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fetters. Rhyme, however, is so pleasing and so easily understood, as to stand higher than any other poetical artifice in popular estimation. The existence of so-called doggerel verses is a rude testimony to its power. Three conditions are required before two syllables make a perfect rhyme.

1. The vowel-sound and what (if anything) follows it, must be the same in both: long,' song'; 'sea,' 'free'. As rhyme depends upon sound only, the spelling is of no consequence: 'bear,' 'hare,' are rhymes; not so 'bear,' 'fear'.

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A great many conventional combinations are permitted by custom, being a sort of eye-rhymes. Since they do not possess the specific effect of rhymes, they should not be tolerated. They are such as 'love,' 'move'; 'poor,' 'door'; 'earth,' 'birth'; main,' again'; 'live,' 'thrive,' &c. Pope has many such faulty correspondences, rhyming, within the 292 lines of the Second Moral Essay, as the following words: 'weak,' 'take'; 'thought,' with 'fault,' draught' (draft), and taught'; 'feast,' taste,'; 'birth,' 'earth'; 'brain,' again'; 'great,' cheat'; store,' 'poor'; 'unmov'd,' 'lov'd'; 'swells,' 'conceals,'; taught, fault'; 'retreat,' 'great'; 'most,' 'lost'. Keats, in Lamia, has:' alone,' 'boon'; bliss,' 'is' (twice); was, 'pass'; undrest,' amethyst'; 'muse,' 'house'; 'fared,' appeared'; 'sung, 'long '; one,' tune'; youth,' 'soothe'; rose,'' lose 'his,' 'miss'; on,' 'known'; 'eagerness,' 'decrease 'how,' 'know'; 'past,'' haste'; 'year," where'; 'curious," 'house'; 'one,' 'known'; 'on,' 'one'; 'feast,' 'drest 'smoke,'' took'; 'rose,' 'odorous'; 'stood,' 'God'; 'feast,' 'placed'; 'shriek,' 'break'; 'again,' 'vein'; 'lost,' 'ghost'. 2. The articulation before the vowel-sound must be different: green,'' spleen'; 'call,' 'fall,' 'all'. The letter h is not considered a distinct articulation: 'heart,' 'art,' are improper rhymes.

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3. Both must be accented: 'try',' 'sigh"; not 'try',' 'brightly'. There is an admitted violation of this rule, when the accent on a syllable is metrical purely, and not proper to the word. This affords what is called a weak rhyme. For example: 'eye,' 'utterly'; 'reply,' 'revelry'; 'trees,'' intricacies''; 'he,' 'ruefully'; 'hour,' 'paramour'; 'please,' 'goddesses''. The main source of these is the endings in y; which may sound i or e at need. To know which way to take the weak ending, we must get the other rhyming syllable first-a consideration that leads Johnson

CONDITIONS OF RHYME.

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to forbid rhymes in the order of: mysteries,' 'eyes'; 'palaces,' 'please'; 'fairily,'' see'; 'empery,' sigh'.

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Rhymes are single: as plain,' 'grain'; double: as 'glo-ry,' 'sto-ry'; or triple: as 'read-i-ly,' 'stead-i-ly'. In double and triple rhymes, the last syllables are unaccented, and are really appendages to the true rhyming sound, which alone fulfils the conditions laid down above: cul'minate, ful'minate.

The double and triple rhymes give scope for surprises of ingenuity. They are one of the helps in comic pieces, like Butler's Hudibras and Byron's Don Juan. The latter poem is prodigally adorned with triple rhymes :But oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual

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Inform us truly, have they not henpeck'd you all.
He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery,
And how to scale a fortress-or a nunnery.

Byron even makes a prodigy of four syllables:

So that their plan and prosody are eligible,

Unless, like Wordsworth, they prove unintelligible.

The Ingoldsby Legends deals in such effects: Chancery,' answer he '; 'revell in,' 'Devil in': or

In short, she turns out a complete Lady Bountiful,
Filling with drugs and brown Holland the county full.

The double rhyme, can, however, be used for serious purposes; and Mr. Swinburne has been bold in this use of it. He has even ventured on serious uses of the triple

rhyme :

Send but a song oversea for us,

Heart of their hearts who are free,

Heart of their singer, to be for us

More than our singing can be ;

Ours, in the tempest at error

With no light but the twilight of terror;
Send us a song oversea.

It sees not what season shall bring to it
Sweet fruit of its bitter desire;

Few voices it hears yet sing to it.
Round your people and over them
Night like raiment is drawn,
Close as a garment to cover them.

Browning also frequently employs both double and triple rhymes.

Rhymes are not confined to the close of separate verses, but are sometimes found in the middle and at the end of the same verse. Some lines from Shelley's Cloud' will illustrate both cases :—

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I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers
From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noon-day dreams.

