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CONCERNING

CHAPTER XI.

THE POETRY OF THE LATTER LATINS, OR WESTERN EUROPEANS-ACCENTUAL QUANTITY-RHYME-SAMPLES OF RHYME IN LATIN-IN CLASSICAL POETS, ACCIDENTAL; IN THOSE OF A LATER AGE, DESIGNED-RHYME AMONG THE ARABIANS-ODILO, HUCBALDUS, HİLDIGRIM, HALABALDUS, POETS OR HEROES OF WESTERN EUROPE RHYMES IN MODERN LANGUAGES OF DANTE, PETRARCH, BOCCACCIO, CHAUCER, ETC.-SANNAZARIUS, A PURE WRITER IN CLASSIC LATIN WITHOUT RHYME-ANAGRAMS, CHRONOGRAMS, ETC., FINELY AND ACCURATELY DESCRIBED SCRIBLERIAD.

BY THE INGENIOUS AUTHOR OF THE

AND here, as we are about to speak upon the poetry of these times, we wish our readers previously to review what we have already said upon the two species of verbal quantity, the syllabic and the accentual.

It will there appear, that till Greek and Latin degenerated, accentual quantity was hardly known. But though degeneracy spread it through these two languages, yet, with regard to modern languages, it was the best that could be attained. Their harsh and rugged dialects were in few instances suited to the harmonious simplicity of the syllabic measure.

And yet, though this more perfect and elegant prosody was rarely attainable, so strong was the love of mankind for rhythm, so connate (if I may so say) with their very being, that metre of some sort was everywhere cultivated, and even these northern tribes had their bards, their minstrels, their troubadours, and the like.

Now, though in the latter Latinity syllabic quantity was little regarded, and the accentual more frequently supplied its place, they did not esteem even this last always sufficient to mark the measure. An expedient was therefore found, (flattering to the ear, because it had something of harmony,) and this was, to mark the last syllables of different verses with sounds that were similar, so that the ear might not doubt a moment where every verse ended.

And hence in modern verse these last syllables, which poets of a purer age in a manner neglected, came to claim a peculiar and superior regard, as helping to mark the rhythm through the medium of the rhyme.

Si sol spendescat Maria purificante,
Major erit glacies post festum, quam fuit ante.b

See from p. 408 to p. 413.
b Rhyme is the similitude of sound at
the ends of two verses. Rhythm is measured
motion, and exists in verses of every sort,

whether classical or not classical, whether blank verse, or rhyme. In short, without rhythm no verse can exist of any species; without rhyme they may, and often do.

Nor was this practised in heroics only, but in trochaics also.

Suscitavit igitur | deus Hebræorum

Christianos principes, || et robur eorum
Vindicare scilicet || sanguinem sanctorum,
Subvenire filiis || mortificatorum.c

Nay, so fond were those poets of their jingle, that they not only infused it into different verses, but into one and the same verse; making the middle of each verse to rhyme with its end, as well as one verse to rhyme with another. Thus, in St. Edmund's epitaph, we read,

Hic erat Edmundus, anima cum corpore mundus,
Quem non immundus potuit pervertere mundus."

And again, in those verses transcribed from an old monument,
Hic sunt confossa Bernoldi præsulis ossa;

Laudet cum glossa, dedit hic quia munera grossa.

To these may be added the inscription upon the three wise men of the East, buried (as they tell us) at Cologn in the West. Corpora sanctorum recubant hic terna magorum,

Ex his sublatum nihil est, alibive locatum.

Verses of this sort, of which there are innumerable still extant, have been called Leonine verses, from Leo, a writer of the twelfth century, who is supposed to have been their inventor. But this should seem a mistake, if the inscription upon the image of a king Dagobert, who lived in the seventh century, be of the same period with that monarch.

Fingitur hac specie, bonitatis odore refertus,

Istius ecclesiæ fundator, rex Dagobertus.

It is true, there are verses of this sort to be found even among poets, the first in classical rank.

Thus Virgil:

Trajicit: i, verbis virtutem illude superbis.

Thus Horace :

Fratrem mærentis, rapto de fratre dolentis.

Thus even Homer himself:

Ἐκ γὰρ κρηΤΑΩΝ γένος εὔχομαι εὐρειΑΩΝ.

The difference seems to have been, the rhymes, falling from these superior geniuses, fell (it was probable) accidentally with the latter race of poets they were the work of labour and design. They may well, indeed, be called works of labour and design, when we reflect on the immense pains which their makers must have taken, where their plan of rhyming was so complicated, as they sometimes made it.

с

Roger Hoveden. Annal. p. 379. B.

d

Waverly, p. 202.

Take a singular example of no fewer than three rhymes to each verse.

Crimina crescere flete; tepescere jus, decus, æquum;
Flete, gemiscite; denique dicite, dicite mecum,
Qui regis omnia, pelle tot impia, surge, perimus,
Nos, Deus, aspice, ne sine simplice lamine simus.

