reduce our available poetical vocabulary to a much narrower list than that of other languages not more copious, but which have not adopted the fetters of rhyme. We must enlarge our stock by the revival of obsolete words and inflections from native sources, or by borrowing from the Romance languages; or again, we must introduce the substitutes to which I have before alluded, and which will form the subject of the next lecture.

LECTURE XXV.

ALLITERATION, LINE-RHYME, AND ASSONANCE.

THE interest which the study of native English, old and new, and of the sister dialects, now so generally excites, prompts the inquiry whether it is not possible to revive some of the forgotten characteristics of ancient Anglican poetry, and thus to aid the efforts of our literature to throw off or lighten the conventional shackles which classical and Romance authorities have imposed upon it. I propose to illustrate, by specimens original and imitative, the leading peculiarities of Anglo-Saxon and Old-Northern verse, as well as of one or two Romance metrical forms hitherto little if at all attempted in English, and to suggest experiment upon the introduction of some of them into English poetry. The only coincidences of sound known to English versification are, repetition of the same accentual feet in the same order, alliteration and terminal rhyme; but these by no means exhaust the list of possible consonances, or even of those employed by some branches of the Gothic family. The poetry of the Anglo-Saxons was always rhythmical, but not always metrical. In modern criticism, rhythm is often loosely used as synonymous with metre, but they are properly distinguished. Bede speaks of the poetry of his native land as characterized by rhythm, and he thus discriminates between rhythm and metre:

"It (rhythmus) is a modulated composition of words, not according to the laws of metre, but adapted in the number of its syllables to the judgment of the ear, as are the verses of our vulgar (or native) poets."

"Metre is an artificial rule with modulation; rhythmus is the modulation without the rule. For the most part you find, by a sort of chance, some rule in rhythm; yet this is not from an artificial government, of the syllables, but because the sound and mod

ulation lead to it. The vulgar poets affect this rustically; the skilful attain it by their skill." *

Bede's definition of rhythm is not remarkable for clearness and precision. Indeed, it is difficult to define rhythm, for the same reason that it is difficult to describe a sound, and the embarrassment has been increased by the determination of critics to insist on finding rhythms where none exist. In all simply rhythmical poetry, there will occur lines which are, to all intents and purposes, mere prose, just as in metrical poetry we now and then meet lines which, by poetic license, violate the established canons of metre. In a general way, we may say that accent is to rhythm what the foot is to metre, and we may illustrate the prosodical value of the accent by comparing a rhythmical verse to a musical measure, where the number of accents is constant, though that of the notes is variable, just as is that of the syllables in rhythmical poetry. The only difference is that the laws of music are more strictly observed than those of rhythm, in which latter there is great license both as to the number and the position of the ac

cents.

Metre may be defined to be a succession of poetical feet arranged in regular order, according to certain types recognized as standards, in verses of a determinate length.

The following lines, from the Primus Passus of Piers Ploughman's Vision, are rhythmical but not metrical, and they conform to the Saxon models in all respects, except that the short, or unaccented, syllables are generally more numerous than in AngloSaxon verse, the particles being often omitted in the poetry of that nation:

What this mountaigne bymeneth,

And the merke dale,

And the feld ful of folk,

I shal yow faire shewe.

A lovely lady of leere,

In lynnen y-clothed,

Came doun from a castel

And called me faire,

And seide, "Sone, slepestow?

Sestow this peple,

How bisie thei ben

Alle aboute the maze ?

* Sharon Turner, Hist. Ang. Sax., B. ix., chap. 1.

The mooste parte of this peple
That passeth on this erthe,

Have thei worship in this world,
Thei wilne no bettre;

Of oother hevene than here

Hold thei no tale."

Metre, therefore, was not an essential constituent of AngloSaxon verse, and the few instances of its occurrence are chiefly accidental coincidences, although a Saxon bard may occasionally have employed it designedly, just as a modern poet may confine himself to double rhymes, or introduce alliteration. Of rhymed poetry there are a few examples, as well as of what is called linerhyme, but, in general, like endings seem to have been avoided rather than sought for. An English ear, then, would recognize in Anglo-Saxon verse none of the formal characteristics of poetry, and it would strike a modern hearer as merely an unmeasured and irregular recitative.

The most prominent formal feature of Anglo-Saxon versification is its regular alliteration; and, with certain exceptions and licenses not necessary to be noticed at present, this was an indispensable characteristic of the poetry of that language, as well as generally of the Old-Northern or Icelandic.

It was also much employed in Old-English, but whether its use was confined to certain districts or local dialects, or what were the circumstances that determined its application, is not, I believe, yet ascertained. The Ormulum, which is not alliterative, has been supposed to have been written by a native of the North of England, because its dialect is marked by Scandinavianisms probably derived from the Danish population of the border counties, and we should therefore expect that its versification, as well as its diction, would exhibit traces of the influence of Scandinavian models; but of this there are no indications. There is also a passage in Chaucer, now a regular stock quotation in all essays on this subject, which seems to show that the bards of other English counties, most remote from the Danish colonies, did not employ alliteration or even rhyme. The narrator in the Prologue to the Persones Tale, says:

But trusteth well, I am a sotherne man,

I cannot geste, rom, ram, ruf, by my letter,
And, God wote, rime hold I but little better.

There are many passages in other early English writers, which point to a marked difference between the poetic forms of Northern and Southern England; and the general inference would be, that the versification of the South conformed to classical and Romance, that of the North to Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian models. I do not discover sufficient evidence that, at any time after Norman English was recognized as an independent speech distinct from both its sources, alliteration was generally regarded as a regular and obligatory constituent of English verse, though it was freely employed as an ornament by individual writers in the fourteenth, and even fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. However this may be, metre and rhyme, perhaps as much from the splendid success of Chaucer as from any other cause, became established characteristics of versification before the commencement of the fifteenth century; and Piers Ploughman is the last work of any real importance in English literary history, which follows the original type of Anglican verse.

The rule which governed the employment of alliteration, stated in its most general form, and without specifying the exceptions and qualifications that under different circumstances attended it, is, that in each couplet three emphatic words, (or, by poetic license, accented syllables,) two in the first line, and one in the second, must commence with the same consonant, or with vowels, in which latter case the initial letters might be, and generally were, different. The position of the alliterated words in the first line was arbitrary, and varied according to the convenience of the poet, but the alliteration in the second line should fall on the first emphatic word. Nevertheless, the lines were so short that the stress of voice would seldom fall on more than two syllables in either line, so that, in practice, the first of these syllables would almost necessarily be alliterated in the first line also.

The lines already quoted for another purpose from one of the interesting poems just referred to, The Vision and the Creed of Piers Ploughman, the former by Langland, one of the Reformers before the Reformation, and written probably soon after the middle of the fourteenth century, are alliterated according to these rules, as are also the following extracts, though with frequent departures from strict conformity to them: