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: supplíce). 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 (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. (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 A cele feste qui tant coste, 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.) 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 Les pleurs pleuvront à leur tour. Des cortèges s'enrubannent aux vertes routes Selon le rire de Bacchus, et ses fifres, et ses tambours. 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 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; (A. Chénier, Poésies, p. 45.) (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? ... (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 (Clément Marot, Euvres, p. 103.) La guerre est achevée, où est-ce, hélas où est-ce (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 (G. de Coincy, p. 291, 1. 161.) (Froissart, Poésies, i. p. 171.) De ce que vois, riens ne te desconforte; Such rimes, inadmissible now, are still found in Clément 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 garite Fui tost, fui tost et guaris té. (G. de Coincy, p. 648 2.) Vecy ainsi qu'elle commence. (Froissart, Poésies, iii. p. 206.) 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. 166. 1 Cf. Tobler, p. 164. 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 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: |