of the Cæsural pause among the syllables making up the line. As a source of variety, there must be added the many possible placings of the grammatical stops in the lines of a poem; this is what Milton meant in the famous preface by the expression-'the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another'.

It is by the numerous combinations of measures with pauses that metrical effect, strictly so called, is reached. No more is necessary to that kind of effect; a poet may display great metrical skill without, for example, securing the melody of easy arrangements of vowels and consonants. But there are adjuncts of metre, such as Alliteration and Rhyme, which greatly enrich it.

ALLITERATION.

Alliteration,

This is now merely a fanciful analogy. which means the recurrence at short intervals of the same initial letter, may be described as a metrical ornament. Attempted, more or less, in the poetry of almost all languages, it was especially used, as the main feature of versification, in the Old German, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian poetry. According to strict usage, two or three words in one line, and one word in the next, began with the same letter; as is seen in this extract from the wellknown poem of the 14th century, 'Piers Ploughman':

There preached a pardoner

As he a prieste were;
Brought forth a bull

With many bishop's seals.

In later English poetry, it is curious to note how often alliteration is found, even to perfection, as in the verses of Spenser, Milton, Coleridge, Shelley, Tennyson, &c. A few examples may be given :

The bush my bed, the bramble was my bower,
The woods can witness many a woful stowre,
Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste.
The fair breeze blew; the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free.

Like a glowworm golden

In a dell of dew.

And on a sudden, lo! the level lake
And the long glories of the winter moon.
Extensive harvests hang the heavy head.

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That there is something naturally pleasing in such conjunctions, is evident from their frequency in current sayings and proverbs. For instance: 'Life and limb,'' Watch and ward,'' Man and mouse,' Far fowls have feathers fair'. An extreme case of Alliteration is found in the line—

Let lovely lilacs line Lee's lonely lane

where every syllable begins alike. (See Dr. Longmuir's Edition of Walker's Rhyming Dictionary, p. xxix.)

To get full alliterative effect, this line shows that the similarly opening syllables should be accented; it is too strong an effect to put obviously on weak syllables, and, by retarding them, obliterates the metrical movement.

It is pointed out by Mr. J. A. Symonds that Milton runs an alliteration right through whole periods, and even strengthens the effect by taking in cognate consonants: e.g., to help an alliteration on‘f,' he will take in 'v,' 'p,' and 'b'. This is most obtrusively done when he repeats the same word, or grammatical varieties of it.

Paradise Regained (III. 119-120) is a prolonged example of these points in Milton :—

Think not so slight of glory, therein least

Resembling thy great Father. He seeks glory,
And for his glory all things made, all things
Orders and governs; nor content in heaven,
By all his angels glorified, requires
Glory from men, from all men, good or bad,
Wise or unwise, no difference, no exemption.
Above all sacrifice, all hallowed gift,
Glory he requires, and glory he receives,
Promiscuous from all nations, Jew or Greek,
Or barbarous, nor exception hath declared;
From us, his foes pronounced, glory he exacts.

RHYME.

Rhyme may be called metrical in a wide sense, as determining a recurrence of sound in the closing syllable or syllables of different verses. It is a poetical ornament peculiar to poetry subsequent to the classical period, and by no means universally employed. The blank verse, in which so much of English poetry is written, discards it altogether. Possibly, it was a sense of the comparative paucity of English rhymes, as well as veneration for classical models, that caused Ben Jonson, Milton and others to rebel against its

fetters. Rhyme, however, is so pleasing and so easily understood, as to stand higher than any other poetical artifice in popular estimation. The existence of so-called doggerel verses is a rude testimony to its power. Three conditions are required before two syllables make a perfect rhyme.

1. The vowel-sound and what (if anything) follows it, must be the same in both: long,'' song'; 'sea,' 'free'. As rhyme depends upon sound only, the spelling is of no consequence bear,' 'hare,' are rhymes; not so 'bear,' 'fear’.

A great many conventional combinations are permitted by custom, being a sort of eye-rhymes. Since they do not possess the specific effect of rhymes, they should not be tolerated. They are such as 'love,' move'; 'poor,' 'door'; 'earth,' 'birth'; 'main,'' again'; 'live,' 'thrive,' &c. Pope has many such faulty correspondences, rhyming, within the 292 lines of the Second Moral Essay, as the following words: 'weak,' 'take'; 'thought,' with 'faut,' draught' (draft), and taught'; 'feast,' 'taste'; 'birth,' 'earth'; 'brain,' 'again'; 'great,' 'cheat'; 'store,' 'poor'; 'unmov'd,' 'lov'd'; 'swells,' conceals'; taught, faut'; 'retreat,' great'; 'most,' 'lost'. Keats, in Lamia, has: alone,' 'boon' bliss,' 'is' (twice); was, 'pass'; undrest, ' amethyst'; 'muse,' 'house'; 'fared,'' appeared'; 'sung,' 'long'; '; 'one,' 'tune'; youth,' 'soothe'; rose,' lose his,' 'miss'; 'on,' 'known'; eagerness,' 'decrease 'how,' 'know'; 'past,' ' haste'; 'year,' 'where'; 'curious, house'; 'one,' 'known'; 'on,' 'one'; 'feast,' 'drest 'smoke,'' took'; 'rose,' 'odorous'; 'stood,' 'God'; 'feast, 'placed'; 'shriek,' 'break'; 'again,' 'vein'; 'lost,' 'ghost'. 2. The articulation before the vowel-sound must be different green,' spleen'; 'call,' 'fall,' 'all'. The letter h is not considered a distinct articulation: 'heart,' 'art,' are improper rhymes.

3. Both must be accented: 'try','' sigh"; not 'try',' 'bright'ly'. There is an admitted violation of this rule, when the accent on a syllable is metrical purely, and not proper to the word. This affords what is called a weak rhyme. For example: 'eye,' 'utterly'; 'reply,' 'revelry'; 'trees,'' intri'cacies' 'he,' 'ruefully'; 'hour,' 'paramour'; 'please,' 'goddesses''. The main source of these is the endings in y; which may sound i or e at need. To know which way to take the weak ending, we must get the other rhyming syllable first-a consideration that leads Johnson

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to forbid rhymes in the order of: 'mysteries,' 'eyes'; 'palaces,''please'; 'fairily,'' see'; empery,' sigh'.

Rhymes are single: as 'plain,' 'grain'; double: as 'glo-ry,' 'sto-ry'; or triple: as 'read-i-ly,' 'stead-i-ly'. In double and triple rhymes, the last syllables are unaccented, and are really appendages to the true rhyming sound, which alone fulfils the conditions laid down above: cul'minate, ful'minate.

The double and triple rhymes give scope for surprises of ingenuity. They are one of the helps in comic pieces, like Butler's Hudibras and Byron's Don Juan. The latter poem is prodigally adorned with triple rhymes :But oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,

Inform us truly, have they not henpeck'd you all.
He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery,
And how to scale a fortress- —or a nunnery.

Byron even makes a prodigy of four syllables :-
So that their plan and prosody are eligible,

Unless, like Wordsworth, they prove unintelligible.

The Ingoldsby Legends deals in such effects: 'Chancery,' answer he'; 'revell in,' 'Devil in': or—

In short, she turns out a complete Lady Bountiful,
Filling with drugs and brown Holland the county full.

The double rhyme, can, however, be used for serious purposes; and Mr. Swinburne has been bold in this use of it. He has even ventured on serious uses of the triple

rhyme :

Send but a song oversea for us,

Heart of their hearts who are free,

Heart of their singer, to be for us

More than our singing can be ;

Ours, in the tempest at error

With no light but the twilight of terror;
Send us a song oversea.

It sees not what season shall bring to it
Sweet fruit of its bitter desire;
Few voices it hears yet sing to it.
Round your people and over them
Night like raiment is drawn,

Close as a garment to cover them.

Browning also frequently employs both double and triple rhymes.

Rhymes are not confined to the close of separate verses, but are sometimes found in the middle and at the end of the same verse. Some lines from Shelley's Cloud' will illustrate both cases :-

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers
From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noon-day dreams.

In this passage, it might be possible to argue that the line should be printed as two; but this is precluded in the following from Scott:

Then up with your cup, till you stagger in speech,

And match me this catch, though you swagger and screech,
And drink till you wink, my merry men each.

The marked similarity of rhyming closes draws the attention on the rhyming words, and so gives them emphasis. It is a great part, accordingly, of the artistic use of rhyme that it should fall on words sufficiently important to deserve the added emphasis.

But further the rhyme corresponds with the words. where the Final Pause is, which is itself an emphasis-giving effect.

Hence, this unavoidable combination of Rhyme with Pause makes it absolutely necessary that none but words of weighty meaning should come into these places.

There is nothing to justify such an emphasis as Chapman, by these means, throws on 'forms' in the following:Before her flew Affliction, girt in storms,

Gash'd all with gushing wounds, and all the forms

Of bane and misery,—

On the other hand storms' gets a deserved emphasis. Drayton has a well-rhymed opening stanza in one of his Agincourt Odes :

Fair stood the wind for France,

When we our sails advance,

Nor now to prove our chance
Longer will tarry;

But putting to the main,

At Caux, the mouth of Seine,
With all his martial train,

Landed King Harry,

It is a stroke of art to open such an ode on the rhyme of 'France'.

As might be expected in such a master of the heroic couplet, Dryden affords many happy instances of wellplaced emphasis of rhyme and pause:

Next these, a troop of busy spirits press,
Of little fortunes and of conscience less.

-('Absalom and Achitophel.')