Modern literary poetry only employs rime, but in popular poetry assonance is not yet quite extinct.

Within the last twenty years a few of the poets of the group known as Symbolists have endeavoured, in conscious imitation of popular poetry, to reintroduce assonance, or rather to blend it with ordinary rime:

Le rire de Bacchus résonne par les bourgs

Où neigèrent les roses rouges

Les pleurs pleuvront à leur tour.

Des cortèges s'enrubannent aux vertes routes

Selon le rire de Bacchus, et ses fifres, et ses tambours.

(Gustave Kahn 1.)

IV. The one essential condition of good rime is that it should exist for the ear. Thus in spite of differences in spelling the following are excellent rimes since they are perfectly homophonous :

enlace: embrasse

apôtre : autre

parole: folle

humain : examen

sain: tien, &c.

If in a feminine word that part of the rime which follows the tonic accent consists of a separate word which of its nature can only be atonic and enclitic, the rime is quite good if the enclitic word is je:

Parle était-ce bien lui? parle, parle, te dis-je;
Où l'as-tu vu? - Mon hôte, à regret je t'afflige.

(A. Chénier, Poésies, p. 45.)
Mais on poussera donc l'horreur jusqu'au prodige?
Mais vous êtes hideux et stupides, vous dis-je!

(V. Hugo, Légende des Siècles, i. p. 181.) Hélas! qu'en sais-je

Que vous ne sachiez mieux, et que vous apprendrais-je?

(A. de Musset, Prem. Poés., p. 114.)

Rimes in which ce occupies the same position are also found occasionally in Modern French, but are not to be recommended:

Un baiser, mais à tout prendre, qu'est-ce?
Un serment fait d'un peu plus près, une promesse
Plus précise...

(Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Act iii. Sc. 9.)

1 Quoted by E. Vigié-Lecocq, La Poésie Contemporaine, p. 253.

They also occur in the sixteenth century:

Pour vous prier; or devinez qui est-ce
Qui maintenant en prend la hardiesse.

(Clément Marot, Euvres, p. 103.)

La guerre est achevée, où est-ce, hélas où est-ce
Que je dois employer ce reste de vieillesse?

(Garnier, Troade, 1. 2167.)

Old and Middle French poets allowed themselves much more liberty in respect to such rimes, and counted le, me, te placed after a verb as atonic syllables, as also ce and que after prepositions:

Il vint a une soie garce,

Car son pelerinage par ce
Tolir li vaut li anemis.

(G. de Coincy, p. 291, 1. 161.)

(Froissart, Poésies, i. p. 171.)

De ce que vois, riens ne te desconforte;
Segurement sus ce que di endor te.

Such rimes, inadmissible now, are still found in Clément

Marot's verse:

O roy Françoys, tant qu'il te plaira perds-le,
Mais si le perds, tu perdras une perle.

Or again:

Si ce ne fust ta grand' bonté qui à ce

Donna bon ordre avant que t'en priasse.

(Euvres, p. 90.)

(Ibid. p. 95.)

Till late in the fifteenth century French poets occasionally accented these monosyllabic words, and joined them to the preceding syllable, thereby forming a masculine rime which they nevertheless coupled with a feminine rime. In this way the line containing the monosyllabic word was shortened by a syllable:

A la garite, à la garíte

(G. de Coincy, p. 648 2.)

(Froissart, Poésies, iii. p. 206.)

Fui tost, fui tost et guaris té. Entendez sa requeste en cé, Vecy ainsi qu'elle commence. V. With regard to the strict homophony of rimes it may be said that O.F. poets were most careful; less so modern poets, who have often blindly followed rules set up before their time, and which have become absurd since, owing to changes of pronunciation, such as the one affecting those words that change their pronunciation in liaison, which 2 Id., p.

1 Cf. Tobler, p. 164.

166.

enjoins that these words can only be connected by rime if also in their liaison pronunciation they gave a correct rime. Accordingly the coupling of such words as in the following pairs is quite correct:

nous : loups près: plaids dépens: francs

bontés : chantez

talent: grand, &c.

On the other hand the following rimes, although perfectly homophonous according to Modern French pronunciation, would be objectionable :

nous: loup près : plaid dépens: franc bonté : chantez

talent: grands, &c.

This restriction as to words which would have a different pronunciation in liaison is more than irrational now, but it was not so during the Middle Ages and the sixteenth century, when final consonants were not only pronounced in liaison, but also before any pause, and consequently at the end of the line in verse. Since the beginning of the seventeenth century final consonants have become mute as a general rule before a pause, so that the modern rule is based on a pronunciation that had ceased to exist three hundred years ago.

Occasionally, however, seventeenth-century poets emancipated themselves from the strict observance of the rule, more especially La Fontaine, in whose Fables the following examples are found among others:

fort: encor
Jupiter: désert
talon: long
beaucoup : cou

soul: trou, &c.

Instances are also not wanting in other poets of the same period.

Exceptions are still more frequent in the poets of the nineteenth century:

The Symbolists employ such rimes with still greater freedom.

Most liberty among modern poets is taken in the case where the final mute consonants are preceded by a nasal vowel, frequent rimes being :

sang: champ plomb: sillon

lien: vient

commun: emprunt, &c.

VI. It follows from the general principle, that two riming words should be perfectly homophonous, that a short vowel does not constitute a good rime with the corresponding long vowel. Such rimes, however, are used even by the most exact poets of the seventeenth century:

Je sais sans me flatter, que de sa seule audace
Un homme tel que moi doit attendre sa grâce.

(Racine, Bajazet, 1. 1393.)

Et, dans tous ces écrits la déclarant infâme,
Par grâce lui laissa l'entrée en l'épigramme.

(Boileau, Art Poét., Canto ii. 1. 125.)

Also quite commonly by those of the eighteenth and nineteenth century:

Rivale de personne et sans demander grâce,
Vient, le regard baissé, solliciter sa place.

(A. Chénier, Poésies, p. 199.)

Et rien ne reste là qu'un Christ pensif et pâle,
Levant les bras au ciel dans le fond de la salle.

(V. Hugo, Contemplations, i. p. 136.)

The first French poet to raise a distinct objection to

such rimes was Jean Bouchet in the Epistres Morales et Familieres (1545)1:

J'entends qui veult toutes reigles garder

De rimerie, & bien y regarder,
Voire doit on sans que le vers on griefve
Avoir regard a la longue & la briefve,
Qu'on congnoistra par le parler commun
Sur la voyelle, ou ne pense chascun,
En bon français ce mot cy advertisse
Est long sur i, & brief ce mot notice.

(Epistre, cvii.)

Du Bellay also protested in the Deffence et Illustration de la Langue Françoyse 2, and Malherbe in the Commentary on Desportes' poems, but, probably because they saw that their protests were of no avail, theorists became more lenient in this respect, and were content to recommend a sparing use of such rimes. Thus in Port-Royal (ch. ii. art. 3) we read: Il faut éviter autant qu'on peut d'allier les rimes féminines qui ont la pénultième longue avec celles qui l'ont brève. Néanmoins il y en a de supportables, surtout dans l'a, parce que cette voyelle étant toujours assez pleine de sa nature la différence du bref au long n'est pas si grande qu'elle ne puisse être facilement aidée et corrigée par la prononciation.

Rimes between è:é, not uncommon in modern poets, but never found in the classicists, also infringe the rule of strict homophony:

It should be noticed that the spelling ai does not invariably denote an open pronunciation, notably in the future. and preterite of verbs in -er. Thus the following rimes fulfil the conditions of the most exact prosody:

1

Epistres morales et familieres du Traverseur (nom de plume of Jean Bouchet). Poitiers, 1545, fol. xxi. vo.

2 Cf. p. 133 (ed. Person) : Et feray fin à ce propos, l'ayant sans plus averty de ce mot en passant, c'est, que tu te gardes de rythmer les motz manifestement longs avecques les brefz, aussi manifestement brefz, comme un' pásse,' et 'trace,' un máitre, et mettre, une 'chevelúre,' et 'hure,' un 'bast,' et' bat, et ainsi des autres.