5. The rime emperière repeated three times the same sound at the end of each line: Bénins lecteurs, très diligents, gens gens, (Massieu.) 6. The rime was known as fratrisée or enchaînée when the last word of the line was repeated at the beginning of the next line : Pour dire au vray, au temps qui court, Pas sage n'est qui droit là court, (Meschinot.) 7. The rime entrelacée is much the same, except that, instead of repeating the whole of the last word of the preceding line, part only of that word was repeated in the next line: Flour de beaulté en velour souverain, Raim de bonté, plante de toute grace, Grace d'avoir sur tous le pris a plain, Plain de savoir et qui tous maulz efface, Face plaisant, corps digne de louange, Ange en semblant où il n'a que redire, Dyre vuidié, a vous des preux ou renge, Renge mon cuer qui fors vous ne desire. (Christine de Pisan.) 8. If the word carried over belonged to the same root as the last word of the preceding line, the rime was called rime annexée : Ainsi se faict rithme annexée, Versifiée et composée Composant telz mot ou divers (Fabri.) 9. The rime rétrograde presented in each line a series of words which could be inverted word for word, or even syllable for syllable, without losing their meaning (such as it was) or their rime, as in this strophe of a ballade rétrograde1 of Christine de Pisan: Flour plaisant, de grant haultece 1 Euvres Poétiques, i. p. 119. which, on inverting the order of the words, becomes: Haultece grant de plaisant flour, Amour prisiée ma princece, 10. In the rime senée all the words of each line began with the same letter: Triste, transi, tout terni, tout tremblant, (Clément Marot.) The grands rhétoriqueurs, who tried to replace poetic inspiration by complicating the technique of verse, went so far as to occasionally combine these artificial rimes, as in this specimen from Crétin: Lire des Roys faict or' de dans ce livre Like the rime équivoque, of which we have already spoken, these intricate and artificial rimes have been completely abandoned since the second half of the sixteenth century. II. The only one to survive right through, from the early Middle Ages till the present time, is the rime en écho: Qui est l'auteur de ces maux advenus? Vénus. Que suis-je doncq lors que mon cœur en fend? Enfant, etc. (Du Bellay, Euvres Choisies, p. 137.) 1 Quoted by Bellanger, p. 14. Cf. Poésies de Crétin, p. 225. It occurs as early as the thirteenth century: Ke puet avoir belle amie In modern times the rime en écho has been employed by Sainte-Beuve and Panard, but the best-known example of it is in Victor Hugo's La Chasse du Burgrave in the Odes et Ballades: Mon page, emplis mon escarcelle, Selle Mon cheval de Calatrava, Va! Piqueur, va convier le comte; Conte Que ma meute aboie en mes cours, XXI. Before mentioning the different combinations of rime found in French poetry it is necessary to discuss the so-called règle d'alternance des rimes, an acknowledged principle in French versification since the sixteenth century. According to this rule, a masculine rime cannot be immediately followed by a different masculine rime, or a feminine rime by a different feminine rime. This principle of the alternation of rimes was unknown to O. F. poetry. Although there was a tendency to observe the rule in certain kinds of poems since the fourteenth century, especially in rimes croisées, the first poet to apply it rigorously in rimes plates was Octovien de Saint-Gelais, in his translation of the Epistles of Ovid (1500): Puis que tu es du retour paresseux 1 Histoire Littéraire, xvi. p. 236. (Epistres d'Ovide, 11. 1-7.) 2 See Deschamps' Art de dictier et de faire Ballades (1392), Euvres, vii. p. 276, and also Fabri's Le grand et vrai Art de pleine Rhetorique (1520), ed. Héron, ii. 101: Le facteur...doibt vser a son champ royal de ligne feminine et puis masculine ou de masculine et puis feminine. He was not followed by the poets of his time or those of the beginning of the sixteenth century; neither Jean Marot nor Octovien's son, Mellin de Saint-Gelais, knew of any such rule. It was not followed by Clément Marot either. In his Epistre au Roy pour le delivrer de prison, for example, we find as many as twelve masculine verses (on six different rimes) one after another, and at the end of the same poem ten feminine lines with five different rimes in succession. In the translation of the Psalms, however, the rule of alternation is observed with few exceptions by Clément Marot, afin que plus facilement on pust les chanter sans varier la musique, as Du Bellay says1. But the first poet to apply the règle d'alternance both in rimes plates and croisées was Jean Bouchet (1475 or 1476-1555), in the last of whose works, the Epistres Morales et Familieres (1545), we find a clear statement of the rule set up by the author himself: Je treuve beau mettre deux feminins (Epistre cvii.) However, as in the case of Octovien de Saint-Gelais, it required a poet of greater importance and authority than Jean Bouchet to make such a precept binding on other poets. That poet was to be Ronsard, the leader of the Pléiade. In the Abrégé de l'Art Poëtique François he expresses himself as follows on that point: Après, à l'imitation de quelqu'un de ce temps (a reference to Bouchet probably), tu feras tes vers masculins et feminins tant qu'il te sera possible, pour estre plus propres à la Musique et accord des instrumens, en faveur desquels il semble que la Poësie soit née ... Si de fortune tu as composé les deux premiers vers masculins, tu feras les deux autres fœminins, et paracheveras de mesme mesure le reste de ton Elegie ou Chanson, à fin que les musiciens les puissent plus facilement accorder. Quant aux vers Lyriques, tu feras le premier couplet à ta volonté, pourveu que les autres suivent la trace du premier. Although Ronsard clearly left the observance of this law to the poet's discretion, his authority was so great that he came to be looked upon by his contemporaries as the inventor of the règle d'alternance. But already in the Deffence 2 Euvres, vii. p. 320. 1 ed. Person, p. 143. 3 Compare Pasquier's words in the Recherches de la France, livre vii. ch. vii: Le premier qui y mist la main fut Ronsard, lequel premiere et Illustration (1549) Du Bellay had used very much the same language: Il y en a, qui fort supersticieusement entremeslent les vers Masculins avesques les Feminins. Je treuve cette diligence fort bonne, pourveu que tu n'en faces point de religion, jusques à contreindre ta diction, pour observer telles choses 1. The words of Ronsard and Du Bellay show plainly what were their reasons for defending, or rather recommending, the regular alternation of masculine and feminine rimes. They still considered poetry as closely allied to music and as meant to be sung, in which case the so-called e mute of feminine endings was, and still is, audible like any other vowel 2. With a few exceptions, such as Jodelle in Cléopâtre and Eugène, Jean de la Taille in La Famine (1571), and Du Bellay in his Olive, all the poets of the time followed Ronsard's lead, and since then the rule of alternation has been scrupulously adhered to by classicists and romanticists alike, although the great bulk of poetry has long since been disassociated from song and music. This strict adhesion to a rule which has no longer any real raison d'être cannot but be regretted. Masculine and feminine rimes are intended to produce different effects, and they should thus not be made to alternate blindly, but used according as they best suit the expression of poetic feeling, and not according to the technical value of the contiguous rime. XXII. It is on those grounds that Banville has written certain strophes on masculine rimes only: Mais tes fils, les chasseurs de loups, Sont tombés purs et sans remords. ment en sa Cassandre et autres livres d'Amours, puis en ses Odes, garda cette police de faire suivre les masculins et feminins sans aucune melange d'iceux.... Et au regard de la rime plate, il observa toujours cette ordonnance, que s'il commençoit par deux feminins, ils estoient suivis par deux masculins, et la suite tout d'une mesme teneur, comme vous voyez en sa Franciade. 1 Deffence et Illustration, ed. Person, pp. 142-3. 2 Compare livre iv, p. 56, of the 1591 (Rouen) ed. of the Bigarrures of the Seigneur des Accords (Tabourot): Du temps passé on ne sçavoit que c'estoit de ceste liaison ou mariage (des rimes masculines et feminines), et ne l'observoit on sinon es chansons; mais comme on a veu que la poësie et la musique, qui sont cousines germaines, compatissoient fort bien en ceste façon, cela a donné occasion aux plus curieux de les observer en toutes autres sortes de vers. |