THE ORIGIN OF RHYME.
The foundation of poetry, that is of the expression of human feelings in
verse, is rhythm. According to Aristoxenus, the greatest metrical scholar
of Greece, rhythm is the division of time into equally recurring shorter
and longer parts; but it becomes perceptible only by being applied to
certain movements performed in this time (τὸ ῥυθμιζόμενον). This object
of rhythm is, of course, different in the different arts. In music, it
is the notes of a melody (μέλος); in dance, the movements of hands and
feet (σωματικὴ κίνησις); and in poetry, the words (λέξις). In ancient,
and especially in Greek, poetry, rhythm was the first and chief principle
of verse; and Greek poets observed this principle with the greatest
consistency, measuring their lines exclusively according to the length or
shortness of the syllables, without taking any notice of the rhetorical
accent of each word, which depends, of course, greatly on its meaning.
This metrical system, founded entirely on the beauty of sound, agrees
perfectly with what we know of the plastic art of the Greeks, where
also the graceful and harmonious form predominates over the emotional
expression of the features. There is something analogous to be found in
the primitive poetry of the Teutonic nations. The aim of their poets was
to impress the audience by the strong and heroic sound of their verses;
and in consequence the principle of their metrical system was purely
rhythmical. In _Beowulf_, as well as in the _Hildebrandliet_, or the
_Wessobrunner Gebet_, each line contains a certain number of long and
highly-accented (_hochbetont_) syllables, which are further emphasised by
alliteration. The rhetorical importance of these syllables does not in
the least influence their metrical value.
Latin poetry was not at first equally strict. The earlier Roman poets
always tried to make the rhetorical and the metrical accent coincide.
This was the more easy for them, as their rules of quantity were not yet
clearly defined. Only the later Roman poets, and among them especially
Horace, who were under the influence of Greek literature, introduced the
accurate rules of Hellenic prosody into their own language, and at the
same time made the metrical accent quite independent of the rhetorical.
A remarkable sign of the difference between the Roman and Greek metrical
systems is the way in which the two nations used the most important terms
of rhythmical art, arsis and thesis. Aristoxenus, founding his metrical
system entirely on the rhythms of dance and music, called arsis the weak
part of the metre, because there the dancer raised his foot (αἴρω), and
thesis the strong part, when the dancer trod the ground (τίθημι)—exactly
contrary to the modern use of these words made familiar by Bentley.
The best Roman metrical scholars, such as Atilius Fortunatianus and
Terentianus Maurus, on the other hand, led by the rhetorical accent of
their language, called arsis the first, and thesis the second, part
of the metre, whether weak or strong, following, however, in this the
metrical ἐγχειρίδιον of an unknown late-Greek author.[32] The only
exception is Martianus Capella, the author of ‘De Nuptiis Philologiæ
et Mercurii,’ a work considered, during the middle ages, as a standard
authority for all the branches of human knowledge. In his translation of
Aristides Quintilianus, he adopted from him the use of arsis and thesis,
although it was in direct contradiction to his own definition: ‘Arsis
est elevatio, thesis depositio vocis ac remissio.’ The introduction of
Greek prosody into the Latin language was simply a matter of art; and its
reign could last only so long as the great poets of the classic period
kept down the influence of popular poetry. As soon as the unlimited sway
of these grand traditions ceased, the original tendencies of the Roman
language began to oppose the Greek-Augustan orthodoxy; and this struggle,
which lasted for many centuries, ended in the complete overthrow of the
ancient prosody. It would lead too far to follow the traces of this
process through its different phases; it is enough to say that, at the
beginning of the middle ages, the rhetorical as against the metrical
accent had more than reconquered its original rights in Latin poetry. In
the grand religious songs of mediæval monkish poetry, such as ‘Dies iræ,
dies illa’ or ‘Stabat mater dolorosa,’ the verses are measured entirely
according to the modern principle of rhetorical accent. Even where the
mediæval poets tried to keep up the appearance of ancient versification
they could not abstain from yielding to the powerful influence of
rising mediæval art. The best example of this fact is the favourite
metre of monkish scholars, the Leonine hexameter. The poems written in
this metre—as may be seen by the following two lines from the poem ‘De
contemptu mundi,’ of the eleventh century,
Cumque laborum | cumque dolorum | sit sitabundus,
Nos irritans | nos invitans | ad mala mundus—
utterly neglect the fundamental rules of ancient prosody. The same might
be said, even in a higher degree, of Godfrid of Viterbo. He goes so far
as to join two leonine hexameters and one pentameter in a stanza; for
example:
Imperii sidus | plaudunt tibi mensis et idus,
Metra tibi fidus | regalia dat Gotefridus
Quæ tibi sæpe legas | ut bene regna regas.
