rhymes are 
 essences : lees ; innumerable : tell ; gone : known ; dead : mead ; 
 prest : amethyst ; moon : thereon ; gourd : curd ; form : worm : 
 deform; Maia:Baiae. 
 
 1 A surprising thing is that Palgrave omitted this in later editions of 
 The Golden Treasury, by the advice of Tennyson.
 
 ROMANTIC RHYME 169 
 
 In the stanza arrangements of these odes Keats follows neither 
 the Horatian, the Pindaric, nor any familiar irregular method; 
 but, while retaining the strict stanza form, with a uniform num- 
 ber of feet in each line and of lines in each stanza, varies the 
 rhyme-arrangement at will. Thus in the Ode on a Grecian Urn 
 the arrangement is as follows: stanza 1, ababcdedce; stanza 2, 
 ababcdeced; stanza 3, ababcdecde; stanza 4, ababcdecde; stanza 
 5, ababcdedce. 
 
 Keats took no pains to avoid assonance in adjoining rhymed 
 lines. Thus we have in the Ode to Psyche, trees : steep : bees : 
 sleep; brain: name: feign: same. After patient study of asso- 
 nance from the earliest to the latest times, one must reach the 
 conclusion that it is now a nearly negligible thing, in the verse- 
 art of most English poets. It does not occur often enough, or 
 regularly enough, to give evidence that it has frequently been 
 prized as a beauty; nor, on the other hand, is it sedulously 
 avoided. Keats evidently enjoyed it, especially when a languor- 
 ous effect was sought. 1 Gifford thought that many of Keats's 
 images in Endymion looked as though they had been suggested 
 by the rhymes themselves. "Rhyme," said he, "may incline the 
 balance"; but the poet's art lies "in making the deflection [to 
 the necessities of rhyme and metre] as little conspicuous as 
 possible." 
 
 A noteworthy element in Keats's use of the rhyming couplet is 
 the essential unimportance of the rhyme, oftentimes, as a marker 
 of sense. In the famous opening lines of Endymion, for instance, 
 the running-over is so constant that the rhymes become only 
 a sort of undertone of agreeable music. 
 
 One of the most beautiful of thought-rhyme cadences, and at 
 the same time one of the most obvious illustrations of tone-color, 
 is the well-known end of stanza 7 and beginning of stanza 8 of 
 the Ode to a Nightingale : 
 
 ."Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 
 
 " Forlorn ! the very word is like a bell 
 
 To toll me back from thee to my sole self." 
 
 1 See page 30 sqq.
 
 170 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 This repeated word forlorn, on which Keats so finely dwelt, 
 suggests a brief mention of a large subject. Tone-color is an un- 
 questionable thing, and one closely connected with rhyme. 
 Some of the "symbolists" have gone so far as to connect particular 
 sounds with particular colors. Such a word as forlorn pos- 
 sibly suggests purple or blue, as such a word as splendid may 
 suggest the glitter of bright hues; but those who pursue the 
 inquiry soon get into the region where no two persons agree as 
 to facts or fancies. 
 
 Of course there is a difference in color between Poe's line 
 so much admired by Mr. Andrew Lang "The viol, the violet, 
 and the vine," and Browning's "Gr-r-r there, go, my heart's 
 abhorrence." Equally of course there are onomatopoetic words 
 like whizz, bang, thud, and a hundred more. Boom, for instance, 
 contains the three sounds, in order, attending the firing of a 
 cannon. But we do not go very far before we reach words 
 which, melodious or not in themselves, strongly suggest inherent 
 ideas. Dark, to take the first one that comes to mind, is sweetly 
 musical as well as pictorially impressive; and it would be easy 
 to found a scheme of tone-color on it alone. But, unfortunately, 
 mark is still more musical, and yet, because of its meaning, 
 destitute of tone-color effects. Nor in stark has the explosive 
 any function. Bark (ship) and bark (of a dog) depend wholly 
 on their meanings for any result on the mind. Hark might 
 be selected as being completely unified in sound and sense, while 
 lark also suggests tonality; but park, beginning with a smart 
 labial-explosive, has no onomatopoetic power. Furthermore, 
 while ah may perhaps be closer to a purple effect than see, no two 
 writers on the subject, from Lord Bacon to Stephane MaHamae", 
 will agree on the color-labels to attach to any two sounds in any 
 language. Clearly, "the subject remains to be investigated." 
 
 Poe's statement as to the way in which The Raven was built 
 up is well known ; and Walter Crane, in his Reminiscences, says 
 that Tennyson read his own poetry aloud in a deep voice, in a 
 way that reminded one of his description, in the M orte d' Arthur, 
 of the manner in which Everard Hall 
 
 " read, mouthing out his hollow o's and o's, 
 Deep-chested music."
 
 ROMANTIC RHYME 171 
 
 It is interesting to see how many of the most enduringly popular 
 songs of England and America, for the past hundred years, have 
 had, in title or refrain, the long vowels and liquids that make the 
 most sonorous rhymes. Take, for instance, those bringing in 
 the thought and utterance of the word "old": Beginning with 
 Auld Lang Syne and Auld Robin Gray, we have The Old Folks 
 at Home, The Old Oaken Bucket, Old Uncle Ned, My Old 
 Kentucky Home, Tenting on the Old Camp Ground, and many 
 others. Long o is the dominant sound of Ben Bolt, Home, Sweet 
 Home, The Last Rose of Summer, and Tennyson's Sweet and Low. 
 The similar au is the note of Annie Laurie. Liquids and long 
 vowels dominate The Land o' the Leal, Drink to me only with 
 thine eyes, Flow gently, sweet Afton, and The Harp that once 
 through Tara's halls. Hard times, hard times, come again no 
 more is one of the many songs depending upon the most effective 
 single refrain in English. " No more all hell is writ in those 
 two words"; but they may also be turned into a thought of 
 triumphant mastery over present woe. 
 
 Thomas Hood, who may be called the last of the romantic 
 school proper, was a minor poet who wrote two enduring master- 
 pieces of melody. The Bridge of Sighs stands alone in the 
 anthology of the nineteenth century. One of its features a 
 deliberate use of assonance shows that Hood was an exception 
 to the general remark just made on that subject. There can be 
 no question of the intention, or of the success, of garments: 
 cerements; constantly : instantly; evidence : eminence : providence. 
 Among the end-rhymes are humbly : dumbly ; humanly. 'wo- 
 manly; dishonor : on her ; casement : basement : amazement. 
 
 An early example of the repetend is 
 
 "Loop up her tresses 
 
 Escaped from the comb, 
 Her fair auburn tresses ; 
 Whilst wonderment guesses 
 Where was her home?" 
 
 Hood's Past and Present in its different way not less valu- 
 able than The Bridge of Sighs is an excellent example of a 
 poem that rhymes throughout in both ways : in thought and in 
 corresponding expression. An apparent indication that it was
 
 172 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 rapidly written is found in the imperfect internal rhyme in the 
 next-to-the-last line of the third stanza: 
 
 "And summer pools could hardly cool 
 The fever on my brow." 
 
 The consecutive high : sky : joy : boy of the last stanza indicates 
 that in Hood's day the ai sound of joy, etc., no longer existed. 1 
 
 Hood, by the way, once produced what is a strong candidate 
 even when we remember the later cacophonies of the Brown- 
 ings for the place of the worst rhyme (not jocosely intended) 
 in the language. It occurs in his imaginative poem The Elm 
 Tree, evidently written under the influence of Coleridge: 
 
 "The pines those old gigantic pines, 
 
 That writhe recalling soon 
 The famous human group that writhes 
 
 With snakes in wild festoon 
 In ramous wrestlings interlaced, 
 
 A forest Laocoon. 
 
 1 A parody is a sort of elaborated rhyme, in which there is a series of 
 contrasts between the ideas of the one poem and those of the other, 
 place by place. Thus Miss Carolyn Wells begins her parody of Hood's 
 Past and Present; 
 
 "I remember, I remember 
 
 The flat where I was born: 
 The little air-shaft where the sun 
 Could not peep in at morn ; " 
 
 and ends it with 
 
 "I live in first-floor chambers now, 
 
 With nothing to annoy, 
 But still I 'm farther off from heaven 
 Than when I was a boy."
 
 X 
 
 MODERN RHYME 
 
 INFLUENCES in poetry cannot infallibly be traced; 
 
 "For who has sight so keen and strong 
 That it can follow the flight of song?" 
 
 But after Wordsworth came Bryant; after Shelley Poe; and 
 after Keats Tennyson. Bryant in turn affected the youthful 
 Longfellow, until he came under the power of Heine ; nor would 
 the pre-Raphaelite school of English poets have been quite the 
 same had Tennyson never written Mariana, The Sisters, and 
 St. Agnes' Eve. 
 
 Neither can schools of poetry be neatly assigned to chronologi- 
 cal limits. Rogers, who may be considered the last survival of 
 the eighteenth-century school, died as late as 1855 ; Wordsworth 
 was still poet-laureate in 1850; and Hunt, whom the Quarterly 
 Review, in its famous onslaught on Keats, had declared to be 
 much superior to him, though possessing all his characteristic 
 faults, survived until the eve of the American Civil War. 
 
 The first American poem to win and retain a place in the history 
 of English literature was Bryant's Thanatopsis in every way 
 a dignified piece of blank verse. But when it orginally appeared 
 (in The North American Review for September, 1817) it was in a 
 form very different from that in which it has so long been known. 
 It began with four four-line iambic pentameter stanzas, rhymed 
 abab. Then came, by an abrupt change, in blank verse to the 
 end, the germ of the poem as we have it at present. In this 
 original shape the now famous beginning and ending were 
 lacking ; the rhymed stanzas were weak ; and between them and 
 the added blank verse there was no more unity of form than 
 would have been shown had a page of Gray's Elegy been com-
 
 174 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 bined with a page of Blair's Grave, as constituting a single 
 poem. 1 
 
 Somfe of the earlier and less important poems of Longfellow, 
 both in rhyme and in blank verse, were, as had been said, im- 
 mediately affected by the work of Bryant. Longfellow's was 
 always a receptive mind; and when, before he was twenty, he 
 was beginning his poetical career, Bryant loomed large on the 
 American literary horizon. But Longfellow soon turned to the 
 kind of work by which he is best known, and which does not in 
 the least suggest his eminent predecessor. 
 
 It is interesting to note that no poet of rank, since the dismal 
 days of the Elizabethan anti-rhymers, so extensively and so 
 successfully experimented in other unrhymed measures than 
 blank verse. To an Old Danish Song-Book (trochaic), The 
 Grave (translated from Old English), Tegner's Drapa (" in the 
 spirit of the old Norse poetry"), The Children of the Lord's 
 Supper (hexameter), and other translated or original pieces, 
 showed his fondness for such work before the two long poems 
 
 1 The rhymed introduction, as originally printed, was as follows : 
 " THANATOPSIS 
 
 "Not that from life, and all its woes 
 
 The hand of death shall set me free; 
 Not that this head shall then repose 
 In the low vale most peacefully. 
 
