* Verse, from the Latin vertere, to turn, is so called on account of the turning or re-commencement of the series of feet. Thus a verse strictly speaking is a line. In this sense, however, I have preferred using the latter word alone; employing the former in the general acceptation given it in the heading of this paper.
Lines being once introduced, the necessity of distinctly defining these lines to the ear (as yet written verse does not exist), would lead to a scrutiny of their capabilities at their terminations- and now would spring up the idea of equality in sound between the final syllables- in other words, of rhyme. First, it would be used only in the iambic, anapaestic, and spondaic rhythms (granting that the latter had not been thrown aside long since, on account of its tameness), because in these rhythms the concluding syllable being long, could best sustain the necessary protraction of the voice. No great while could elapse, however, before the effect, found pleasant as well as useful, would be applied to the two remaining rhythms. But as the chief force of rhyme must lie in the accented syllable, the attempt to create rhyme at all in these two remaining rhythms, the trochaic and dactylic, would necessarily result in double and triple rhymes, such as beauty with duty (trochaic), and beautiful with dutiful (dactylic).
It must be observed that in suggesting these processes I assign them no date; nor do I even insist upon their order. Rhyme is supposed to be of modern origin, and were this proved my positions remain untouched. I may say, however, in passing, that several instances of rhyme occur in the "Clouds" of Aristophanes, and that the Roman poets occasionally employed it. There is an effective species of ancient rhyming which has never descended to the moderns: that in which the ultimate and penultimate syllables rhyme with each other. For example:
Parturiunt montes; nascetur ridiculus mus. And again:
Litoreis ingens inventa sub ilicibus sus.
The terminations of Hebrew verse (as far as understood) show no signs of rhyme; but what thinking person can doubt that it did actually exist? That men have so obstinately and blindly insisted, in general, even up to the present day, in confining rhyme to the ends of lines, when its effect is even better applicable elsewhere, intimates in my opinion the sense of some necessity in the connection of the ends with the rhyme- hints that the origin of rhyme lay in a necessity which connected it with the end- shows that neither mere accident nor mere fancy gave rise to the connection-points, in a word, at the very necessity which I have suggested (that of some mode of defining lines to the ear), as the true origin of rhyme. Admit this and we throw the origin far back in the night of Time- beyond the origin of written verse.
But to resume. The amount of complexity I have now supposed to be attained is very considerable. Various systems of equalization are appreciated at once (or nearly so) in their respective values and in the value of each system with reference to all the others. As our present ultimatum of complexity, we have arrived at triple-rhymed, natural-dactylic lines, existing proportionally as well as equally with regard to other triple-rhymed, natural-dactylic lines. For example:
Virginal Lilian, rigidly, humblily dutiful;
Saintlily, lowlily,
Thrillingly, holily
Beautiful!
Here we appreciate, first, the absolute equality between the long syllable of each dactyl and the two short conjointly; secondly, the absolute equality between each dactyl and any other dactyl, in other words, among all the dactyls; thirdly, the absolute equality between the two middle lines; fourthly, the absolute equality between the first line and the three others taken conjointly, fifthly, the absolute equality between the last two syllables of the respective words "dutiful" and "beautiful"; sixthly, the absolute equality between the two last syllables of the respective words "lowlily" and "holily"; seventhly, the proximate equality between the first syllable of "dutiful" and the first syllable of "beautiful"; eighthly, the proximate equality between the first syllable of "lowlily" and that of "holily"; ninthly, the proportional equality (that of five to one) between the first line and each of its members, the dactyls; tenthly, the proportional equality (that of two to one) between each of the middle lines and its members, the dactyls, eleventhly, the proportional equality between the first line and each of the two middle, that of five to two; twelfthly, the proportional equality between the first line and the last, that of five to one; thirteenthly, the proportional equality between each of the middle lines and the last, that of two to one, lastly, the proportional equality, as concerns number, between all the lines taken collectively, and any individual line, that of four to one.
The consideration of this last equality would give birth immediately to the idea of stanza,* that is to say, the insulation of lines into equal or obviously proportional masses. In its primitive (which was also its best) form the stanza would most probably have had absolute unity. In other words, the removal of any one of its lines would have rendered it imperfect, as in the case above, where if the last line, for example, be taken away there is left no rhyme to the "dutiful" of the first. Modern stanza is excessively loose, and where so, ineffective as a matter of course.
* A stanza is often vulgarly, and with gross impropriety, called a verse.
Now, although in the deliberate written statement which I have here given of these various systems of equalities, there seems to be an infinity of complexity so much that it is hard to conceive the mind taking cognisance of them all in the brief period occupied by the perusal or recital of the stanza, yet the difficulty is in fact apparent only when we will it to become so. Any one fond of mental experiment may satisfy himself, by trial, that in listening to the lines he does actually (although with a seeming unconsciousness, on account of the rapid evolutions of sensation) recognise and instantaneously appreciate (more or less intensely as his is cultivated) each and all of the equalizations detailed. The pleasure received or receivable has very much such progressive increase, and in very nearly such mathematical relations as those which I have suggested in the case of the crystal.
It will be observed that I speak of merely a proximate equality between the first syllable of "dutiful" and that of "beautiful," and it may be asked why we cannot imagine the earliest rhymes to have had absolute instead of proximate equality of sound. But absolute equality would have involved the use of identical words, and it is the duplicate sameness or monotony, that of sense as well as that of sound, which would have caused these rhymes to be rejected in the very first instance.
The narrowness of the limits within which verse composed of natural feet alone must necessarily have been confined would have led, after a very brief interval, to the trial and immediate adoption of artificial feet, that is to say, of feet not constituted each of a single word but two, or even three words, or of parts of words. These feet would be intermingled with natural ones. For example:
A breath / can make / them as / a breath / his made. This is an iambic line in which each iambus is formed of two words. Again:
The un / ima / gina / ble might / of Jove. This is an iambic line in which the first foot is formed of a word and a part of a word; the second and third of parts taken from the body or interior of a word; the fourth of a part and a whole; the fifth of two complete words. There are no natural feet in either line. Again: