Amenities of Literature Part 34

The ancient poetry of the Greeks was composed for recitation. The people never read, for they had no books; they listened to their rhapsodists; and their practised ear could decide on the artificial construction of verses regulated by _quant.i.ty_, and not by the latent delicacy and numerosity of which modern versification is susceptible.

[2] Quadrio, "Storia e raggione d'ogni Poesia," i. 606.

[3] Pasquier, "Les Recherches de la France," p. 624, fo. 1533.

[4] "A Discourse of English Poetrie; together with the Author's Judgment touching the Reformation of our English Verse," by WILLIAM WEBBE, graduate, 1586, 4to.

[5] "Observations on the Art of English Poesie, by THOMAS CAMPION, wherein is demonstratively proved, and by example confirmed, that the English tongue will receive eight several kinds of numbers proper to itself, which are all in this Book set forth, and were never before this time by any man attempted," 1602.

ORIGIN OF RHYME.

Contending theories long divided the learned world. One party a.s.serted that the use of Rhyme was introduced by the Saracenic conquerors of Spain and of Sicily, for they had ascertained that the Arabian poets rhymed; the other, who had traced Rhyme to a northern source among the Scandinavian bards, insisted that Rhyme had a Gothic origin; and as Rhyme was generally used among the monks in the eighth century, they imagined that in the decline of ancient literature the dexterous monks had borrowed the jingle for their church hymns, to win the ear of their Gothic lords; both parties alike concurred in condemning Rhyme as a puerile invention and a barbarous ornament, and of a comparatively modern invention.

The opinions of the learned are transmitted, till by length of time they are accepted as facts; and in this state was Rhyme considered till our own days. Warton, in the course of his researches in the history of our poetry, was struck at the inaccuracy of one of these statements; for he had found that rhymed verse, both Latin and vernacular, had been practised much earlier than the period usually a.s.signed. But Warton, though he thus far corrected the misstatements of his predecessors, advanced no further. No one, indeed, as yet had pursued this intricate subject on the most direct principle of investigation; conjecture had freely supplied what prevalent opinion had already sanctioned; and we were long familiarised to the opprobrious epithet of "Monkish Rhymes."

The subject was not only obscure, but apparently trivial; for Warton dismisses an incidental allusion to the origin of Rhyme by an apology for touching on it. "Enough," he exclaims, in his impatience, "has been said on a subject of so little importance;"[1] and it is curious to observe, that the same vexatious exclamation occurred to a French literary antiquary. "We must not believe," said Lenglet du Fresnoy, "that we began to rhyme in France about 1250, as Petrarch pretends. The romance of Alexander existed before, and it is not probable that the first essay of our versification was a great poem. Abelard composed love-songs in the preceding century. I believe Rhyme was still more ancient; and it is useless to torment ourselves to discover from whom we learned to rhyme. As we always had poets in our nation, so we have also had Rhyme."[2] Thus two great poetical antiquaries in England and France had been baffled in their researches, and came to the same mortifying conclusion. They were little aware how an inquiry after the origin of Rhyme could not be decided by chronology.

The origin of Rhyme was an inquiry which, however unimportant Warton in his despair might consider it, had, though inconclusively treated, often engaged the earnest inquiries of the learned in Italy and in Spain, in Germany and in France. It is remarkable that all the parties were equally perplexed in their researches, and baffled in their conclusions.

Each inquirer seemed to trace the use of Rhyme by his own people to a foreign source, for with no one it appeared of native growth. The Spaniard Juan de la Enzina, one of the fathers of the Spanish drama, and who composed an "Art of Poetry," (_Arte de Trovar_, as they expressively term the art of invention,) fancied that Rhyme had pa.s.sed over into Spain from Italy, though in the land of Redondillas the guitar seemed attuned to the chant of their Moorish masters; but in Italy Petrarch, at the opening of his epistles, declares that they had drawn their use of Rhyme from Sicily; and the Sicilians had settled that they had received it from the Provencals; while those roving children of fancy were confident that they had been taught their artless chimes by their former masters, the Arabians! Among the Germans it was strenuously maintained that this modern adjunct to poetry derived its origin and use from the Northern Scalds. Fauchet, the old Gaulish antiquary, was startled to find that Rhyme had been practised by the primitive Hebrews!

Fauchet, struck by discovering the use of Rhyme among this ancient people, and finding it practised by the monks in their ma.s.ses in the eighth century, suggested for its modern prevalence two very dissimilar causes. With an equal devotional respect for "the people of G.o.d," and for the monks, whom he considered as sacred, he concluded that "possibly some pious Christian by the use of Rhyme designed to imitate the holy people;" but at the same time holding, with the learned, Rhyme to be a degenerate deviation from the cla.s.sical metres of antiquity, he insinuates, "or perchance some vile poetaster, to eke out his deficient genius, amused the ear by terminating his lines with these ending unisons." He had further discovered that the Greek critics had, among the figures of their rhetoric, mentioned the _h.o.m.oioteleuton_, or consonance. The abundance of his knowledge contradicted every system which the perplexed literary antiquary could propose; and impatiently he concludes,--"Rhyme has come to us from some part of the world, or nation, whoever it may be; for I confess I know not where to seek, nor what to conclude. It was current among the people and the languages which have arisen since the ruin of the Roman empire."[3]

Since the days of ancient Fauchet, no subsequent investigators, even such great recent literary historians as Warton, Quadrio, Crescembini and Gray, Tiraboschi, Sismondi and Ginguene, have extricated us by their opposite theories from these uncertain opinions. It was reserved for the happy diligence of the learned Sharon Turner to explore into this abyss of darkness.[4] To defend the antiquity of the Rhyming Welsh bards, he pursued his researches through all languages, and demonstrated its early existence in all. His researches enable us to advance one more step, and to effect an important result, which has always baffled the investigators of these curious topics.

Rhyming poems are found not only in the Hebrew but in the Sanscrit, in the Bedas, and in the Chinese poetry,[5] as among the nations of Europe.

It was not unknown to the Greeks, since they have named it as a rhetorical ornament; and it appears to have been practised by the Romans, not always from an accidental occurrence, but of deliberate choice.

To deduce the origin of rhyme from any particular people, or to fix it at any stated period, is a theory no longer tenable. The custom of rhyming has predominated in China, in Hindustan, in Ethiopia; it chimes in the Malay and Javanese poetry, as it did in ancient Judea: this consonance trills in the simple carol of the African women; its echoes resounded in the halls of the frozen North, in the kiosque of the Persian, and in the tent of the Arab, from time immemorial. RHYME must therefore be considered _as universal as poetry itself_.

Yet rhyme has been contemned as a "monkish jingle," or a "Gothic barbarism;" but we see it was not peculiar to the monks nor the Goths, since it was prevalent in the vernacular poetry of all other nations save the two ancient ones of Greece and Rome. Delighting the ear of the man as it did that of the child, and equally attractive in the most polished as in the rudest state of society, rhyme could not have obtained this universality had not this concord of returning sounds a foundation in the human organization influencing the mind. We might as well inquire the origin of dancing as that of rhyming; the rudest society as well as the most polished practised these arts at every era.

And thus it has happened, as we have seen, that the origin of rhyme was everywhere sought for and everywhere found.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Warton's "Second Dissertation on the Introduction of Learning into England."

[2] Lenglet du Fresnoy--Preface to his edition of the "Roman de la Rose."

[3] Much curious matter will be found in the rare volume of Fauchet "Recueil de l'Origine de la Langue et Poesie Francoise Ryme et Romans plus les Noms et Summaire des Oeuvres, de cxxvii. Poetes Francois, vivant avant l'an MCCC.;" liv. i. ch. vii., 1610, 4to.

[4] See "Two Inquiries respecting the Early Use of Rhyme," by Sharon Turner, Esq.--_Archaeologia,_ vol. xiv. The subject further enlarged, "On the Origin and Progress of Rhyme in the Middle Ages."--_Hist. of England_, iv. 386.

[5] The second book the Chinese children read is a collection conveyed in _rhyming lines_.--_Davis on the Chinese._

RHYMING DICTIONARIES.

If our poets in rhyme dared to disclose one of the grand mysteries of their art, they would confess that, to find rhymes for their lines is a difficulty which, however overcome, after all has botched many a fine verse; the second line has often altered the original conception of the preceding one. The finest poems in the language, if critically examined, would show abundant evidence of this difficulty _not overcome_. This difficulty seems to have occurred to our earliest critics, for GASCOIGNE, in his "Certain Notes of Instruction concerning the making Verse or Rhyme in English"--and WEBBE, in his "Discourse," repeats the precept--would initiate the young poet in the art of rhyme-finding: the simplicity of the critic equals the depth of his artifice.

"When you have one verse _well settled_ and _decently ordered_, which you may dispose at your pleasure to end it with _what word you will_; then whatsoever the word is, you may speedily run over the other words which are answerable thereunto (for more readiness through all the letters alphabetically),[1] whereof you may choose that which will _best fit the sense_ of your matter in that place; as, for example, if your last word end in book, you may straightway in your mind run them over thus--book, cook, crook, hook, look, nook, pook, &c. &c. Now it is _twenty to one but always one of these shall jump with your former word and matter in good sense_."

The poet in _rhyme_ has therefore in his favour "twenty to one" of a chance that his second line may "jump" with his former one. We were not aware that the odds were so favourable, even when we look over the finished poetry of Pope, who has written so much, or of Gray, who has written so little. Boileau tells us he always chose a rhyme for his second line before he wrote out his first, that by this means he might secure the integrity of the sense; and this he called "the difficult art of rhyming." These are mysteries which only confirm the hazard which rhymers incur; and, on the whole, though we do marvellously escape, the poet at every rhyming line still stands in peril.

This torture of rhyme-finding seems to have occasioned a general affliction among modern poets; and an unhappy subst.i.tute was early found in arranging collections of rhymes, and which subsequently led to a monstrous device. In Goujet's "Bibliotheque Francaise," vol. iii., will be found a catalogue of these rhyming dictionaries: the earliest of the French was published in 1572. Indeed, some of these French critics looked upon these rhyming dictionaries as part of the art of poetry, recommending pocket editions for those who in their walks were apt to poetise, as if finding a rhyme would prompt a thought.

Among these early attempts is an extravagant one by Paul Boyer. It is a kind of encyclopaedia, in which all the names are arranged by their terminations, so that it furnishes a dictionary of rhymes.

The demand for rhymes seems to have continued; for in 1660, D'Ablancourt Fremont published a _Dictionnaire_, which was enlarged by Richelet in 1667. It seems we were not idle in threading rhymes in our own country, for Poole, in 1657, in his "Parna.s.sus," furnishes a collection of rhymes; and he has had his followers. But the perfect absurdity or curiosity of a rhyming lexicographer appears in one of Walker's Dictionaries of the English Language. As he was a skilful philologist, he has contrived to make it useful for orthography and p.r.o.nunciation. He advances it as on a plan "not hitherto attempted;" and his volume on the whole, as Moreri observes of Boyer's, is a thing "_plaisant a considerer_."

A dictionary of rhymes is as miserable a contrivance to a.s.sist a verse as counting the syllables by the finger is to regulate the measure; in the case of rhyme it is sense which should regulate the verse, and in that of metre it is the ear alone which can give it melody.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Here is the first idea of "A Dictionary of Rhymes," which has inspired so many unhappy bards.

THE ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE.

Among the arts of English poesie, the most ample and most curious is an anonymous work.[1] The history of an anonymous book is sometimes liable to the most contradictory evidence. The present, first printed in 1589, we learn from the work itself, was in hand as early as in 1553. The author inscribed the volume to Queen Elizabeth, and the courtly critic has often adroitly addressed "the most beautiful, or rather the beauty, of queens;" and to ill.u.s.trate that figure which he terms "the gorgeous,"

has preserved for us some of her regal verses.

Yet notwithstanding this votive gift to royalty, the printer has formally dedicated the volume to Lord Burleigh, acknowledging that "this book came into my hands with _its bare t.i.tle without any author's name_." The author himself could not have been at all concerned in delivering this work to the press, for having addressed the volume to the queen, he would never have sought for a patron in the minister.