The principle of dividing the stanza into three parts which is the basis
of Italian and German strophes, can be easily recognised here; and the
mediæval poet might have written his sham hexameters much more properly
in this way:—
{ Imperii sidus
{ Plaudunt tibi mensis et idus.
Pedes {
{ Metra tibi fidus
{ Regalia dat Gotefridus.
Cauda { Quæ tibi sæpe legas
{ Ut bene regna regas.
One of the most striking features of this rising poetry is the rhyme—an
element quite independent of the metrical principle, and founded entirely
on the sound and rhetorical accent of the words. This rhyme is used no
longer as an occasional effect, in different places of the verse, but
defined by the strictest rules of art. It has been a favourite subject
of investigation with literary scholars, to determine who first used
the rhyme. Monkish mediæval poets and Provençal troubadours have found
enthusiastic defenders of their claims to this great invention. It
appears however that the question itself was a mistake. Nobody invented
the rhyme: it has existed as long as poetry itself. Horace and Homer knew
it as well as Byron and Goethe; but the rhythmical principle prevailed
too largely in the Latin and Greek languages to allow the rhyme, as
a rhetorical element, to attain that influence which it gained by a
natural process, when verses began to be measured according to the
modern principle of rhetorical accent. Wilhelm Grimm, in his monograph
‘Zur Geschichte des Reims,’ has collected with great care the numerous
instances of rhyme in the classic Roman period. The rule is, as Grimm
shows, that the chief cæsura in the third foot of the hexameter rhymes
with the end of the verse; but in other places also the rhyming words
may be found. Grimm, however, decidedly goes too far when he sees an
intentional rhyme in all these cases. The Latin language, owing to its
consonant final syllables in declensions and conjugations, possessed an
immense quantity of rhyming material, and moreover each adjective had to
agree with its noun, if it followed the same declension. It is therefore
difficult to see how the poet could have avoided bringing into the same
verse very often two or even more words ending in the same way. In a
verse, for instance, like that quoted by Grimm from Virgil’s ‘Bucolics,’
Vare tuas cupiant et tristia condere bella,
no Roman poet could have intended, nor a Roman ear have noticed, a rhyme
between ‘tristia’ and ‘bella;’ especially as the different metrical value
of the two syllables modified the sound of the two _a_’s. Grimm seems
not to have been able to free himself altogether from the propensity
of biographers to overrate the importance of their heroes. However, in
innumerable other cases rhyme has decidedly been used of set purpose
by the Roman poets, especially where the corresponding words are found
either in the chief cæsura and the end of the same verse, or at the end
of two verses following each other. Of both cases an example may be cited
from Horace, whose fine ear and ability to avail himself of beauties of
rhythm and sound make him an important witness for the intentional use of
rhyme.
Ille gravem du_ro_ terram qui vertit arat_ro_,[33]
affords an excellent instance of rhyme in the chief cæsura; while the
lines
Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto
Et quocumque volent animum auditoris agunto,[34]
prove even the existence of a sort of feminine rhyme in Latin poetry.
Horace also shows how the Roman poets used the rhyme for onomatopoetic
purposes. In the celebrated line,
Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus,[35]
the quick jump of the little animal could not have been better
illustrated than by the rhyme of the two words immediately following each
other—‘Schlagreim,’ as the German meistersingers appropriately call it.
Though there can be no doubt that the Latin poets of the classic period
knew and occasionally used rhyme, it never was to them of the same vital
importance that it is to modern poets; and in fact it never could be, so
long as the rhythmical accent preserved its unlimited power; for this
is decidedly unfavourable to rhyme. In all those cases, for instance,
where the chief cæsura of the hexameter rhymed with the end of the same
verse, which, as we have seen, was the usual way, the two corresponding
syllables had different metrical accents. In the line already cited,
Īllĕ grăvēm dūr_ō_ tērrām quī vērtĭt ărātr_ŏ_,
the _o_ of _duro_ stands in the arsis, and therefore has quite a
different sound from the _o_ in _aratro_, which stands in the thesis.
This becomes the more evident in those very rare cases where the rhyme in
this position contains two syllables, or is, as we should say, feminine.
