Circuit (circuitus) and fortuit (fortuitus) are dissyllabic in modern poetry :

Quels bizarres circuits vous feriez sur ses pas!

(Sully-Prudhomme, Poésies, i. p. 179.)

Pour quelques nouveautés sauvages et fortuites.

(V. Hugo, Contemplations, i. p. 68.)

Both those words were counted as having three syllables till the middle of the sixteenth century:

Que dira doncq' qu'un seul cas fortu-it?

(Clément Marot, Euvres, p. 92.) Faisoit en l'air maints circu-is et tours. (ibid., p. 109.)

Jésuite and pituite are treated in the same way:

Ce héros que Dieu fit général des Jésuites.

(V. Hugo, Châtiments, p. 298.)

Monsieur, ne troublez pas la paix de vos pituites.

(Id., Contemplations, i. p. 69.)

The words diable, diacre, diantre, and fiacre, in which the two succeeding vowels are i and a, have undergone a regular reduction, which, in the case of diable, already begins to appear in the fourteenth century:

Le diable était bien vieux lorsqu'il se fit ermite.

(A. de Musset, Premières Poésies, p. 209.) Diantre vous en parlez avec une chaleur !

Étant

(Augier, Philiberte, Act i. Sc. 6.)

aux champs avec le diacre Pollion.

(V. Hugo, Légende des Siècles, ii. p. 189.)

Et n'allait plus qu'en fiacre au boulevard de Gand.

(A. de Musset, Premières Poésies, p. 113.)

In O. F. the and the a belonged to different syllables, according to the derivation of those words from diabolus, diaconus, &c.:

Puis se segna por les di-ables. (Roman de Renart, i. p. 32.) Il fet du clerc archedi-acre. (Rutebeuf, p. 148.) Both the regular du-el, and duel, are found, the latter invariably in Victor Hugo:

C'est toi qui commenças ce périlleux du-el.

(Gautier, Poésies Complètes, i. p. 243.)

C'est le duel effrayant de deux spectres d'airain.

(V. Hugo, Légende des Siècles, i. p. 217.)

Fiole (phiola) should be regularly of three syllables, but in modern poetry fiole is used:

Les vieux parfums rancis dans les fioles persanes.

(V. Hugo, Châtiments, p. 307.)

The words miasme, miauler, piaffer, piastre, and piauler are either used regularly, or with synaeresis of the i and a:

Ce n'est point là pleurer, c'est mi-auler, princesse.

(La Fontaine, Euvres, vii. p. 357.)

Le vent beugle, rugit, siffle, râle et mi-aule.

(Leconte de Lisle, Poèm. Trag., p. 74.)

L'épervier affamé pi-aule.

(Gautier, Émaux et Camées, p. 72.)

But more often:

Il découvre en miaulant ses crocs jusqu'aux gencives.
(Sully-Prudhomme, Poésies, ii. p. 137.)

Plus de pur sang piaffant aux portes des donzelles.

(V. Hugo, Châtiments, p. 17.)

Par l'étroit pont de pierre, où la volaille piaule.

(Coppée, Poésies, ii. p. 96.)

The o and e of poète belong to different syllables, but in the sixteenth century and part of the seventeenth the oe was often diphthongated (pwèt) under the influence of the pronunciation of oi1 which prevailed then. The satirist Régnier almost invariably treats the word in that way:

Je ne sçay quel démon m'a fait devenir poete.

As also frequently La Fontaine :

Même précaution nuisit au poete Eschyle.

(Sat. ii. p. 16.)

(Euvres, ii. p. 294.)

De votre Altesse humble servant et Poete.

(Ibid. ix. p. 211.)

The regular su-icide, and suicide, both occur in modern

poetry:

Je vais au pays du charbon,

Du brouillard et du su-icide.

(Gautier, Émaux et Camées, p. 84.) Mon enfant, un suicide! ah, songez à votre âme. (A. de Musset, Premières Poésies, p. 126.)

But in De Musset also:

La spirale sans fin de ton long suicide.

(Poés. Nouv., p. 11.)

1 Thurot, i. p. 545.

Viol is also frequently found instead of vi‐ol:

Tous les coups du malheur et tous les viols des lois. (Sully-Prudhomme, Poésies, ii. p. 237.) XVII. It will have been noticed that the rules given for ascertaining if two contiguous vowels in the body of a word belong to different syllables have practically no exceptions in O. F. and very few in sixteenth-century French. The fact that they still apply generally shows once again that the rules of French versification depend on an archaic pronunciation, and sadly require revision. The exceptions that do occur in modern poetry, and which have been noted above, are attempts to approximate the pronunciation of verse to that of the modern spoken language, but the majority of words in which diaeresis is the rule in verse have long since undergone synaeresis in the spoken language, according to the tendency that if, of two contiguous vowels, the first is high it changes, by a rapid articulation, into a consonant, z becoming j, u (ü) becoming y, and ou becoming w, as in the following words: alouette, confiance, curieux, dialogue, diamant, étudier, évanouir, idiot, lien, lion, Louis, muet, odieux, ruine, suer, tuer, persuader, &c., which have one syllable more in modern verse than in the modern spoken language.

CHAPTER III

RIME

I. Two or more lines are said to rime if the vowel-sound of their last accented syllable and all the sounds that follow are identical.

If the accented syllable is the last syllable of the word, the rime is known as masculine (matín: destín); if it is followed by an unaccented vowel, which in French can only be the so-called mute e (-e, -es, -ent), it is known as feminine (complice: supplice).

However, the forms aient and soient of the present subjunctive of avoir and être respectively, as also the ending -aient of the imperfect indicative and present conditional, are not only reckoned as monosyllabic in the body of the line, but also as masculine rimes at the end of the line:

Ils marchaient à côté l'un de l'autre ; des danses
Troublaient le bois joyeux; ils marchaient, s'arrêtaient,
Parlaient, s'interrompaient, et, pendant les silences,
Leurs bouches se taisaient, leurs âmes chuchotaient1.

(V. Hugo, Contemplations, i. p. 104.)

Although the bulk of feminine rimes have now practically ceased to exist owing to changes of pronunciation, the rules of French prosody forbid the riming together of masculine and feminine words. Accordingly two words such as mer and mère, though homophonous to all intents and purposes, cannot be coupled in rime.

It has already been noticed that this rule has been infringed by a few modern poets.

II. If the identity of sound only extends to the accented

1 That arrêtaient and chuchotaient, in lines 2 and 4 respectively, are masculine rimes is proved by the requirements of the rule concerning the alternation of rimes. (See p. 63.)

vowels and not also to the sounds that may follow, this vowel-rime is known as assonance.

When the vowel which determines rime is not followed by a consonant, rime and assonance are one and the same thing: loi roi.

In O.F. assonance was at first used exclusively till the beginning of the twelfth century, and it was a rule in epic poetry that all the lines of the same section or laisse joined by assonance should have the same assonance and gender:

Rollanz ad mis l'olifant a sa buche:

Empeint le bien, por grant vertut le sunet.
Halt sunt li pui e la voiz est mult lunge:
Granz trente liwes l'oïrent il respundre.
Carles l'oït e ses cumpaignes tutes;
Ço dit li Reis: Bataille funt nostre hume.
Et li quens Guenes li respundit encuntre:
Se desist altre, ja semblast grant mençunge.

(Roland, laisse clvii.)

III. In the course of the twelfth century it was gradually supplanted by full rime1, at first in learned and court poetry, later also in the popular or national epic (chansons de geste).

The opening lines of Ivain (c. 1172) of Chrestien de Troyes, the greatest of the French courtly poets, will serve as an example:

Artus, li buens rois de Bretaingne,

La cui proesce nos ansaingne

Que nos soiiens preu et cortois,
Tint cort riche come rois

A cele feste qui tant coste,
Qu'an doit clamer la pantecoste.
La corz fu a Carduel an Gales.
Après mangier parmi les sales
Li chevalier s'atropelerent
La ou dames les apelerent
Et dameiseles et puceles.

1 The earliest instance of the use of rime in the full sense of the word, as distinct from assonance, occurs in the Norman rimed sermon beginning with the words: Grant mal fist Adam, and which was composed at the beginning of the twelfth century. (Cf. H. Suchier, Reimpredigt, Halle, 1879.)