Contending theories long divided the learned world. One party asserted
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 assigned. 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 passed 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 masses in the
eighth century, suggested for its modern prevalence two very dissimilar
causes. With an equal devotional respect for "the people of God," 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 classical 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 _homoioteleuton_, 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.