In Horace there is only one instance of this; and indeed what could be
the use of a rhyme which, if the verse were read according to rhythmical
principles, would be scarcely audible?—
Frātrēm mœ̄_rēntīs’_ rāptō dē frātrĕ dŏ_lēn’tĭs_.[36]
But by the same fact the destructive influence of rhyme on the rhythmical
principle becomes evident. The line, for instance, already quoted from
Godfrey of Viterbo, would, if properly scanned, have sounded thus:
Mētră tĭbē _fīdūs’_ rēgālĭă dāt Gŏtĕf_rī’dŭs_.
But this way of destroying the feminine rhyme by the rhythmical accent
certainly did not tally with the feeling of the mediæval poet; and it
may be assumed that he accentuated _fídus_ exactly like Gotef_rídus_, as
if it were a trochee. This at the same time agreed perfectly with the
rhetorical accent of the word. Reading the whole verse according to the
same principle, the first part of it,
Métra tíbi fídus,
became quite trochaic in character, and the idea of the hexameter is
utterly destroyed. This destruction of the rhythmical principle in
mediæval Latin poetry was almost contemporary with the same phenomenon
in Teutonic literature. Here also the dominion of purely rhythmical
measurement and alliteration was victoriously contested by rhyme and
rhetorical accent. At the beginning of the middle-high-German period,
alliteration as a principle of art disappeared; and by the great
minnesingers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was used only
occasionally, and without any strict rule, just as rhyme was by the old
Roman poets. It was chiefly preserved in old alliterative formulæ, such
as ‘Haus und Hof,’ or our ‘Kith and Kin.’ A beautiful example of this is
found in the last stanza but one of the ‘Nibelunge Nôt’:
Mit leide was verendet des künges hochgezît
als ie diu _l_îbe _l_eide z’aller jungeste gît.
Rhythmical accent, however, existed side by side with rhetorical accent
much longer in German than in any of the Romance languages; and traces
of its influence may be found almost till the beginning of the modern
high-German epoch.
In the Romance languages the decline of the rhythmical principle was
even more complete than in the mediæval Latin or in any of the Teutonic
idioms. The feeling for rhythm in those languages was so entirely
lost that they were not able even to preserve the rhetorical accent
in sufficient strength to make it of any avail for metrical purposes.
Although in most of the poems written in the Romance languages there is
a certain resemblance to the iambic or trochaic fall, yet the scanning
of a whole stanza according to these metres would in most cases prove
impossible. In modern French, which has gone farthest in neglecting the
rhythmical difference between the syllables within the same word, there
is scarcely a single line of the most finished poets which could be read
metrically without altering even that remnant of rhetorical accent which
has been preserved. In the following verse, taken from Boileau’s sixth
Satire,
Căr à peĭ_nē_ lĕs cōqs cŏm_m_ēnçănt leūr rămāgĕ,
there are two striking examples of this fact; for the accent of the
(if anything) iambic metre in the word _peine_ is on a syllable which
in prose is scarcely pronounced at all, and in _commençant_ the last
syllable is at least as long as the last but one. Where modern French
poets try to introduce something resembling rhythm, they generally do
so less by means of the rhetorical accent in words of several syllables
than by putting the more or less important parts of the sentence, such
as article and noun or personal pronoun and verb, in thesis and arsis
respectively. In the main it may fairly be said that in Romance poetry
metre is entirely founded on counting the syllables of the verse, and
rhythm, properly speaking, has disappeared, except so far as it shows its
influence in the combination of verses of different lengths in a stanza.
This leads us to another consideration, which is of the highest
importance in studying Provençal versification. Rhythm showed its
influence on the poetry of the troubadours, not only in the single
verses, but also in the composition of several verses of different sizes
and cadences into an organic whole—the strophe. The harmonious beauty and
impulsive lyrical pathos of Pindar’s odes excite the same admiration as
does the steady epical flow of Homer’s hexameters; and to the inheritance
of the strophe, and its development into the stanza, mediæval poems, and
especially the canzos of the troubadours, owe their greatest charm. To
the relics of ancient literature already mentioned was added the rhyme,
defined by strict rules and made obligatory; and this new principle
contributed not a little to give variety and harmonious beauty to the
mediæval stanza. In investigating Provençal versification, it will
therefore be necessary to consider (1) rhythm, as shown in the manifold
measures of verse, (2) rhyme, and (3) the mode in which by these two
elements combined the stanza of the troubadours was formed.