 "Ah, when I touch time's farthest brink, 
 
 A kinder solace must attend ; 
 It chills my very soul to think 
 On that dread hour when life must end. 
 
 "In vain the flattering verse may breathe 
 Of ease from pain and rest from strife; 
 There is a sacred dread of death 
 Inwoven with the strings of life. 
 
 "This bitter cup at first was given 
 
 When angry justice frown'd severe, 
 And 't is th' eternal doom of heaven 
 That man must view the grave with fear. 
 
 "Yet a few days, and thee 
 The all-beholding sun shall see no more "... etc. 
 
 The poem closed with the broken line 
 
 "And make their bed with thee."
 
 MODERN RHYME 175 
 
 by which his fame was so widely spread: Evangeline and 
 Hiawatha. The hexameters of Evangeline, with some occasional 
 roughness, proved to have a fitness for idyllic description not 
 discovered by previous experimenters in a verse-form that was, 
 and is, generally unsuitable for English use. 1 Its employment 
 by Longfellow as the vehicle (in The Courtship of Miles Stan- 
 dish) for detailed humor we now see to have been a mistake ; 
 indeed, humor was never one of Longfellow's strongest powers. 
 The four-stressed trochaics of Hiawatha, with their fitness for 
 the parallelisms and repetitions so germane to the Indian mind 
 and so advantageous in a poem needing to include explanatory 
 translations, proved to be, as Longfellow said when he hit on 
 the metre while reading the Kalevala, exactly suitable for the 
 designed purpose. 
 
 Longfellow's fondness for freeing himself from the fetters of 
 rhyme also appeared in some of his rhymed work ; for instance, 
 in parts of The Saga of King Olaf, where the movement some- 
 times dominates the technically rhyming syllables. Of all 
 Longfellow's unrhymed poems the best is The Bells of Lynn, 
 with its melodious refrain. In his finest lyric of all, My 
 Lost Youth, though the poem itself is otherwise rhymed 
 throughout, he found a prose recurrence ready to his hand, con- 
 stituting one of the most effective thought-markers to be found 
 in modern verse. 
 
 When Emerson, the prophet and poet of individualism, ideal- 
 ism, and optimism, wished to preach or portray with special 
 conciseness, he fell naturally into a rhythmical form of expression. 
 Writing, as he always did, "for thought, and not praise," he 
 was careless concerning the number of stresses in the line, or the 
 nature and arrangement of rhymes. Few poets have used a 
 greater variety of lilts. Like the old improvisatori, he chanted 
 until he had sung his song. Sometimes he was as regular as 
 in the Concord Hymn; sometimes as loose as in the Earth-Song 
 of Hamatreya. The music of Good-Bye, or The Rhodora, is so 
 
 1 Swinburne declared himself unable to scan Arnold's hexameters, 
 and said: "At best what ugly bastards of verse are these self-styled 
 hexameters ! how human tongues or hands could utter or could write 
 them except by way of burlesque improvisation I could never imagine, 
 and never shall."
 
 176 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 unquestionable that we are left certain that Emerson's rough- 
 ness in verse was due either to indifference to externals or to a 
 sense of satisfaction in Saxon straightforwardness of expression. 
 Excessive strength sometimes pleases by its very force, just as 
 undue mellifluousness cloys. 
 
 Thus the rhyme-uses of the leader of the Transcendental 
 school of American poets were free in the extreme freer, on 
 the whole, than those of his associates and followers. Of all 
 the school, Jones Very was the truest master of form, and the 
 only one who could be trusted to write a first-rate sonnet. The 
 strength of The Dial contributors lay in prose ; deeply influenced 
 by Coleridge, there was no Coleridge among them. Yet two 
 bits from The Dial, aside from Emerson's contributions, have 
 justly passed into the collections of familiar quotations, and 
 both are rhymed. One is Cranch's 
 
 ."Thought is deeper than all speech, 
 Feeling deeper than all thought; 
 Souls to souls can never teach 
 What unto themselves was taught;" 
 
 the other Ellen Sturgis Hooper's 
 
 "I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty; 
 I waked, and found that life was duty." 
 
 Some of Emerson's more unusual rhymes are mace : conveys : 
 blaze; use: (noun) muse; romance : clans ; vice: ties; wars: 
 remorse ; oreads : arcades ; patriots : roots ; libraries : diction- 
 aries; woods: roads; coats: spots; zones: towns; cavaliers: 
 travellers ; fairies : contraries ; resorts : thoughts ; hours : years : 
 doors ; tones : cotyledons ; Nemesis : redresses ; heats : violets ; 
 solitudes : underwoods ; bells : daffodels (sic): science : clairvoy- 
 ance; unites : opposites ; rude: wood; gloom: come; cloud: 
 blood ; foot : fruit ; foot : note ; shoot : compute ; not : mote : note ; 
 shoon:on; none: union (compare Milton's alone: union); sun: 
 dominion; go: whereto; antipode : glowed ; odd .-period; be- 
 yond : bound ; lost : coast ; thought : not ; power : emperor ; cow : 
 caribou; come : hum : martyrdom ; atmosphere : air ; seer .'phil- 
 osopher; are: war; art: bard; Porto Rique (sic) : seek; hope: 
 up; honey: agrimony; waste: passed (this was a good rhyme in 
 Shakespeare's day) ; swamp : lamp ; dark : clerk (surviving English
 
 MODERN RHYME 177 
 
 pronunciation); scarf : wharf ; breath : bequeath ; kite: freight: 
 parasite; put: nut; again: men; amain: again (same poem); 
 wine: time; privilege : liege ; realm: film; divided : united. 
 
 The gem of the Emersonian collection is draw : proprietor. 
 
 Of the American choir, Whittier seems to have had the least 
 trustworthy ear. The whole trend of the present review of the 
 general subject is to show the widespread almost the universal 
 assertion, by the poets, of the right to use means toward ends 
 as they choose, obeying the general law, but violating it in the 
 particular. Yet when a poet, as did Whittier, writes in conven- 
 tional metres and uses the ordinary verse-machinery for the utter- 
 ance of common emotions of humanity, we do not expect him 
 to claim the freedom of a Blake, a Coleridge, or an Emerson. 
 War : law and dawn : morn, notwithstanding the weakening of r 
 in England and New England, are not yet good usage. Abroad: 
 lord is made no more euphonious because it is also used by Kip- 
 ling. Another Whittier rhyme is dumb : lyceum. But in charity 
 we may remember Crashaw's wishes : blisses : kisses, and Her- 
 rick's goes : flows : clothes. 
 
 Whittier's liberality as a rhymer may fairly be illustrated by 
 turning not to his earliest or obscurest lyrics, but to a few of his 
 best known pieces. In The Eternal Goodness are flood : good ; 
 hath :death; weak: break; have: prove. In Our Master are 
 full : whole ; look : rebuke ; gratitude : good ; subdued : father- 
 hood; ineffable : hell ; bells : canticles ; holocaust : most. In Bar- 
 bara Frietchie are Lord: horde; staff: scarf; tost: host. In Maud 
 Muller are wrongs : tongues ; on: alone; poor: door; pain: 
 again; again: been; pen: been. In Laus Deo are Lord: abroad; 
 abroad : God. 
 
 Some of these, certainly, need Professor G. R. Carpenter's 
 defence: "Whittier's rhymes were loose, but they were the as- 
 sonances that the people loved." 
 
 Whittier's great achievement in rhyme is not the melodious 
 Dead Ship of Harpswell, or the refrain of the Farewell of a 
 Virginia Slave-Mother, or the beauty of such lines as 
 
 "I know not where his islands lift 
 
 Their fronded palms in air; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond his love and care," 
 12
 
 178 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 but his successful restoration, in Snow-Bound, of the iambic 
 tetrameter, here used not for rapid narrative, as in Scott, but 
 for tender sentiment. Not Goldsmith himself, in his employ- 
 ment of the heroic couplets of The Deserted Village, better turned 
 his measure to description of nature, delineation of persons, and 
 that higher spiritual thought which is the ultimate mission of 
 poetry. From the first line to the last Snow-Bound is a master- 
 piece, and a masterpiece not spoiled or materially harmed by 
 its inclusion of some of the rhymes just quoted. It was much to 
 produce octosyllabic couplets capable of presenting such a 
 thought-picture as this : 
 
 "What matter how the night behaved? 
 What matter how the north- wind raved ? 
 Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
 Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. 
 O Time and Change 1 with hair as gray 
 As was my sire's that winter day, 
 How strange it seems, with so much gone 
 Of life and love, to still live on 1 
 Ah, brother 1 only I and thou 
 Are left of all that circle now, 
 The dear home faces whereupon 
 That fitful firelight paled and shone. 
 Henceforward, listen as we will, 
 The voices of that hearth are still ; 
 Look where we may, the wide earth o'er, 
 Those lighted faces smile no more. 
 We tread the paths their feet have worn, 
 
 We sit beneath their orchard-trees, 
 
 We hear, like them, the hum of bees 
 And rustle of the bladed corn; 
 We turn the pages that they read, 
 
 Their written words we linger o'er, 
 But in the sun they cast no shade, 
 No voice is heard, no sign is made, 
 
 No step is on the conscious floor ! 
 Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust, 
 (Since He who knows our need is just,) 
 That, somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
 Alas for him who never sees 
 The stars shine through his cypress-trees I 
 Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
 Nor looks to see the breaking day 
 Across the mournful marbles play ! 
 Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 
 
 The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
 
 MODERN RHYME 179 
 
 That Life is ever lord of Death, 
 And Love can never lose its own I " 
 
 Holmes must be classed among the American singers of the 
 second order, indeed, his best work was in prose. But none 
 of his contemporaries surpassed him in ease of lyrical flow. The 
 natural singers are commonly the rhymers who depart least fre- 
 quently from the orthoepical laws of their time. Therefore we 
 find a rather unusual smoothness and felicity in the rhymes of 
 Holmes's best poems. In The Chambered Nautilus is no imper- 
 fect or unusual rhyme. In The Last Leaf, also, is none. So 
 accurate is Holmes that his wan : gone and said : dead in this 
 poem may hereafter be cited as proofs of pronunciation in his 
 time. Even in his strictly humorous pieces he does not avail 
 himself of the jester's usual privilege of resorting to strained or 
 unexpected rhymes. In The Deacon's Masterpiece the dialectal 
 do : yeou ; taown : raoun' : daown; and ellum : sell 'em are accurate. 
 What : spot are o, in rural parlance. 
 
 With all of Tennyson's lasting achievements as a poet, his 
 principal mark on the history of English rhyme was made by his 
 successful use of what has since been called the In Memoriam 
 metre, the very phrase being an indication of the novelty and 
 unexpectedness of the triumph. The form iambic tetrameter, 
 rhymed abba was not strictly new ; it occurs in a way in 
 Gottfried of Strasburg's Tristan, in the latter half of the twelfth 
 century, where we have not only man : kan : man : kan, but also 
 list : ist : ist : list. Chaucer used the arrangement as the quatrain 
 ending the sixain of the stanzas of his Complaint to his Lady 
 (Skeat's nomenclature). Here, however, the line is pentameter, 
 and the group of four lines does not constitute a stanza. In one 
 passage of Dryden's shorter St. Cecilia's Day ode the lines 
 being of different lengths is flute : discovers : lovers : lute. Of 
 course, also, the scheme is that of each of the two quatrains 
 opening the Italian sonnet. But Tennyson's use, in a variety 
 of sober lyrics, was original. The arrangement would be un- 
 suitable for most themes, and even in this case it becomes 
 heavily monotonous at times but as retaining a gravity not 
 inherent in more common forms it was a happy thought on 
 Tennyson's part. Yet should this abba plan be applied to lines
 
 180 
 
 having more than four stresses it would annoy or confuse most 
 modern readers, who would feel that they, and not the poem, 
 were carrying the rhymes. 
 
 Of unusual or forced rhymes there are rather fewer in Tenny- 
 son than in his predecessors of the earlier romantic school, and 
 far less than in the work of the pre-Raphaelites. We find 
 illumineth : death (merely a matter of slow pronunciation) ; 
 seas : peace ; more : poor ; curse : horse ; gaze : face ; wood : flood ; 
 own : crown ; tune : moon ; one : alone : gone ; waist : rest ; stars : 
 wars. Blood : stood is to be explained, as in the cases cited in the 
 previous chapter, by the necessity of using an almost rhymeless 
 word. Christ : mist is similarly necessary ; the very few existing 
 rhymes having small relation to the thought of Christ. Thundered : 
 hundred may have been natural in thinking of the three hundred 
 in connection with cannon; but the pronunciation is one of the 
 most objectionable in modern poetry. Air : sepulchre is hard to 
 justify on any strict theory. Campbell, in Hohenlinden, has 
 rapidly: scenery: revelry: artillery: rapidly: canopy: chivalry: 
 sepulchre; his pronunciation was perhaps "sepulchra." But 
 Shelley had sepulchre: tear. Mahony ("Father Prout") has 
 ne'er: sepulchre; and Andrew Lang (as late as 1871) dear: 
 sepulchre. 
 
 Tennyson had small objection to identical rhymes; thus he 
 uses land: land; down:adown; heaviness : weariness. Identity 
 of final syllables, with changed meaning of the root part of the 
 word, is thus brought down to the latter half of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 St. Agnes' Eve is perhaps his most nearly perfect lyric, in its 
 unity of inner idea and rhyme-effects. 
 
 Notwithstanding such successes, from the hands of masters of 
 melody, as the eight-stressed rhymed lines of The Raven and 
 Locksley Hall, English verse cannot safely with or without 
 rhyme go beyond seven stresses. Even the hexameter, when 
 rhyming in itself and not used as a closing alexandrine, leaves a 
 poor effect. But the nine-stressed rhymed trochaics of Tennyson's 
 To Virgil are satisfying, because the poet divides each line by a 
 strong caesural pause for the ear and a typographical break for 
 the eye:
 
 MODERN RHYME 181 
 
 "Roman Virgil, thou that singest 
 
 Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire, 
 Ilion falling, Rome arising, 
 wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre; 
 
 "Landscape-lover, lord of language 
 
 more than he that sang the 'Works and Days,' 
 All the chosen coin of fancy 
 
 flashing out from many a golden phrase; 
 
 "Thou that singest wheat and woodland, 
 
 tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd ; 
 All the charm of all the Muses 
 
 often flowering in a lonely word ; . . . 
 
 "I salute thee, Mantovano, 
 
 I that loved thee since my day began, 
 Wielder of the stateliest measure 
 ever moulded by the lips of man." 
 
 Tennyson was fond of experimenting in various classical 
 measures, which, though more scannable than the Elizabethans' 
 endeavors, and of course superior in value of idea, he wished to 
 be considered merely as experiments. 
 
 In his odes he allowed himself the freedom of inserting some 
 lines with idea-rhyme and internal rhyme. 
 
 A master of blank verse, 1 Tennyson also surpassed all his 
 predecessors in English in his unrhymed lyrics. On the whole, 
 the unrhymed lyric by Heine, Carducci, Arnold, or whatso- 
 ever nineteenth-century lyrist, in this or that tongue, remains a 
 thing far from indispensable. Nothing can be compared with 
 Tennyson's Tears, Idle Tears save Lamb's The Old Familiar 
 Faces. In both of these a beautiful and melancholy-melodious 
 refrain virtually constitutes rhymed stanzas. In "Now sleeps 
 the crimson petal, now the white," stanzas also seem to be 
 created by " Now sleeps," "Now lies," "Now slides," and "Now 
 folds," and by the ends "thou with me," "on to me," "unto me," 
 "thoughts in me," "lost in me." 
 
 Splendidly self-explanatory, in thought and form, is the auto- 
 biographical Merlin and the Gleam, in which the gleam word 
 recurs as often and as effectively as the thought of the ideal in a 
 man's life. 
 
 1 Said Tennyson to William Allingham (Allingham's Diary, 294) : 
 "It is much easier to write rhyme than good blank verse."
 
 182 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 Matthew Arnold, notwithstanding a certain classic reticence in 
 his temper and style, was by no means a close rhymer. He gives 
 us Thames : aims ; away: way; well : fill : still ; fire: by her; 
 and morning : dawning, which last the London Chronicle says is 
 a faithful record of present English pronunciation, but is, though 
 used by Blake and Kipling, "the one vulgar rhyme of the 
 language." 
 
 In such balances as 
 
 "This way, this way," 
 followed later on by 
 
 f'Come away, come away," 
 
 Arnold shows that an irregularity in stress-matter and stress- 
 arrangement may lend new force to rhyme. Dover Beach is 
 another illustration of his effective use of this method. But A 
 Summer Night, though rhymed, is not rhythmical prose, not 
 even good prose. 
 
 Browning, brave singer of the glory of age, the sureness of 
 immortality, and the honor due to manly force, was at times a 
 master of rhyme, but again seemed to chafe under its fetters. 
 Nothing more melodious could be asked than he gave us in the 
 rhymes of Evelyn Hope, Prospice, How they brought the Good 
 News from Ghent to Aix, or the sustained Rabbi ben Ezra; yet he 
 sometimes fills up his rhymes with "in fine," "to wit," "say," 
 etc., like a 'prentice hand in poetry. Butler and Byron were not 
 freer in the use of rhymes of all sorts, from the melodious to the 
 ingenious, and from the strict to the absurd. In his case, as 
 elsewhere, we leave unmentioned the ordinary, or so-called 
 "perfect," rhymes, as taken for granted; and we must once 
 more remember that in any poet, however wayward or original 
 in his rhyme-uses, the normal is largely in the majority. But if 
 we marshal some of Browning's more unusual rhymes the result 
 is rather surprising, and may be left to tell its own story : 
 
 Adela:May; balance : nonchalance ; blue eye : dewy ; balcony: 
 falcon eye; companion: any one; cup more rose: up morose; can 
 know: piano; duplicate : supplicate ; dizziness : business ; deli- 
 cate : helicate ; die : mulberry ; eye-holes : viols ; from mice:
 
 MODERN RHYME 183 
 
 promise; Jour year-old : Ber old ; forethought : worth aught; 
 fondly there: beyond lie there; figure : bigger ; honour : donour ; 
 hand :lands; high : properly ; happen : clap pen ; ins and outs: 
 thin sand doubts; in hell free: belfry; importune : fortune 
 (formerly correct, and used by Gray) ; infinite: bright; imperfect 
 say : perfects aye ; laymen: amen; London : undone ; liberty: I: 
 why ; lose : noose ; linger : stringer ; Master Hugues : fugues ; 
 moments : endowments ; morass: was; news of her .-Lucifer; 
 office : trophies ; once: suns; once stir : monster ; packed : track ; 
 pass : was ; plans : Lannes ; putties : portcullis ; pray : Africa ; 
 religion : pigeon ; right : exquisite ; reddens: Edens; small mist: 
 psalmist ; stature : usurpature ; shall see : palsy ; Solomon : throne ; 
 singer : finger ; scores : quarter-emperors ; skill : principle : will ; 
 slip sees : gypsies ; tress : kiss ; visit I 've : inquisitive ; well swear : 
 elsewhere; within wards : inwards ; went trickle : ventricle ; 
 wreathy hop : Ethiop. 
 
 In Pacchiarotto alone are Pacchiarotto : paint-pot-0 : lot to : 
 trot toe : got to : hot tow; oratory : art-laboratory; roomy : gloomy : 
 Beccafumi; stubborn: cub-born; one key: monkey; prelude: 
 hell-hued; circle : work ill ; was hard: hazard: mazard; Stallo- 
 reggi : allege ye ; sides of it : wide so fit ; Hades : paid ease : ladies ; 
 pooh-poohed it is : lewd ditties : nudities; triumph : cry "Humph" ; 
 burgess : Boanerges : urges ; pontiff: won't if; reared in: mere 
 din; conventional : mention all ; bolted : dolt-head ; half! abet?: 
 alphabet; there 1 's X : fair sex ; pott' s hood : falsehood ; trumpets: 
 dumb pets; few venal : Juvenal ; Apage:cap a-gee; doublet: 
 sub-let; outside : lout's eyed; visage : this age; tractable : fact able; 
 interpose : purpose ; busily : Sicily ; open: no pen; quiet eye: 
 society; especially : fresh ally; poverty : covert tie; essayed: yes 
 said; lambdas : damned ass; all! fie:Amalfi; clotpott : what 
 poll; Siena's: hyenas; ill able : dissyllable ; last "If" : mastiff; 
 discomfiture : dumb fit sure; need is:incedis; constable : one 
 stable; structure : tucked your; domicile : promise I'll; specimens : 
 essemens; spark as : carcass ; loathsome : oath some ; observancy: 
 reserve fancy; abbot : dab-pot : scab hot ; transmute : man' s mute ; 
 consequence : non-sequence ; take hold : clay-cold ; dungeon : one 
 John; existence : hissed hence ; cue be : booby : ruby ; mahlstick: 
 all stick; stomach: some ache; nimbly : chimbly ; my house:
 
 184 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 pious; grunt is'tf: contrapuntist; aubade : so bad ; 'scape hence, 
 ha'pence; ranunculus: Tommy-make-room-for-your-Uncle us: 
 homunculus; place in: basin; paddock: ad hoc; convey thought: 
 enswathe ought; envy: then vie; crystalline : small line; goose- 
 wont is: os frontis; chrusaora [Greek]: or ray; vexed here: next 
 year. 
 
 But Browning, says William Allingham in his Diary, once 
 subjected a poem by him to a close analysis, "to see if any of 
 the rhymes were forced," and objected to rose : clothes. 
 
 As regards identical rhymes, Browning was willing to allow 
 light instead of might as the reading of the last word of the fourth 
 line of the first stanza of Shelley's Stanzas written in Dejection 
 near Naples: 
 
 "The sun is warm, the sky is clear, 
 
 The waves are dancing fast and bright, 
 Blue isles and snowy mountains wear 
 
 The purple noon's transparent might; 
 
 The breath of the moist earth is light 
 Around its unexpanded buds; 
 
 Like many a voice of one delight 
 The winds', the birds', the ocean-floods' 
 
 The city's voice itself is soft like Solitude's." * 
 
 The greatest curiosity in Browning's rhymes is where the three 
 momometers 
 
 "Escape me? 
 Never, 
 Beloved. 
 
 are separated the whole length of the poem (sixteen lines) from 
 the corresponding 
 
 " I shape me, 
 Ever 
 Removed." 
 
 1 " Robert Browning wanted me to read light for might, urging that 
 ' the notion of light as a veil and transparent is familiar with Shelley ' ; 
 and the Italian practice of making words rhyme which have the same 
 sound but a different sense, not infrequent: 'in this stanza,' he added, 
 'there is delight for light's fellow.' The last argument seemed to me 
 to be conclusive against light, because Shelley would almost certainly 
 not use the identical syllable as a rhyming terminal thrice so close 
 together." H. Buxton Fonnan, in The Athenaeum, July to December, 
 1907, p. 155.
 
 MODERN RHYME 185 
 
 A triumph not to be matched in English prosody is the un- 
 rhymed trochaic pentameter of One Word More, beginning : 
 
 "There they are, my fifty men and women 
 Naming me the fifty poems finished ; 
 Take them, Love, the book and me together: 
 Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also." 
 
 The melody of the movement is so constant that it is difficult to 
 disabuse one's mind from the impression that the poem is rhymed. 
 
 The severest arraignment of Browning's rhymes is to be found 
 in The True Function of Criticism, a dialogue by Oscar Wilde 
 (in The Nineteenth Century for July, 1890), in which "Gilbert" 
 says : : 
 
 "Rhyme, that exquisite echo which in the music's hollow hill 
 creates and answers its own voice ; rhyme, which in the hands of 
 a real artist becomes not merely a material element of metrical 
 beauty, but a spiritual element of thought and passion also, 
 waking a new mood, it may be, or stirring a fresh train of ideas, 
 or opening by mere sweetness and suggestion of sound some 
 golden door at which the Imagination itself had knocked in vain ; 
 rhyme, which can turn man's utterance and the speech of gods ; 
 rhyme, the one chord we have added to the Greek lyre, became 
 in Robert Browning's hands a grotesque, misshapen thing, which 
 made him at times masquerade in poetry as a low comedian, and 
 ride Pegasus too often with his tongue in his cheek." 
 
 Mrs. Browning's indifference to all ordinary rules of rhyme is 
 well known. To make anything like a full list of her peculiar 
 rhymes would fill many pages; the following (arranged alpha- 
 betically to correspond with the similar list from her husband's 
 poems) may be given as representative : 
 
 Again: brain; again: men (both in Bertha in the Lane); 
 angels : candles ; alone : home ; burden : disregarding ; brother : 
 lover; calmly : palm-tree ; come: sung; enter : venture ; Eden: 
 heeding ; faith : breath : death ; forgiven : heaven ; Goethe : duty ; 
 greatness : incompleteness ; gander : wander : chamber ; glade and: 
 maiden; hero' s : tear rose ; hat: bag; idyl: middle; know from: 
 snow-storm; love : prove : Jove ; ladies : babies; mainland : train- 
 band; Modena: God in a; panther: saunter; playing: away in; 
 pressure : guesser ; rarest : heiress ; silence : islands ; satire : na-
 
 186 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 ture; suitor : future ; trident : silent ; valleys : palace ; ways: 
 grace; day' s : praise ; water: her; wildwood : childhood. 
 
 Mrs. Browning herself, when sharply criticised for the loose- 
 ness of her rhymes, definitely stated that she had worked on a 
 clear, and as she believed correct, theory in the matter. August 
 13, 1844, she wrote, with a Poesque copiousness of italics, to H. S. 
 Boyd: "Most of the 'incorrectnesses' you speak of may be 'in- 
 correctnesses,' but are not negligences. I have a theory about 
 double rhymes for which I shall be attacked by the critics, but 
 which I could justify perhaps on high authority, or at least 
 analogy. In fact, these volumes of mine have more double 
 rhymes than any two books of English poems that ever to my 
 knowledge were printed; I mean of English poems, not comic. 
 Now, of double rhymes in use, which are perfect rhymes, you 
 are aware how few there are, and yet you are also aware of what 
 an admirable effect in making a rhythm various and vigorous, 
 double rhyming is in English poetry. Therefore I have used a 
 certain licence; and after much thoughtful study of the Eliza- 
 bethan writers, have ventured it with the public. And do you 
 tell me, you who object to the use of a different vowel in a double 
 rhyme, why you rhyme (as everybody does, without blame from 
 anybody) 'given ' to 'heaven/ when you object to my rhyming 
 'remember' and 'chamber'? The analogy surely is all on my 
 side, and I believe that the spirit of the English language is also. 
 ... I wish you to consider the subject as a point for consideration 
 seriously, and not to blame me as a writer of careless verses. If 
 I deal too much in licences, it is not because I am idle, but 
 because I am speculative for freedom's sake." 
 
 Frederic G. Kenyon, the editor of Mrs. Browning's letters, in 
 discussing this argument, says that the experiment is "as legiti- 
 mate as, say, the metrical experiments in hexameters and hen- 
 decasyllabics of Longfellow or Tennyson, and whether approved 
 or not it should be criticised as an experiment, not as mere care- 
 lessness. . . . That Mrs. Browning's ear was quite capable of 
 discerning true rhymes is shown by the fact that she tacitly 
 abandoned her experiment in assonances. Not only in the pure 
 and high art of the Sonnets from the Portuguese, but even in 
 Casa Guidi Windows, the rhetorical and sometimes colloquial
 
 MODERN RHYME 187 
 
 tone of which might have been thought to lend itself to such 
 devices, imperfect rhymes come but rarely." 1 
 
 In Lady Geraldine's Courtship Mrs. Browning made a novel 
 use of internal rhyme, a use interesting in itself and impor- 
 tant in its effect on the form of Poe's Raven. The "noblest of 
 her sex " (dedication to Poe's collected poems of 1845) is in- 
 separably connected with the best known of his writings. 
 
 There is significance in the title of the late W. E. Henley's 
 collection of English Lyrics: Chaucer to Poe. "After Keats," 
 says Mr. Henley in his introduction, "there is no fresh note, until 
 we hear from over the Atlantic the artful, subtle, irresistible song 
 of Poe: the New Music which none who has heard it can for- 
 get, and which, if you listen for it, you will catch in much of the 
 melody that has found utterance since Mr. Swinburne, working 
 after Baudelaire, shocked and enchanted the world with his 
 First Series of Poems and Ballads." 
 
 On what did that music depend? 
 
 It is atmosphere, not rhyme-freedom or other external thing, 
 that marks originality in a poet. We may find anticipations of 
 Poe even as far back as Dryden's 
 
 "Less than a god they thought there could not dwell 
 Within the hollow of that shell 
 That spoke so sweetly and so well. 
 What passion cannot music raise and quell?" 
 
 but finally the lordship of verse, like the kingdom of God, is 
 within and not without. Poe's genius is a far more important 
 thing than any or all of his mannerisms; but as he was a life- 
 long student of technique some of his methods specially repay 
 investigation. 
 
 His use of the "repetend" the parallel repetition of ex- 
 panded or contrasted ideas, with or without change of the rhyme- 
 word may fairly be called his most characteristic addition to 
 poetic form. He did not invent it ; but no other poet, before him 
 or after him, employed it so effectively. Henceforth the device is 
 his own. Akin to Hebrew parallelism and the refrain, it carries 
 us back to the beginnings of poetry ; but in its virtually original 
 
 1 ['Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning " ; 1, 182-4.
 
 188 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 manner of use Poe availed himself of a marvellously musical 
 
 ear.* 
 
 Word-counting, of which so wearisome a burden is laid upon 
 scholarship in these thesis-manufacturing days, has added little 
 to philology and nothing to literature; but I am tempted to 
 indulge in it for once, in order to see if it may give any aid in 
 the study of Poe's method. 
 
 There are in his small book of verse omitting the unfinished 
 blank- verse drama of Politian, which contains no songs 2121 
 rhymes, including identical line-endings in the repetends. In the 
 2121, 1842, or 86 per cent, are perfect sound-correspondences, 
 according to present English pronunciation, leaving 279 imper- 
 fect, strained, or unusual. But of these 279, 169 are allowable 
 or in common poetical use that is, such rhymes as sea : melody ; 
 I ."melody (y, as we have noted, has been both ai and I since 
 Shakespeare's day); river: ever; love: strove; wood: flood; 
 given: heaven; spirit: inherit; none: gone; tresses: kisses; birth: 
 forth; wars: stars; woman : human ; breath : beneath ; ponder: 
 wonder; pain: again (Poe, like many poets, is obliged to sound 
 again in both ways in the same poem). Some of these are made 
 necessary, as so often, by the fewness of rhymes for important 
 words; some are the results of the slow utterance essential to 
 the music of the verse. Occasionally, but more rarely than his 
 pre-Raphaelite admirers, Poe employs an unusual accent in an 
 otherwise perfect rhyme, as tree-top : drop ; hence: reverence. 
 
 Omitting all these allowable rhymes, 169 in all, we have re- 
 maining only 110 that can be called in any sense unusual; that 
 is, Poe employs but five per cent of forced and out-of-the-way 
 rhymes. Of these latter, the ones deserving citation on the basis 
 employed in our similar lists from other poets are as follows : 
 
 That is: lattice: thereat is; lent thee: sent thee : nepenthe ; re- 
 
 1 Quoting from F. B. Gummere's Handbook of Poetics, 153, the re- 
 mark that what is called perfect rhyme [identity] "is now entirely 
 foreign to English verse," C. Alphonso Smith, in his Repetition and 
 Parallelism in English Verse, 148, adds that "Poe skillfully disguises 
 the effect of his perfect rhymes by lessening the emphasis of the re- 
 peated rhyme-word. This he does by throwing a sudden and superior 
 emphasis on the newly introduced word or words that serve to differen- 
 tiate the two forms of the repetend."
 
