Alliteration preceded rhyme. Rhyme followed alliteration. Hence, whenever we have no specimens of a given form of speech anterior to the evolution of rhyme, we have no alliterational compositions. This is the case with the Frisian, the Batavian, and the Platt-Deutsch dialects. Indeed, for the High-German the poem of Muspilli is a solitary, or nearly solitary, instance. The two languages wherein there is the most of it are the English during the Anglo-Saxon and early English periods, and the Norse. In the latter we not only get numerous specimens, but we also get the rules of its Prosody. These are, perhaps, more artificial than actual practice requires. They are also more stringent and elaborate. than those of Anglo-Saxon and High-German.

Thus, the alliterative syllables take names, one being the head-stave and the other two the by-staves.

The head-stave has its place at the beginning of the second line, or (if we throw the two into one) immediately after a break, cæsura, pause, or quasi-division.

The by-staves belong to the first line out of two, or to the first member of a single one. This is a rule that gives stringency to the system. Others give licence. Thus,

An unaccented syllable at the beginning of the second line (or member) counts as nothing.

Again, the vowels which collectively are dealt with as a single letter not only may but must be different. This goes far to enable anything and everything to be metre-inasmuch as all that is wanted to constitute either one long or two short lines is the occurrence of three words beginning with a vowel, and accented on their initial syllable. The following is from Thorlakson's Translation of "Paradise Lost: ".

VOL. II.

"OF Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, heavenly Muse, that on the secret top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the Heavens and Earth

G G

Rose out of Chaos: or if Sion hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flow'd

Fast by the oracle of God."

The full details of the Norse alliterative system may be

found in Rask on the Icelandic Prosody.

CHAPTER IV.

RHYME AND ASSONANCE.

§ 560. In an Alliteration the likeness between the articulate sounds which constitute it occurs at the beginning of words. In rhyme it occurs at the end.

Observe in each of the following couplets the last syllable of each line. They are said to rhyme to each other.

O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,

Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free.
Far as the breeze can bear the billow's foam,
Survey our empire and behold our home.
These are our realms, no limits to our sway—

Our flag the sceptre all who meet obey.

The next extract is a stanza of Gray's Elegy, where, instead of following one another in succession, the rhyming lines come alternately.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark, unfathom'd depths of ocean bear;

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.—GRAY.

In other stanzas the rhyming lines are sometimes continuous, and sometimes separated from each other by an interval.

And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,

Land of lost gods and godlike men, art thou!

Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,
Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now:

Thy fanes, thy temples to thy surface bow,
Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
Broke by the share of every rustic plough :

So perish monuments of mortal birth,

So perish all in turn, save well-recorded worth.-Byron.

It is not difficult to see, in a general way, in what rhyme consists. The syllables see and free, foam, home, &c., are syllables of similar sound; and lines that end in syllables of similar sound are lines that rhyme.

By substituting in a line or stanza, instead of the final syllable, some word different in sound, although similarly accented and equally capable of making sense, we may arrive at a general view of the nature and influence of rhyme as an ornament of metre. In the following stanza we may spoil the effect by substituting the word glen for vale, and light for ray.

Turn, gentle hermit of the vale,
And guide thy lonely way
To where yon taper cheers the dale
With hospitable ray.-GOLDSMITH.

With this contrast

Turn, gentle hermit of the glen,

And guide thy lonely way
To where yon taper cheers the dale
With hospitable light.

§ 561. Syllables may be similar in their sound, and yet fail in furnishing full, true, and perfect rhymes. In each of the forthcoming couplets there is evidently a similarity of sound, and there is equally evidently an imperfection in the rhyme.

1.

The soft-flowing outline that steals from the eye,
Who threw o'er the surface,-did you or did I?
WHITEHEAD.

2.

'Tis with our judgments as our watches; none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.-POPE.

3.

Soft o'er the shrouds aërial whispers breathe,

That seem'd but zephyrs to the train beneath.-POPE. The first of these three pairs of verses was altered into— The soft-flowing outline that steals from the view,

Who threw o'er the surface,—did I or did you?

and that solely on account of the imperfectness of the original endings, eye and I.

These are samples of what passes for a rhyme without being one.

Neither are the syllables high and -ly, in the following, rhymes.

The witch she held the haír in her hánd,

The réd flame blázed hígh;

And round about the cáldron stoút,

They danced right mérrilý.-KIRKE WHITE.

§ 562. Varieties of imperfect Rhymes.-None and own are better ryhmes than none and man; because there are degrees in the amount to which vowels differ from one another, and the sounds of the o in none and the o in own are more alike than the sounds of the o in none and the a in man. In like manner breathe and teeth are nearer to rhymes than breathe and teaze ; and breathe and teaze, are more alike in sound than breathe and teal. All this is because the sound of the th in teeth is more allied to that of the th in breathe than that of the z in teaze, and to the z in teaze more than to the 7 in teal. This shows that in imperfect rhymes there are degrees, and that some approach the nature of true ones more than others.

High and I, hair and air, are imperfect rhymes.

Whose generous children narrow'd not their hearts

With commerce, giv'n alone to arms and arts.-Byron.

Words where the letters coincide, but the sounds differ, are only rhymes to the eye. Breathe and beneath are in this predicament; so also are cease and ease (eaze).

In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease,

Sprang the rank weed, and thrived with large increase.

POPE.