In this passage, it might be possible to argue that the line should be printed as two; but this is precluded in the following from Scott:

Then up with your cup, till you stagger in speech,

And match me this catch, though you swagger and screech,
And drink till you wink, my merry men each.

The marked similarity of rhyming closes draws the attention on the rhyming words, and so gives them emphasis. It is a great part, accordingly, of the artistic use of rhyme that it should fall on words sufficiently important to deserve the added emphasis.

But further the rhyme corresponds with the words where the Final Pause is, which is itself an emphasis-giving effect.

Hence, this unavoidable combination of Rhyme with Pause makes it absolutely necessary that none but words of weighty meaning should come into these places.

There is nothing to justify such an emphasis as Chapman, by these means, throws on 'forms' in the following:Before her flew Affliction, girt in storms,

Gash'd all with gushing wounds, and all the forms
Of bane and misery,—

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On the other hand storms' gets a deserved emphasis. Drayton has a well-rhymed opening stanza in one of his Agincourt Odes :

Fair stood the wind for France,

When we our sails advance,

Nor now to prove our chance
Longer will tarry;

But putting to the main,

At Caux, the mouth of Seine,

With all his martial train,

Landed King Harry,

It is a stroke of art to open such an ode on the rhyme of France'.

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As might be expected in such a master of the heroic couplet, Dryden affords many happy instances of wellplaced emphasis of rhyme and pause:

Next these, a troop of busy spirits press,
Of little fortunes and of conscience less.

-(Absalom and Achitophel.')

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The opening of 'MacFlecknoe' is a model in this respect (see p. 248). Three leading words are finely placed; and 'obey' is as good as any other there possible.

Repetitions of like vowel-sounds, where other conditions of perfect rhyme are neglected, get the name of Assonances. These have no regular place in English poetry, as they have in some other languages, but they are occasionally found instead of rhymes in old ballads. For example:

And Cloudesly lay ready there in a cart,

Fast bound, both foot and hand;
And a strong rope about his neck,
All ready for to hang.

Shakespeare has :—

Earth's increase and foison plenty,
Barns and garners never empty —

Spring come to you at the farthest
At the very end of harvest.

Two lines or verses rhyming together in succession form a couplet; three, a triplet or tercet. Groups of four lines, which may rhyme in various combinations, are called quatrains. A stanza is the least group of lines involving all the peculiarities of metre and arrangement of rhymes characteristic of the piece wherein it enters.

KINDS OF VERSE.

The elements for constructing the various kinds of verse common in English poetry have now been mentioned. They are the five measures repeated to make lines of various length: not seldom, compounded with one another; occasionally, made harmonious by alliteration; and, in most kinds of poetry, fitted with rhyming closes. The Rhyme, by its very nature, supposing at least two lines or verses, practically determines what special forms the versification shall assume; in the absence of rhyme, the versification is complete within the single line.

This last case of simple unrhymed metrical combination is best disposed of by itself, before the more intricate rhymed forms are noticed. It is the Blank Verse, called also Heroic, and belongs to English literature. The name Heroic arises from its employment in the High Epic, where it takes the place of the classical hexameter. It is composed of five

Iambic measures, as seen in the appended extract from
Milton:-

High on a throne' of royal State,' | which far
Outshone' the wealth' | of Ormuz and' | of Ind',
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold—

Young, Thomson, Wordsworth, and Tennyson also make use of Blank Verse, although the lines of each have a distinct ring or rhythm, dependent for the most part upon their management of the natural pauses.

In the Drama, a somewhat looser form of Blank Verse is in common use, varied occasionally by rhyming couplets. Frequently, the verse is hypermetrical by one or even two syllables. Thus :—

Most potent, grave, | and rev'rend Signiors;

My very noble and | approv'd | good masters.

The combinations that are formed to meet the necessities, or gain the advantage, of Rhyme, are so exceedingly numerous, that it will be impossible to allude to more than a few of the common forms, associated with well marked kinds of composition. In these the Iambic measure is found largely to preponderate.

Iambic Octosyllabics, of four measures, or eight syllables, in couplets rhyming at the close. As

Lord Marmion turn'd,' | well was' | his need'
And dash'd' | the row' els in' | his steed'.

This form is employed in Byron's Tales, in Hudibras, &c. Scott varies it often by lines of six syllables, or runs it into triplets. Other poets write triplets in stanzas. Quatrains in stanzas, rhyming by couplets or alternately, are exceedingly common.

Tennyson's In Memoriam has made famous an old combination of eight-syllabled lines, with four accents and iambic movement. The stanza has four lines, 1 and 4, and 2 and 3 rhyming together.

Heroic Couplets, five iambic measures rhymed.

Know well thyself | presume | not God | to scan;
The proper study of mankind | is man.

Chaucer, Marlowe, Dryden, Pope, Cowper, &c., have used this metre; Swinburne and William Morris have made great

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