 MODERN RHYME 189 
 
 assure me : o'er me : bore me : d'Elormie (proper name invented 
 for the sake of the rhyme) ; June: moon; valleys: palace; musi- 
 cally : valley ; swamp : encamp ; been (Poe's regular pronuncia- 
 tion) : serene ; holy : melancholy ; bliss : is ; suit : lute : mute ; 
 intrude: solitude: food: imbued; solitude: stood; wan: man; 
 Dian: dry on: lion; kissed her : vista : sister ; Leda: reader; 
 Ferdinando : can do; arrant : transparent; fancies : pansies; 
 many :Annie; early : dearly ; upon: known; rode: God; was: 
 pass; years: cares; tent : extravagant ; shade and : maiden ; glade 
 and: maiden (used by Mrs. Browning). 
 
 After all, this is a very modest list, compared with those 
 gathered from the Brownings and Emerson. Kissed her : vista : 
 sister and Leda : reader are rather Cockneyish in appearance, but 
 represent a common sound, as do arrant : transparent. Tent : 
 extravagant is unexpected, but occurred in a juvenile poem. 
 
 The gems of the collection, however, are the two last, of which 
 the young Poe wrote : 
 
 "The rhyme . . . has the appearance of affectation. It is, 
 however, imitated from Sir Walter Scott, or rather from Claud 
 Halcro, in whose mouth I admired its effect: 
 
 'Oh were there an island 
 
 Tho' ever so wild 
 Where woman might smile, and 
 
 No man be beguil'd, ' etc." 
 
 Shadow : Eldorado, the germ of Poe's last poem, appears in 
 the early Dreamland. 
 
 A curious early rhyme is paroquet : say. Frankly 'prentice- 
 work (perhaps meant to be altered) is, in Fairy Land, 
 
 "Like almost anything 
 Or a yellow albatross." 
 
 rhyming with covering and toss. 
 
 Internal rhymes, of which Poe was fond, are usually but not 
 always introduced at regular intervals. 
 
 Alliteration is of course often employed, but seldom as in "the 
 pallid bust of Pallas." 
 
 The assonance or internal rhyme of Peccavimus : but rave not 
 thus (Lenore} is unmatched elsewhere; the modern reader must
 
 190 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 remember that the English pronunciation of Latin was in vogue 
 in America in Poe's day. 
 
 Poe does not avoid assonance in consecutive lines ending, for 
 instance, pride : guise : beside : eyes; or even see : sky : droopingly : 
 eye; whether he did not notice it, or considered it a merit, is hard 
 to tell. In the next-to-the-last division of Tamerlane the con- 
 secutive endings are- more : so : door : low : stone : known : show : 
 below : woe. Nor does he object to given : alone : heaven : tone : 
 striven : throne : down : crown, where the stanza-scheme is 
 abababcc. 
 
 The following poems are in blank verse: The Coliseum, To 
 Helen (the longer poem of that title), To M. L. S., and To 
 
 ; total lines, 157. In them the feminine ending is unusually 
 
 frequent. In To Helen it abounds, and in To M. L. S. eight 
 
 lines out of eighteen are feminine. In To the second 
 
 line has six feet. Richard Henry Stoddard once remarked that 
 to the end of his life Poe remained a mere tyro in blank verse; 
 certainly these four pieces are not indispensable. The worth- 
 lessness of this To Helen is in startling contrast with the beauty 
 of the lyric of the same name. 
 
 Similarly poor are the sonnets, of which Silence has fifteen 
 lines, rhymed ababcddccefefgg. Poe was master of peculiar verse- 
 forms of the kinds associated with his name, but more feebly 
 used the orthodox measures. 
 
 Of rhymeless lines in rhymed poems, aside from identities, 
 there are only eighteen; two in Eldorado; twelve in Annabel 
 Lee; and four in Evening Star, which turns into rhyme after 
 the start. 
 
 Of lines with identical endings, owing to Poe's use of the 
 repetend, there are no less than 63 in Ulalume, 54 in The Raven, 
 36 in The Bells, and 34 in For Annie; 18 others make a total 
 of 205. Of all Poe's poems Ulalume is the most characteristic, 
 both of his genius and of his method of expression. The follow- 
 ing from Ulalume 
 
 "And I said 'She is warmer than Dian: 
 She rolls through an ether of sighs, 
 She revels in a region of sighs : 
 She has seen that the tears are not dry on
 
 MODERN RHYME 191 
 
 These cheeks where the worm never dies, 
 And has come past the stars of the Lion 
 
 To point us the path to the skies, 
 
 To the Lethean peace of the skies : 
 Come up, in despite of the Lion, 
 
 To shine on us with her bright eyes: 
 Come up through the lair of the Lion, 
 
 With love in her luminous eyes' " 
 
 suggests Swinburne in two or three places, though not as strongly 
 as the Byron stanzas quoted on page 166. 
 
 The repetend appears in all but one stanza (the second) of 
 The Raven, Poe prided himself on The Raven stanza, as con- 
 taining "some altogether novel effects, arising from an exten- 
 sion of the application of the principles of rhyme and allitera- 
 tion." Whether his account of its evolution, in The Philosophy 
 of Composition, be considered forethought or afterthought, it is 
 an interesting study of a poem by its maker. Another study of 
 The Raven may be made by any reader who will compare it 
 with Locksley Hall, and note how different an effect is given to 
 Poe's lines, though in Tennyson's metre, by the internal rhyme, 
 the repetend, and the feminine ending. 
 
 "While, to listen, the red levin 
 (With the rapid Pleiads, even. 
 Which were seven) 
 Pauses in heaven," 
 
 in Israfel, seems to have been influential upon Rossetti's The 
 Blessed Damozel, the first stanza of which, in the original form, 
 was 
 
 "The blessed Damozel leaned out 
 From the gold bar of heaven : 
 Her blue deep eyes were deeper much 
 
 Than a deep water, even. 
 She had three lilies in her hand, 
 And the stars in her hair were seven." 
 
 The most noticeable mark of the rhymes of the "pre- 
 Raphaelite " school in the English verse of the second half of 
 the nineteenth century I use the term broadly, as including 
 not only Rossetti and Morris but also Swinburne is the forcing 
 of rhymes falling on final syllables, as in Rossetti's well: audible:
 
 192 
 
 tell: Jell, and so on in many cases. This mannerism is clearly 
 due to two things: pleasure in a lingering pronunciation that 
 gives the fullest sound-values; and a thorough enjoyment of 
 ballad and other archaic models. Thus Rossetti rhymed me: 
 Nineveh; unaccountable : shell : well ; hers: wing-feathers; in- 
 deed : opened : fire-footed. The pre-Raphaelite wan water was 
 sure to reflect her. Elsewhere Rossetti did not fear to join win : 
 him ; veterans : France ; strong : flung ; years : stirs ; calm : 
 warm. 
 
 Of the rhymes in the first version of The Blessed Damozel 
 which, it will be remembered, was written when the young 
 Rossetti was strongly influenced by Poe's Raven, and was de- 
 signed to be a counterpart to that poem forty-two are perfect. 
 For the rest, we have heaven : even : seven ; adorn : worn : corn ; 
 choristers : hers : years; on : begun : sun; calm : warm : arm; 
 fierce : pierce : spheres ; said : prayed : afraid ; untrod : God : period ; 
 tree : be : audibly ; me : be : verily ; spheres : barriers : tears. 
 
 The Blessed Damozel was published in The Germ in 1850. 
 Then came The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems, by 
 William Morris (1858). This was pre-Raphaelite through and 
 through; beginning with the unaccustomed spelling of Guene- 
 vere, it was consistently unlike the prevalent English poetry of 
 the time, in titles, antique words, ultra-Keats-like rhymes, and 
 mediaeval spirit. Tennyson had prepared the immediate way, 
 to some extent; and Browning, for reasons which I have never 
 been quite able to fathom, was high in the favor of the new group ; 
 but, after all, its members had a tone of their own, which sur- 
 vived only in Swinburne, and died with him. 
 
 Morris's first book was received with inextinguishable laughter 
 by the very journal (The Athenceum) which afterwards became, 
 in the reviews written by Theodore Watts-Dunton, the principal 
 Swinburnian exponent. But there was more than affectation in 
 Rapunzel, The Blue Closet, Shameful Death, and some of the rest, 
 queer as they were. Affectation, indeed, if chargeable against 
 others of the group, or its lesser copyists, belonged to Morris 
 in no more than a limited sense ; he was as sincere in his literary 
 archaisms as in his later work as designer, decorator, printer, 
 and socialist. As Burne-Jones said of himself, Morris belonged
 
 MODERN RHYME 193 
 
 to the fourteenth century. A man has a right to believe that 
 tl ere was good and beauty in medievalism, if he seeks to trans- 
 f r that good and beauty to his own times, for the benefit of his 
 fellows. 
 
 The general character of Morris's rhymes did not differ mate- 
 rially from that of the rhymes of Rossetti and Swinburne. The 
 proportion of unusual sound-concurrences is perhaps somewhat 
 smaller in him than in his associates; yet in The Defence of 
 Guenevere volume we find sword : word : cord ; sword : sward ; 
 lord : sword ; alone : son ; on : son ; fear : where ; plaits : bats ; 
 tower: lower (adverb); floods : woods ; promises : ease ; said: 
 maid; hand : bend : send ; year : out-wear ; bliss: is; though: 
 through ; have : brave ; also : know ; preux : shew : new ; again : 
 pain: fain; again : then : ten (same poem); brow: blow; you: 
 do : so ; hands : commands : wands ; fingers : lingers : singers. 
 
 In one respect Morris surpassed all other nineteenth-century 
 poets. Not since Chaucer had English literature possessed so 
 long a narrative poem as The Earthly Paradise. It lacks the 
 breezy good cheer of The Canterbury Tales, for this "idle singer 
 of an empty day " was touched with a gentle melancholy. But 
 there is a fascination in it which begins with its beautiful title and 
 ends with its last page a fascination partly due, like that of 
 Spenser's Faerie Queene, to its abstraction from the thoughts 
 and words of to-day. After all, the true province of rhyme is to 
 charm the reader; and The Earthly Paradise would have been 
 impossible without the binding and unifying power of rhyme. 
 It is the rhyme, more than the metre, which furnishes the reg- 
 ularly recurrent music of these twenty-four tales. Narrative 
 charm may inhere in stories told in blank verse, as witness the 
 Idyls of tlie King; but there is a softer grace in Spenser's and 
 Morris's melody, which depends upon the variety-in-unity given 
 by rhyme to stanza or couplet. 
 
 For Morris's rhyme-use in this his masterpiece, we may turn 
 to a page of The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon, as 
 giving us a fair average. Here, to begin with, are moon : boon and 
 moon : tune variation enough to equip a theorist concerning 
 Chaucerian or Shakespearean pronunciation. For the rest, we 
 find was: pass; around: round; enow (inau) : show; love: move; 
 
 13
 
 194 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 guest-chamber : hear ; bear : hear ; memory : by ; stared : heard ; 
 why: history ; place: ways. 
 
 No poet since Poe has evoked a greater number of new melo- 
 dies from the old English lyre than Algernon Charles Swinburne. 
 
 In general, with all his apparently inexhaustible fertility as a 
 rhymer, Swinburne is not abnormal or eccentric in his choice 
 of correlated sounds. No such miscellany of rough assonances 
 of every kind as we have just culled from the Brownings could be 
 drawn from the collected edition of his works. Some of the 
 pre-Raphaelite rhymes mentioned under Rossetti's name may 
 be found in Swinburne; but in general, he relies upon familiar 
 methods. The novelty of his verse depends upon the arrange- 
 ment of metre and rhyme, and upon an almost inexhaustible 
 vocabulary. 
 
 Of rhymes which we may call earmarks of the pre-Raphaelites 
 we find fell: insatiable; grass: was; her: harp-player; well-water: 
 her; hair: lovelier. Rossetti might also have used brows: house: 
 poisonous. Quiet: riot and hers: worse are Mrs.-Browningesque. 
 Other somewhat forced or unusual rhymes are place: ways; 
 spume : loom ; men : rain ; kiss : is ; whit : sweet ; green : sin ; 
 cheer: her; sit: feet; them: flame; men : again : rain (in which 
 again occupies its usual compromise position with more than 
 usual nicety of non-committal); pressure : pleasure. In a few 
 instances he uses identical rhymes; such as sea: see; is: is; 
 be : be. The assonance God : blood is frequent in other poets ; 
 month : doth is unusual anywhere, and seems like a slip. 
 
 But it is in his larger methods that Swinburne's originality 
 is chiefly to be found. In Faustine are the following mono- 
 rhymes with the title word in order : lean (verb) : clean : queen : 
 sheen: therein: between: ween: thin: kin: wean: screen: mien: 
 Magdalene : mean (verb) : seen : skin : win : lean (adjective) : scene : 
 in : din : sin : teen : begin : spin : glean : green : fin : serene : Mity- 
 lene : gin : unclean : epicene : obscene : mean (adjective) : love- 
 machine : Lampsacene : been : wherein : chin : keen. This reminds 
 one of the Provenfal methods of accumulation. 
 
 The Armada consists of eight-stressed lines, trochaic and dac- 
 tylic, with an accented syllable at the end, and rhymes not only 
 at the close but at the third and eighth syllables of the line:
 
 MODERN RHYME 195 
 
 "England, none that is born thy son, and lives, by grace of thy glory, 
 
 free, 
 Lives and yearns not at heart and burns with hope to serve as he 
 
 worships thee; 
 None may sing thee : the sea- wind's whig beats down our songs as it 
 
 hails the sea." 
 
 In the Choriambics of the second series of Poems and Ballads 
 the choriambics themselves are preceded by a trochee at the 
 beginning of each line, and are followed by a rhyming iambus : 
 
 "Love, what ailed thee to leave life that was made lovely, we thought, 
 
 with love? 
 
 What sweet visions of sleep lured thee away, down from the light 
 above?" 
 
 Here the metre is perfectly obvious when looked at, but would 
 not occur to the ordinary reader without the help of the title. 
 
 In Swinburne's A Century of Roundels the fetters of the roundel, 
 even when he stretches them by the use of his ababbababab system, 
 and the use of feet of varying numbers and lengths, do not show 
 his remarkable powers as well as the freer measures. In some 
 of these roundels he makes the refrain a single word or even 
 syllable; as in Sleep, the first seven lines of which are as hard 
 to reduce to grammatical order as Browning's Sordello. When 
 rhyme-devices become too intricate they are verbal puzzles rather 
 than aids to either pleasure or memory; the scheme entangles 
 the poet. 
 
 In Hesperia are six stresses with rhyme; a measure usually 
 unsuccessful in English, because of the monotony of our strongly 
 marked caesura, virtually breaking the line into two short and 
 rather jerky halves. But it is not necessary to catalogue Swin- 
 burne's stanza-forms and scansion-systems. 
 
 Two things are the chief characteristics of Swinburne's verse 
 and give it a distinction of its own. One is his intricate and ap- 
 parently indefinite use of "alliteration's artful aid," which, with 
 him, rises from the place of an old-fashioned metrical trick into 
 that of unforgetable music. Alliteration cannot be banished, as 
 some would banish it, while the works of its chief masters in the 
 nineteenth century Poe and Swinburne remain on the
 
 196 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 heights. In them our first English rhyme has once more come 
 to its own, though in a different way. 1 
 
 Swinburne's other chief characteristic is his use of the iambic- 
 anapsestic line, of three or four stresses, usually in an eight- 
 line stanza, with feminine rhymes at the ends of lines 1, 3, 5, and 
 7. The externally beautiful, if morally objectionable, Dolores 
 of the first series of Poems and Ballads is in this form, as well 
 as the Dedication (to Edward Burne-Jones) of the same famous 
 volume. So (with the exception of the last line) is the lyric in 
 the second series, which may be taken, on the whole, as the 
 best single illustration of Swinburne's method and success: 
 A Forsaken Garden, In it the final line is more than once a 
 clear revival, in English, of the classical foot the molossus. The 
 form of the poem was not, of course, Swinburne's invention; 
 we have found it in Byron (see page 166). But henceforth it 
 belongs to Swinburne, by right of eminent domain. One ignor- 
 ant of English might take pleasure in listening to the melody 
 of the pathetically melodious lines. Nor is it easy to find in 
 any language since the Greek a truer combination of majesty 
 and music than in the closing stanza: 
 
 "Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, 
 Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, 
 Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble 
 
 The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink, 
 Here now in his triumph where all things falter, 
 
 Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, 
 As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, 
 Death lies dead." 
 
 Novalis once said that "poems which sound melodiously and 
 are full of beautiful words, but without any sense or connection" 
 are the height of art. This remark is refuted by the whole history 
 of literature, from Job to Wordsworth. Much, perhaps most, 
 of Swinburne's work must be thrown aside as lacking that which 
 makes "baggage for eternity." But certainly he left English 
 verse richer than he found it. 
 
 There is a proper place, between rhyme and blank verse, for 
 
 1 "Another of Swinburne's feats of metrical invention was the dis- 
 covery that alliteration was the true basis of English poetry." 
 JAMES DOUGLAS: The Athenaeum, Apr. 17, 1909.
 
 MODERN RHYME 197 
 
 anything that makes a pleasing effect or suits the thought. A 
 certain advantage lies in the variant, even in the discord, if 
 the golden mean between rule and license be observed. There- 
 fore there is a legitimate, and indeed an indispensable, use in 
 the higher literature for the noble semi-rhythmical prose of the 
 Authorized Version of the Bible, and for the balance and swing 
 into which we naturally fall in prayer, in eulogy, in fervid politi- 
 cal oratory, and in picturesque description. 1 This is the element 
 which gives pleasureableness to Milton's Areopagitica, to Sir 
 Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, and to Carlyle's Everlasting 
 Yea chapter in Sartor Resartus. The difference between them 
 and a hundred other noble passages of English prose and the 
 best part of Macpherson's Ossian or Walt Whitman's Leaves of 
 Grass is one of attainment rather than form. Macpherson won 
 a wide though temporary fame because of the majesty of some 
 of his thoughts and the unusual manner of their expression; 
 he failed to retain that renown because readers discovered that 
 grammatical inversion is not necessarily poetic eloquence. 
 Whitman really invented nothing in his poetic form ; he used a 
 vehicle as old as impassioned or imaginative prose. Sometimes 
 he employed it well, sometimes ill; he was at his best when 
 nearest to a real but free balance between idea and idea ; he was 
 at his worst when he merely threw lists of words at his readers, 
 expecting them to find poetry in a jumbled page of the dictionary 
 or the geographical index. 
 
 Instead of adding another to the existing analyses of Whit- 
 man's measures, let us turn to his own statement of his metrical 
 purpose. For this we are indebted to Professor Bliss Perry's 
 life of the poet, in which is recovered a "notice," written by 
 himself, of his Dartmouth poem of 1872. This statement was 
 designed unsuccessfully as it proved for editorial use in 
 a Washington paper. If we dismiss from our minds its amaz- 
 ing egotism we shall find it a really important utterance of the 
 aim and method of one of the most considerable poets of the 
 nineteenth century: 
 
 1 Sometimes, in the sweep of strong feeling, rhyme itself unconsciously 
 enters, as in Lincoln's "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that 
 this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away " (Second Inaugural).
 
 198 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 "Walt Whitman's form of composition is not attractive at 
 first sight to accustomed readers of verse. He discharges him- 
 self quite altogether from the old laws of 'poetry,' considering 
 them and their results unfit for present needs, and especially 
 unfit for the United States ; and claims to inaugurate an original 
 modern style, to be followed and expanded by future writers. 
 His theory is that our times exhibit the advent of two especially 
 new creative worlds, or influences, giving a radically changed 
 form to Civilization, namely, the world of science for one, and 
 the world of democratic republicanism for another; and that 
 a third influence, a new poetic world of character and form, ad- 
 justed to the new spirit and facts and consistent with democracy 
 and science, is indispensable. He says the United States must 
 found their own imaginative literature and poetry, and that 
 nothing merely copied from and following out the feudal world 
 will do. His aim is therefore a profound one and essentially 
 revolutionary. He dismisses without ceremony all the orthodox 
 accoutrements, tropes, verbal haberdashery, 'feet,' and the 
 entire stock in trade of rhyme-talking heroes and heroines and 
 all the love-sick plots of customary poetry, and constructs his 
 verse in a loose and free metre of his own, of an irregular length 
 of lines, apparently lawless at first perusal, although on closer 
 examination a certain regularity appears, like the recurrence of 
 lesser and larger waves on the sea-shore, rolling in without inter- 
 mission, and fitfully rising and falling. 
 
 "In this free metre, and in verses when you get the hang 
 of them singularly exhilarating, and that affect one like an 
 atmosphere unusually charged with oxygen, he, by a perpetual 
 series of what might be called ejaculations, manages to express 
 himself on about every theme interesting to humanity, or known 
 to the body, passions, experiences, emotions of man or woman, 
 or sought by the intellect and soul." 
 
