113 CHAPTER XIII. ON RHYME. 86. RHYME, in its original form Rhythm, means proportion, and among other kinds Metrical, in which sense alone it occurs in the modern tongues which have borrowed the word. But as in these tongues the great distinction of one verse from another is formed by the identity of the terminating sound, it came to be applied as the term for this identity, and from familiar use assumed the more familiar form of rhyme. Not that the whole syllables which have the same rhyme are identical. For the initial consonant is left indifferent. It would be a work of insuperable difficulty, as well as an effect most barbarous, to include that also, and make reclaim answer to declaim. 87. As an auxiliary, it has been adopted in the earliest poetry with which we are acquainted, in that of Homer, and runs through all classical poetry to the last. Its use is to give strength to cæsuras, which are made to rhyme with the end of the line. Most commonly the termination of the substantive rhymes with that of its adjective, whose relation thus becomes pointedly marked. Who is not familiar with such examples as Εκ μὲν Κρητάων | γένος εὔχομαι εὐρειάων.-Odyss. Ξ. 199. Ter centum nivei | tondent dumeta juvenci, Illum indignanti | similem, similemque minanti. 88. Those who censure rhyme as a modern barbarism do not seem to have considered this use, nor that it would be exceedingly barbarous in our own versification in that very place where it is such a favourite with the ancients; for who could endure such a line as The blushing rose | her dewy flower shall close? for our rhymed verse has rhyme enough already, and the whole couplet would be thrown into confusion. And our blank verse rejects every thing of the kind on principle. 89. That line Illum indignanti similem, similemque minanti, is the very model of the Leonine or monkish verses, and gives us the key to the origin of modern rhyme. For when in the decay of the Latin the sense of quantity had been lost, and the musical accent given way to mere stress, the hexameter lost all its ancient music, and could well bear some addition to its harmony. At the same time the ear had become dull to the variety of its pauses, and the very marked cæsura in the middle of the third foot was the only one to which it was fully sensible, and which therefore it always required. But at this very point also came the ancient rhyme. What could be a more natural resource for patching up the ruined harmony than this, and where could they have found a better if they had purposely looked beyond this which was at hand? When therefore the vernacular tongues began to employ versification, how could it be otherwise, decayed Latin as they were, than that they should have recourse to rhyme, feeling as they must the want of some additional prop to their feeble measure. The argument is much strengthened when we find, from specimens of the Anglo-Saxon, that it was unlikely to have been derived from the Teutonic stock. 90. The capability of languages for rhyme is of course very different; being in proportion to their analogical structure and abundance of inflections. Hence the Greek surpasses all on this point. It abounds with words of similar sound, as SpúTTW, θρύπτω, κύπτω, τύπτω ;—of similar derivation, as θρέμμα, πέμμα, στέμμα, στρέμμα ;—with large classes of various terminations of substantives, as nua, ωμα, ησις, ωσις, ισμα, ισις, &c.,—of adjectives, as ηρης, ηρος, ερος, ινος, ωδης, ηλος, &c.: to say nothing of the inexhaustible resources arising from persons, tenses, and cases. Even the modern Greek, shorn though it be of so much of this richness, is still by far the best furnished of all our European tongues with the means of rhyme. 91. As in every respect, so in this the Latin is inferior to Greek. Being far less homogeneous in its structure, it has not such well-filled classes of various inflection, and so much echo resounding from an analogical structure. Still it is richer than all its daughters; which, if they have laid open a wider field to a given number of rhymes, by reducing many inflections to one, have lost variety in proportion. Thus, where the Latin had terror, terroris, terrorem, terrori, terrore; the Italian has but terrore: and, therefore, with five times as many words to one rhyme (which it does not need), it has but one-fifth of the variety which it does need. The same may be said of the Spanish and of the French, which last is the poorest of the Latin dialects on this point; while, through its monosyllabic inflexions, it departs widely from their scope of variety, which admits of choice between the fulness of the double, and the firmness of the single, rhyme. 92. Unquestionably the poorest of all the tongues of modern literature, on this head, is the English; not only from its very compound nature, which is so unfavourable to analogical structure, and to rich variety of inflexion; and from its monosyllabic terminations: but also, and principally, from the natural position of its accent, which can hardly ever fall upon a termination. For example, while the Italian can match orrore with terrore, and the French, vicieux with melodieux; the English cannot put horror to rhyme with terror, nor vicious with melodious; and these terminations, which we have so largely introduced from the French, and are to that tongue so fruitful a resource for rhyme, are to us quite barren. Not, however, that they were such at the time of their introduction; for they seem to have brought with them the native seat of their stress. Thus, in the opening of the 66 Canterbury Tales," we find among the rhymes of the first two hundred lines, liquor, reasón, gippón, voyàge, viságe, bracér, manére, consciénce, Bennet, labour. But they were in time compelled to conform to the genius of their adopting language, which likes to throw the stress upon the radical part of the word, and is especially averse to its place on the last syllable. Hence our rhymes are driven to the scanty resource of primitives and radicals: and while the Italian and Frenchman, having |