This ambiguous author remained unknown after the publication, for Sir John Harrington, who lived in the circle of the court, designates him as "the unknown _G.o.dfather_, that, this last year save one (1589), set forth a book called 'The Arte of English Poesie.'" About twelve years afterwards, Carew, in his "Survey of Cornwall," appears to have been the first who disclosed the writer's name as "Master Puttenham;" but this was so little known among literary men, that three years later, in 1605, Camden only alludes to the writer as "the _gentleman_ who proves that poets are the first politicians, the first philosophers, and the first historiographers." Eleven years after, Edmund Bolton, in his "Hypercritica," notices "this work (_as the fame is_) of one of Queen Elizabeth's pensioners, Puttenham." The qualifying parenthesis "as the fame is," leaves the whole evidence in a very ticklish condition.

Who was Puttenham? A name unknown, and whose writings are unnoticed by any contemporary. Even the baptismal name of this writer has been subject to contradiction.[2]

In the work itself the writer has interspersed many allusions to himself, from his nursery to his court-days. His nurse, a right-lined ancestor of the garrulous nurse of the Capulets, had exercised his prurient faculties in expounding an indecent riddle,[3] which our mature critic still deemed "pretty;" but, according to one of his rhetorical technical terms, "it holds too much of the _cachemphaton_ or _foule speech_, and may be drawn unto a reprobate sense." Our author was a travelled gentleman, and by his residence at various courts, seems to have been connected with the _corps diplomatique_, for he had been present on some remarkable occasions at foreign courts, which we discover by coeval anecdotes of persons and places. One pa.s.sage relating to himself requires attention. Alluding to the polished hypocrisy practised in courts, he observes:--"These and many such like disgustings we find in men's behaviour, and specially in the courtiers of foreign countries, _where in my youth I was brought up_, and very well observed their manner of life and conversation; for of _mine own country I have not made so great experience_."

This seems as ambiguous as any part of our author's history, for at eighteen years of age he had addressed Edward the Sixth by "Our Eclogue of Elpine." When he tells us that "he had not had so great experience of his own country as of others," we may be surprised, for no contemporary writer has displayed such intimacy with the court anecdotes of England, which have studded many of his pages. Neither does the style, which bears no mark of foreign idiom, nor the collected matter of his art of poetry, which discovers a minute acquaintance with every species of English composition, preserving for us much fragmentary poetry, at all betray a stranger's absence from home. But, what seems more extraordinary, the writer frequently alludes to learned disquisitions, critical treatises, and to dramatic compositions of his own--to "our comedy" and to "our enterlude," and has frequent ill.u.s.trations drawn from poems of all sorts and measures of his own growth. It is one of the singularities of this unknown person that his writings were numerous, and that no contemporary has ever mentioned the name of Puttenham. How are we to reconcile these discrepancies, and how account for these numberless vernacular compositions, with the condition of one who was "brought up abroad," and who had such "little experience of his own country?" We appear to read a work composed by different persons.

The same anomalous character is attached to the work as we have discovered concerning the writer.

This "Arte of English Poesie," which Warton observes "remained long as a rule of criticism," and still may be consulted for its comprehensive system, its variety of poetic topics, and its contemporary historical anecdotes, is the work of a scholar, and evidently of a courtier. His scholastic learning furnished the terms of his numerous figures of rhetoric, each of which is ill.u.s.trated by examples drawn from English literature; but aware that this uncouth nomenclature might deter, as he says, "the sort of readers to whom I write, too scholastical for our MAKERS," as he cla.s.sically calls our poets, "and more fit for clerks than for courtiers, for whose instruction this travail is taken," our logician was cast into the dilemma of inventing English descriptions for these Greek rhetorical figures. We had no English name--"the rule might be set down, but there was no convenient name to hold it in memory."

To familiarise the technical terms of rhetoric by subst.i.tuting English descriptive ones, led to a ludicrous result. The Greek term of _histeron proteron_ was baptised the _preposterous_; these are words misplaced, or, as our writer calls it, "in English proverb, the cart before the horse," as one describing his landing on a strange coast said thus _preposterously_, that is, placing before what should follow--