 It has sometimes been said that the noblest poetry is that which 
 is most unstudied. It is true that sophisticated and over-artistic 
 verse is not the best; but neither is that which is most nearly 
 destitute of art. As well say that an idea is a cathedral and an 
 outcry an oration. In fact, Whitman's apparently careless verse 
 was carefully elaborated on a definite plan, and was at its best
 
 MODERN RHYME 199 
 
 when most elaborated. One has only to examine a page of Mr. 
 McKay's variorum edition of Leaves of Grass to see how clearly 
 Whitman's scheme lay in his mind ; and how closely he followed 
 it, in revisions more careful than many other poets have given 
 to their scansion and rhyme. The lilt of his verse is unmistak- 
 able. A definite thought is taken, and clearly uttered at the 
 start. Then, in its elaboration, point after point is cumulatively 
 added, antithesis being treated as subordinate to the rise of the 
 effect. In this particular, Leaves of Grass differs from Hebrew 
 parallelism, in which statement is splendidly set over against 
 statement, and catalogues, if introduced, are usually put into 
 a sort of refrain form. In brief, in the Psalms the utterances are 
 likely to be in a decani-cantoris alternation ; in Leaves of Grass 
 the whole passage is a unit. In the former there are usually 
 two ideas in each division; in the latter there may be almost 
 any number. But Whitman well knew the value of contrast, 
 as he moved toward his cumulative effect. Take, for instance, 
 the poem which gives the text of his life-work; a study of its 
 general form, special elaboration, and minutely careful revision 
 will show that no rhyming lyrist was more obedient to laws of 
 poetical rhetoric: 
 
 "I was looking a long while for a clue to J the history of the past for 
 
 myself, and for these chants and now I have found it ; 
 It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept 
 
 nor reject;) 
 
 It is no more in the legends than in all else ; 
 It is in the present it is this earth to-day; 
 It is in Democracy (the purport and aim of all the past ;) a 
 It is the life of one man or one woman to-day the average man of 
 
 to-day ; 
 
 It is in 3 languages, social customs, literatures, arts; 
 It is in 4 the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics, 
 
 creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations, 
 All for the average man of to-day." ' 
 
 It is interesting to note that the famous poem O Captain, my 
 Captain, which stands at the height of Whitman's attainment, 
 
 1 "A clue to" added in 1870. 
 
 2 In editions before 1860, "It is in democracy, in this America, the 
 old world also." 
 
 3 "In" added in 1870. 4 "In" added in 1870.
 
 200 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 is partially rhymed some of the rhymes being perfect and 
 some assonantal and regularly rhythmical. 
 
 At the risk of an anti-climax, a few words must be added with 
 reference to humorous verse, for the reason that it has, by its 
 very nature, been able to extend the limits of the possible vocab- 
 ulary of rhyme. Comic poetry has the jester's privilege, the 
 queerness of its verbal turns adding to that surprise which is 
 its essence. 
 
 Butler coined many new rhymes in Hudibras, the first poem 
 to have what we call a "rollicking" metre. 
 
 Byron, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, set the fashion 
 for a long line of followers of Don Juan ; after intellectual : hen- 
 pecked you all anything was possible. 
 
 Richard Harris Barbara's Ingoldsby Legends of 1840-6 was 
 a widely popular, and in its time a frequently imitated, collec- 
 tion of jingles ; but it relied for the most part on whimsical ideas 
 rather than rhyme-novelties. Barham seldom went farther in 
 search of the latter than friar : squire; draws : turquoise : jack- 
 daws ; gone : on : dawn ; slower : before : door ; pious is : diocese ; 
 Lord May'r : declare : there; ewer : pure: Namur; dreams: 
 Rheims. Sometimes his jocosities in rhyme like Thackeray's 
 "R" for "ah" were typographical, addressed to the eye only: 
 you : 2 ', sex : X. 
 
 James Russell Lowell's chief contribution to the history of 
 rhyme is to be found in his humorous verse. In his Fable for 
 Critics he was not content to run no farther afield than had 
 Barham. The whole poem is a revel of absurd rhymes. In 
 his search for jingles, if he did not find one, he did not hesitate 
 to make one, as in Methusalem : Jerusalem. Among the other 
 rhymes in this poem are : 
 
 Proper names: 
 
 wad: God; deserving : Irving ; Barnaby Rudge: judge; un- 
 twistable: Cristabel; Jackson's: racks one's; lichens: Dickens; 
 loamy : Romae ; have any: Daphne; Beaumont : moment ; ver- 
 juiced : Zerduscht ; shabbily : Rabelais ; wry kink : Duyckinck ; 
 Fuseli : lily; Homer: no more; Wordsworth: herd's worth; 
 Bryant : client; fright one : Aristogeiton ; unshaken : Bacon ; seek : 
 Tieck; rely on: scion: ply on: try on: eye on:Zion:buy one: 
 fie on : lion : spy one : wry one : die on.
 
 MODERN RHYME 201 
 
 With Latin words : 
 
 herb is : imberbis ; majorum: wore 'em; shabbily : immedi- 
 cabile ; slippery : slip awry : desipere : frippery : skipper he. 
 
 Identities : 
 
 dialogue: die a log; metaphor: met afore. 
 
 Miscellaneous : 
 
 brought over .-thought of her; charities: where'er it is; come- 
 outer: about her; crosses : proboscis ; direct you all : effectual ; 
 dreamily : simile ; fill his .-lilies; forest : no rest ; has to risk: 
 asterisk; intrude: wood (pun on wooed); irresistible : whist- 
 table; know it's .-poets; mistress : kiss trees; phylactery : manu- 
 factory; rebels (verb) : else; rebellers : cellars ; steps he : dyspepsy / 
 sell us his : jealousies ; store : lower ; treeified : deified ; toss over: 
 philosopher : loss of her; vary : prairie ; visit : explicit ; war if: 
 tariff. 
 
 In this Fable, as everybody remembers, Lowell inserted his 
 well-known characterization of Poe, "three fifths of him genius 
 and two fifths sheer fudge," who 
 
 "talks like a book of iambs and pentameters 
 In a way to make people of common sense damn metres." 
 
 Less known, and a surprising outburst, is 
 
 "He [Holmes] has a perfect sway of what I call a sham metre, 
 But many admire it, the English pentameter." 
 
 Lowell's Biglow Papers, largely in Yankee dialect, contain 
 many queer rhymes, and many that record local folk-pronuncia- 
 tion. All through Lowell's poems, jocose or serious, he shows 
 a willingness to turn or invent words for his uses. Colonel Hig- 
 ginson once spoke of him as "tangled in tropes"; certainly, in 
 his rhymes as in his ideas, he would have been a greater poet had 
 he been less concerned with his last thought and its instant 
 effect. But sometimes he had a right to let rhymes run loose, 
 as in the verses he sent his neighbor John Bartlett, on receipt 
 of a seven-pound trout, which gift evoked college or: sogdologer; 
 tragi-comedies : aplomb at ease; talents his : balances ; Castaly: 
 fast ally; moccasins : stock o' sins; o'er-step it half : epitaph.
 
 202 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 But the most enjoyable of all the school of "rollicking" 
 rhymers is Francis Mahony, "Father Prout." The apparently 
 wayward but always delightful prodigality of the Reliques is its 
 constant charm; one never knows when he is to come upon 
 some new touch of wit or humor, some clever translation or 
 paraphrase, some ingenious Greek, Latin, or French version of 
 a familiar poem, which Mahony thereupon declares to have been 
 borrowed from his alleged newly-discovered original. The 
 Rogueries of Tom Moore remains the classic example of this sort 
 of polyglot fooling. Mahony's pretended French original of 
 The Burial of Sir John Moore deceived an American magazine 
 in the twentieth century. 
 
 Sometimes Mahony turns back to the natural end-rhyme of 
 mediaeval Latin, as where O'Meara, in The Watergrasshill 
 Carousal, says that in his convent "the repast is divided into 
 three distinct periods ; and in the conventual refectory you can 
 easily distinguish at what stage of the feeding time the brother- 
 hood are engaged. The first is called, 1, altum silentium; then, 
 2, clangor dentium; then, 3, rumor gentium." In general, 
 Mahony's rhyme-freedom is satisfied with any similarity which is 
 at once musical in itself and appropriate to its theme. Assonance 
 appears more frequently in his rollicking than in his pathetic 
 verse. Pat Lardner owes : blarney rose is as good an example as 
 any. In anthem : grant him, and many similar rhymes, the 
 Hibernian element is intentionally introduced. Indeed, in the 
 gem of the book, The Shandon Bells, the author attempted to 
 transfer to English the assonantal rhymes of the old Irish songs, 
 as, for instance, in the third stanza : 
 
 "I've heard bells tolling 
 Old 'Adrian's Mole' in, 
 Their thunder rolling 
 
 From the Vatican, 
 And cymbals glorious 
 Swinging uproarious 
 In the gorgeous turrets 
 
 Of Notre Dame; 
 But thy sounds were sweeter 
 Than the dome of Peter 
 Flings o'er the Tiber, 
 
 Pealing solemnly;
 
 MODERN RHYME 203 
 
 O ! the bells of Shandon 
 Sound far more grand on 
 The pleasant waters 
 Of the river Lee." 
 
 But it is interesting to note, in connection with complaints* 
 old and new, of the burdensomeness of the fetters of rhyme, 
 that this apparently freest of rhymers strongly pleads for the 
 advantages of restriction; he paraphrases from "an ingenious 
 Frenchman, the Chevalier de la Faye," the following: 
 
 "From the rhyme's restrictive rigour 
 
 Thought derives its impulse oft, 
 Genius draws new strength and vigour, 
 
 Fancy springs and shoots aloft. 
 So, in leaden conduits pent, 
 Mounts the liquid element, 
 
 By pressure forced to climb : 
 And he who feared the rule's restraint 
 Finds but a friendly ministrant 
 
 In Reason's helpmate, RHYME;" 
 
 and goes on to say: 
 
 "Prose may rejoice in its Latin designation of soluta oratio; 
 but a voluntary thraldom is the natural condition of poetry, as 
 may be inferred from the converse term, oratio stricta. The 
 Italian poet is distinguishable among his fellow-captives by the 
 light aerial nature of his fetters ; and versi sciolti may be applied 
 to more than one species of his country's versification. This 
 will strike any one who takes up the libretto of an opera. Never- 
 theless, let us envy not the smooth and Sybarite stanza, nor covet 
 the facile and flowing vocabulary, nor complain of the wild and 
 irregular terminations with which we have to struggle. There 
 is more dignity in the march of a manly barbarian than in the 
 gait of an enervated fop; and with all the cumbrous irons of a 
 rude language, were it but for his very mode of bearing the chains, 
 a Briton will be still admired as he treads the paths of poetry : 
 
 Intactus aut Britannus ut descenderet 
 Sacra catena tus via. 
 
 Epod. vii. 
 
 I shall not be accused of travelling out of the record in touching 
 incidentally on this matter, which, indeed, would properly require 
 a special dissertation."
 
