It must be observed that in suggesting these processes I assign them
no date; nor do I even insist upon their order. Rhyme is supposed to
be of modern origin, and were this proved my positions remain
untouched. I may say, however, in passing, that several instances of
rhyme occur in the "Clouds" of Aristophanes, and that the Roman
poets occasionally employed it. There is an effective species of
ancient rhyming which has never descended to the moderns: that in
which the ultimate and penultimate syllables rhyme with each other.
For example:
Parturiunt montes; nascetur ridiculus mus.
And again:
Litoreis ingens inventa sub ilicibus sus.
The terminations of Hebrew verse (as far as understood) show no
signs of rhyme; but what thinking person can doubt that it did
actually exist? That men have so obstinately and blindly insisted,
in general, even up to the present day, in confining rhyme to the ends
of lines, when its effect is even better applicable elsewhere,
intimates in my opinion the sense of some necessity in the
connection of the ends with the rhyme- hints that the origin of
rhyme lay in a necessity which connected it with the end- shows that
neither mere accident nor mere fancy gave rise to the
connection-points, in a word, at the very necessity which I have
suggested (that of some mode of defining lines to the ear), as the
true origin of rhyme.
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