RHYL 



RHYME 



697 



IMiyl, a watering-place of Flintshire, North 

 Wales, at the mouth of the Clwyd, 30 miles NW. 

 of Chester. A mere fishing-village so late as 1830, 

 it has fine sands, a promenade pier 705 yards long, 

 huilt in 1867 at a cost of 17,000, an esplanade, an 

 aquarium and winter garden, a dozen hotels, haths, 

 &c. ; and, though the country around is flat, it 

 commands fine views of the Snowdonian mountains. 

 Pop. ( 1851 ) 1563 ; ( 1881 ) 6029 ; ( 1891 ) 6491. 



Rhyme, or, more properly, RIME (the former 

 spelling being merely due to a confusion with the 

 Greek rhythm), is itself a native Teutonic word ; 

 A.S. rim, Icel. rima, Ger. reim, and O. H. Ger. rim 

 (whence Fr. rime, Ital. rima); probably cognate 

 with Gr. dp,8ft6s, 'number.' In early English rime 

 (and the same is true of Ger. reim and the other 

 forms of the word in other northern tongues as well 

 as in the Romanic) meant simply a poem, a num- 

 bered or versified piece (compare Lat. numeri, 

 ' numbers ' = verses, versification ) ; but it has now 

 come to signify what is the most prominent mark 

 of versification in all these tongues viz. the re- 

 currence of similar sounds at certain intervals. As 

 there may be various degrees and kinds of resem- 

 blance between two syllables, there are different 

 kinds of rime. When words begin with the same 

 consonant we have Alliteration (q.v.), which was 

 the prevalent form of rime in the earlier Teutonic 

 poetry, as in Anglo-Saxon. In Spanish and Portu- 

 guese we find employed a peculiar kind of rime 

 called Assonance, consisting in the coincidence of 

 the vowels of the corresponding syllables, without 

 regard to the consonants ; this accords well with 

 the character of these languages, which abound in 

 full-toned vowels, but is ineffective in English and 

 other languages in which consonants predominate. 

 In its more usual sense, however, rime denotes 

 correspondence in the final syllables of words, and 

 is chiefly used to mark the ends of the lines or 

 verses in poetry. Complete identity in all the parts 

 of the syllables beginning with the same consonants 

 constitutes what the French call rich rime, as in 

 modele, fidele ; beau^, san<<5. They designate as 

 poor rimes most of such rimes as English verse 

 allows collocations of similar syllables beginning 

 with different consonants, as page and ruije, nutt 

 and instruit. 'This difference of taste," says Mr 

 F. W. H. Myers, 'seems partly to depend on the 

 more intimate liaison existing in French pronunci- 

 ation between the consonant and the syllable which 

 follows it which syllable will often consist of a 

 vowel sound very rapidly pronounced, like the 

 terminations in the accented e, or very null ii , //- 

 ni: I,/ pronounced, like the nasal terminations in 

 m and n. If the consonant which gives the whole 

 character to terminations like these differs in the 

 two rhyming lines, there seems to l>e hardly enougli 

 sulistance left in the rhyme to satisfy the ear's 

 desire for a recurring sound. This view is illus- 

 trated by such English rhymes as alone and floirm, 

 where an additional richness seems sometimes 

 gained from the presence of the / in both the 

 rhyming syllables." Undoubtedly one of the 

 delights of rime is expectance, but that of uni- 

 formity in variety, rather than of monotonous 

 and absolute uniformity. Although such rimes 

 are not only allowed but sought after in French, 

 in English they are deservedly considered faulty, 

 or rather as not true rimes at all. No one thinks 

 of making deplore, rime with explore. Riming 

 syllables in English must agree in so far, and 

 differ in so far : the vowel and what follows it if 

 anything follow it must be the same in both; the 

 articulation before the vowel must be different, 

 Thug, mark rimes with \ark, \>ark, ark, but not with 

 remark. In the case of mark and ark the almence 

 of any initial articulation in the latter of the two 

 make* the necessary difference. As an example 



of rime where nothing follows the vowel we may 

 take be-/ott>, which rimes with fore-go, or with ! 

 but not with lo. To make a perfect rime it is 

 necessary, besides, that the syllables be both 

 accented ; iree and merrily can hardly be said to 

 rime. It is almost needless to remark that rime 

 depends on the sound, and not on the spelling. 

 Plough and enough do not make a rime, nor ease 

 and decease. 



Such words as roaring, Ae-ploring, form double 

 rimes; and \\n-fortunate, im-portunate, triple rimes. 

 In double or triple rimes the first syllable must be 

 accented, and the others ought to be unaccented, 

 and to be completely identical. In the sacred Latin 

 hymns of the middle ages the rimes are all double 

 or triple. This was a necessity of the Latin lan- 

 guage, in which the inflectional terminations are 

 without accent, which throws the accent in most 

 cases on the syllable next the last do-lorum, vi- 

 roriim; snp-plicia, con-vicia. Although rimes occur 

 chiefly between the end-syllables of different lines, 

 they are not unfrequently used within the same 

 line, especially in popular poetry : 



And then to see how ye 're negleckit, 

 How huffd, and cujfd, and disrespeckit. 



And ice mast-AtyA came floating by. 



When two successive lines rime they form a 

 couplet ; three form a triplet. Often the lines rime 

 alternately or at greater intervals, forming groups 

 of four (quatrains) or more. A group of lines 

 embracing all the varieties of metre and combina- 

 tions of rime that occur in the piece forms a 

 section called a stave, sometimes a stanza, often, 

 but improperly, a verse. In the days of elaborate 

 Acrostics (q.v.), verses constructed in shapes, and 

 other conceits, it was the fashion to interlace rimes 

 in highly artificial systems ; almost the only com- 

 plex arrangements now current in English are the 

 various forms of the sonnet, and the Spenserian 

 stanza. Tennyson has accustomed the English ear 

 to a quatrain-in which, instead of alternate rimes, 

 tin 1 first line rimes with the fourth, and the second 

 with the third. 



It is a mistake to suppose that rime is a mere 

 ornament to versification. Besides being in itself 

 a pleasing musical accord, it serves to mark the 

 endings of the lines and other sections of the metre, 

 and thus renders the rhythm more distinct and 

 appreciable than the accents alone can do. So 

 much is this the case that in French, in which the 

 accents are but feeble, metre without rime is so 

 nndistinguishable from prose that blank verse has 

 never obtained a footing, notwithstanding the war 

 once waged by French scholars against rimed versi- 

 fication. ' The advantages of rime," says Guest, 

 'have been felt so strongly that no people have 

 ever adopted an accentual rhythm without also 

 adopting rime.' The Greek and Latin metres of 

 the classic period, depending upon time or quantity, 

 and not upon accent, were able to dispense with 

 the accessory of rime ; but, as has been well 

 observed by Trench (Introduction to Sacred Latin 

 Poetry), even 'the prosodic poetry of Greece and 

 Rome was equally obliged to mark this (the divi- 

 sion into sections or verses), though it did it in 

 another way. Thus, had dactyls and spondees 

 been allowed to be promiscuously used throughout 

 the hexameter line, no satisfying token would have 

 reached the ear to indicate the close of the verse ; 

 and if the hearer had once missed the termination 

 of the line it would have been almost impossible 

 for him to recover it. But the fixed dactyl and 

 spondee at the end of the line answer the same 

 purpose of strongly marking the close as does the 

 rime in the accentuated verse ; and in other 

 metres, in like manner, licenses permitted in the 

 beginning of the line are excluded at its close, the 