 204 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 For rapidity of cheery movement and ease of elaborate rhyme 
 Richard Hovey's Barney McGee is enjoyable; here are clarity: 
 vulgarity : carrotty ; Chiante there: Dante there : spumante there; 
 scintillate : in till late ; purse to you : thirst to you : worse to you ; 
 deracinate : fascinate : assassinate ; gab allay : Rabelais : abbey lay ; 
 Latinity : honoraficabilitudinity : vicinity ; stammer in : Cameron : 
 Decameron; flim-flam at all: sham at all: damn it all, 
 
 I have spoken of Browning's monometers. But the shortest 
 line in the verse of any language, so far as is known to the 
 present writer, is contained in the following by George Arnold, a 
 forgotten New York magazinist: 
 
 "Here, 
 
 With my beer 
 I sit, 
 While golden moments flit : 
 
 Alas! 
 
 They pass 
 Unheeded by: 
 And, as they fly, 
 
 I, 
 
 Being dry, 
 
 Sit, idly sipping here 
 My beer." 
 
 Humorous poetry naturally continues to be a fertile field for 
 experimentation in the rhyme art. In Punch, within the past few 
 years, under the editorship of the clever parodist and poet, 
 Mr. Owen Seaman, have appeared many poems which have 
 proved that the resources of English rhyme, in word and arrange- 
 ment, are by no means exhausted. Thus in Back to the Land 
 (Jan. 25, 1905) are Dagonet: autowagonette ; chance a lot: Lance- 
 lot; mercy veil: Percivale; plenish all: seneschal; stocked a pod: 
 octopod. The rhyming of the last word of the line with a following 
 word constituting a line by itself, as in From a Sabine Farm 
 (May 30, 1906), while not strictly new, is carried out with a 
 cleverness which shows that Hood's knack has not been lost. 
 More Whitewash (Oct. 17, 1906) has disgracefully : tracefully ; 
 unfair it is : barbarities ; massacre : alas ! occur; courtesy : hurt 
 as he; be or is: theories. 
 
 In a class by itself is Punch's Abbreviation's Artful Aid, the
 
 MODERN RHYME 205 
 
 only poem in the language, as far as I know, in which fragments 
 of words are used as rhymes : 
 
 "The Bard, at times, 
 Is stumped for rhymes, 
 
 Without the least excuse. 
 He could defy 
 Such moments by 
 
 Abbreviation's use. 
 For words like Bucks : 
 
 Or even Ess : 
 Are not a lux : 
 
 But a necess : 
 
 "So simp: a rule 
 May seem pecul : 
 
 And make the crit: indig: 
 What matter if 
 The scans: is diff: 
 
 The meaning too ambig:? 
 The net result 
 
 Lacon: and punct: 
 Is worth a mult : 
 
 Of needless unct : " etc. 
 
 And now, at the end of our long path, we must ask, once more, 
 the question which has been the underlying thought of every 
 preceding page, What is the higher service of rhyme ? 
 
 Rhyme, of course, is no mere ornament in modern poetry, but 
 a superadded thing of great importance. It beats time; it 
 arrests the attention; it is the one thing, in the average mind, 
 which differentiates poetry from prose ; it is a help to the memory ; 
 it is, at its best, absolute music, without reference to what it means ; 
 it affects, far more than classical quantity could ever do, the choice, 
 sense, and arrangement of most of the words in its immediate 
 environment, and sometimes of words several lines distant ; while 
 in many cases it assumes the complete domination of the mind 
 which originally evoked it. 
 
 The final test of rhyme, as of every artistic means toward an 
 end, is the charm of the finished result. Better one delightsome 
 lyric than a library of treatises like this. 
 
 Is rhyme, strictly defined, an essential element in English 
 poetry ? Clearly not. Is it a great added element of strength and 
 beauty? The whole history of our poetry gives an affirmative
 
 206 A STUDY OF ENGLISH RHYME 
 
 answer. Yet even now there occasionally comes from some poet 
 or critic a renewal of the old Elizabethan outcry against it. 
 George Meredith said that "as quantity is denied to the English 
 tongue, rhymes there must be." " That hard, consonantal smack 
 on the ear of an exact similarity of sound is required in what is 
 called our heroic verse, which relies for its effects on the timely 
 clapper." But "the many writers of verse are wearing the poor 
 stock [of rhyme] to shreds." "An unrivalled instrumentalist like 
 Mr. Swinburne, prince of lyrists, does marvels with the language. 
 Lesser men, however, correct their rhyming ; betray the cramp of 
 their hand in frequent repetitions of the rhymes." Others carry 
 their complaint farther than Meredith, and would revive the 
 attempt to dispense with rhyme. The new censors do not under- 
 take to revive the classical forms ; classical scholarship is making 
 a losing fight in these "practical" days. But the burden of 
 rhyme still rests heavily upon some who crave a larger freedom. 
 What more splendid effect, they say, can be secured than that 
 attained by the Authorized Version of the Psalms or the Book of 
 Job? Therefore vers libre, or balanced semi-rhythmical prose, 
 will be the verse-form of the future. 
 
 But, in the broad view, the poets have mastered rhyme, not 
 rhyme the poets. In it first in alliteration, then in end-rhyme 
 they early found a great and unfailing means of correlating 
 ideas and giving perennial melody to words. Then, at the very 
 time when unsuccessful attempts were making to foist classical 
 quantity upon English stress, came blank verse, using that iambic 
 pentameter which, in its rhymed form, had already proved most 
 suitable for all sustained poetry in our vernacular. Finally, 
 end-rhyme, at first a time-beater, or at best a magnifier of emo- 
 tion, became so intimately connected with the whole metrical 
 structure as to make "rhyme," in popular speech, synonymous 
 with poetry itself. 
 
 On the whole, notwithstanding fettering influences at various 
 periods, the history of English end-rhyme has been marked by a 
 freedom at least as great as that of alliteration. The spontaneity 
 of the early ballads was recovered in the poetry of the nineteenth 
 century, which, from the Lyrical Ballads to Poems and Ballads, 
 has shown a rhyming versatility never before equalled.
 
 MODERN RHYME 207 
 
 As in instrumental music, so in poetry: lesser details of 
 pleasure-giving change with the centuries, but the aesthetic 
 sense, and even the general methods by which it is addressed, 
 remain the same. So, for twelve hundred years, the English- 
 speaking world has been made better and more beautiful by the 
 manifold service of rhyme.
 
 APPENDIX 
 EXPERIMENTS IN RHYME 
 
 AMONG the many examples of rhyme-arrangement in stanzas 
 considered in the present study, I have found none in which (1) 
 only the first syllables of the lines rhyme ; l (2) only the middle 
 syllables; (3) rhymes run down through the first and middle 
 syllables, as well as the final ; (4) the first and last syllables of 
 the lines rhyme. For lack of illustrations of the effect of such 
 arrangements I have made a few verses of my own, which the 
 reader will please consider experiments, not poems. 
 
 The first, if read aloud, will probably leave on the hearer's ear 
 an effect scarcely different from blank verse : 
 
 LOON LAKE 
 
 All the children of the northern wood 
 Call across the lonely inland lake : 
 Moose and caribou and deer and fox, 
 Goose and bittern, grouse and duck and jay. 
 Life is theirs, and days of forest joy, 
 Strife and love, and sunshine after rain. 
 
 Mark you that clear cry a mile away? 
 
 Hark ! the loon, in laugh Aristophanic : 
 Ha ha ha ha ! ha ha ha ha I 
 
 Who would not be glad on such a day? 
 Blue the sky, and fair the western wind, 
 Not a care to trouble bird or beast, 
 Spot that never knew the thought of woe. 
 Yet what wail of anguish do I hear, 
 Set to all the agony of the world ? 
 
 Mark you that clear cry a mile away? 
 
 Hark 1 the loon, in chorus ^Eschylean : 
 Aaooa ! aaooa I 
 
 1 See p. 73. 
 14
 
 210 APPENDIX 
 
 In the second, the rhymes at the strong caesural pauses are 
 obvious enough, but the remainders of the lines seem like rather 
 abrupt prose: 
 
 BOOKS IN THE DARK 
 
 I sit amid my books, as twilight deepens fast ; 
 I know them by their looks, though now I cannot see 
 The titles that they bear, for who that loves his friends 
 Need have them always wear their names upon their backs? 
 
 That worn and rusty calf, how well I still recall 
 
 The dollar and a half it cost a Freshman's purse I 
 
 'T was thirty years last June, but Shakespeare's woodnotes wild 
 
 Lose something of their tune in any book but that. 
 
 My Kelmscott Chaucer, bound by Cobden-Sanderson, 
 Sheds a pale glow around its regal rosewood shrine ; 
 And yet I 'd rather part with all its splendid state 
 Than tear from out my heart that Golden Treasury ! 
 
 It was my noontide friend, you see, in schoolboy days, 
 When I had made an end of the Franconia books ; 
 And if you chanced to see my pocket bulge still more, 
 The podgy cause would be Poe's poems, and my lunch. 
 
 And now the room is dark, save for a little glow 
 That shows a smouldering spark of life within the grate ; 
 Just light enough to tell that on Ruth's table, there, 
 The book she loves so well, her pocket Browning, lies. 
 
 Yet very well I know, my thousand shelf-ranged friends, 
 That I could quickly go to each one in the dark. 
 You 've lived with me so much that if, when eyesight fails, 
 I greet you by the touch you all will understand ! 
 
 In the third, the ear catches both the internal- and the end- 
 rhymes, and may or may not perceive the rhyming of the first 
 syllables : 
 
 NE PLUS ULTRA 
 
 Under the slope at the top of the hill, 
 Wonder and hope and expectancy still ; 
 When on the height the whole view is revealed, 
 Then is the sight but of woodland and field. 
 
 In the fourth, I have found the result the most doubtful of all, 
 some intelligent listeners failing to catch any rhyme, while others
 
 APPENDIX 211 
 
 have perceived it here and there, but without system. The four 
 illustrations perhaps sufficiently show why none of the arrange- 
 ments has ever approved itself to the poets : 
 
 THE FLOWER OF TIME 
 
 Primal chaos, ere the dawn of time, 
 Knew the law of order pulsing through ; 
 Sun and star were severed, one by one, 
 World and moon on spheral pathways hurled. 
 
 Heaven and earth divided, and the seven 
 Days of God marched down the eternal ways; 
 Here the ocean shrank away in fear, 
 There the mountains climbed into the air. 
 
 When the grass and flowers were growing, then 
 Bird and beast in wildwood cry were heard; 
 Last of all, beneath the forest vast, 
 Man and maid in sportful joyance ran. 
 
 So the years of life began to flow, 
 
 Years of love and hate, of hopes and fears, 
 
 All the human happenings that fall, 
 
 Peace and war, and birth, and death's release. 
 
 Yet for one thing, one, earth waited, set 
 Longingly to look with yearning strong, 
 Flower that bloomed in time's last radiant hour, 
 You, all life's perfection, only you 1 .