Fabricius, who gives these verses, remarks, that they were written in the dactylic Leonine; that is, they had every foot a dactyl, excepting the last, and contained three rhymes in each verse, two within the verse itself, and one referring to the verse that followed. He adds, that their author, Bernardus Morlanensis, a monk of the eleventh century, composed no less than three books of this wonderful versification. What leisure must he have had, and how was it employed?"

Before we quit the subject of rhyme we may add, that rhyme was used not only by the Latin, but by the Arabian poets, as we may see by a tract upon the Arabic prosody, subjoined by Dr. Pococke to his Carmen Tograï.

Rhyme, however, was not so strictly followed, but that sometimes they quitted it. In the following heroics, the monk Odilo, addressing himself to his friend Hucbaldus, appears so warm in his wishes, as not only to forget rhyme, but even classical quantity.

Hucbaldo Sopho Sophia sit semper amica;
Hucbaldus Sophus Sophiæ semper amicus:
Exposco hoc Odilo, peccator cernuus ēgo.

This genius (over whose verses I have occasionally marked the accentual quantity in contradistinction to the syllabic) is supposed to have written in the tenth century.

Others, rejecting rhyme, wrote elegiacs; as that monk who celebrated Hildīgrim and Halabuldus; the one for building a church, the other for consecrating it.

Hildigrim struxit; Hălăbaldus episcopus archi

Sanctificavit: honor certus utrumque manet.

In the first of these two verses the word archi-episcopus is, by a pleasant transposition, made into a dactyl and spondee, so as to complete the hexameter."

It was upon these principles of versification, that the early poets of this era wrote much bad verse in much bad Latin. At length they tried their skill in their vernacular tongues, introducing here also their rhyme and their accentual quantity, as they had done before in Latin.

Through the southern parts of France, the troubadours (already mentioned') composed sonnets in the Provençal tongue.

e See Fabric. Biblioth. med. et infim. ætatis, under the word, Bernardus Morlanensis.

See Recueil de divers Ecrits pour servir

de l'Eclaircissements a l'Histoire de France
par l'Abbé de Beuf, p. 115.—p. 106.
* See before, p. 502.

Soon after them, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio wrote poems in Italian; and soon after these, Chaucer flourished in England. From Chaucer, through Rowley, we pass to lords Surry and Dorset; from them to Spencer, Shakspeare, and Johnson; after whom came Milton, Waller, Dryden, Pope, and a succession of geniuses down to the present time.

The three Italian poets we have mentioned, were capital in their kind, being not only strong and powerful in sentiment, but, what is more surprising, elegant in their diction, at a time when the languages of England and France were barbarous and unpolished. This, in English, is evident from our countryman, Chaucer, who, even to an English reader, appears so uncouth, and who yet wrote later than the latest of these three.

It must, however, be acknowledged, that, if we except his language, for learning and wit he appears equal to the best of his contemporaries, and, I may add, even of his successors.

I cannot omit the following sample of his literature in the Frankelein's Tale. In that poem, the fair Dorigen is made to lament the absence of her much-loved Arveragus; and, as she sits upon a cliff, beholding the sea and the formidable rocks, she breaks forth with terror into the following exclamation.

Eternal God! that thro' thy purveyaúnce
Leadest the world by certain governaúnce;
In idle, as men sayn, ye nothing make.
But, Lord, those griesly, fendly, rockis, blake,
That seem rathír a foul confusión

Of work, than any fair creátión

Of such a perfect God, wise, and full stable:
Why have ye wrought this work unreasonable?

Dorigen, after more expostulation of the same sort, adds,

I wote well clerk is woll sayn, as 'hem leste,
By arguments, that "All is for the beste,"
Tho' I ne cannot well the causes know-

But thilké God, that make the winds to blow,
Ay keep my Lord, &c.

There is an elegant pathos in her thus quitting those deeper speculations, to address a prayer for the safety of her Arveragus. The verse, before quoted,

To lead the world by certain governaunce,

is not only a philosophical idea, but philosophically expressed. The next verse,

In idle, as men sayn, ye nothing make,

is a sentiment translated literally from Aristotle, and which that philosopher so much approved as often to repeat it.

Take one example:

Ὁ δὲ Θεὸς καὶ ἡ φύσις οὐδὲν μάτην ποιοῦσιν: “God and nature make nothing in vain."

Arist. de Cælo, l. i. c. 4.

As to what follows, I mean that speculation of learned men, that "All is for the best," this, too, we meet in the same philosopher, annexed (as it were) to the sentiment just alleged.

Ἡ φύσις οὔθεν δημιουργεῖ μάτην, ὥσπερ εἴρηται πρότερον, ἀλλὰ πάντα πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον ἐκ τῶν ἐνδεχομένων: “ Nature (as has been said before) creates nothing in vain, but all things for the best, out of the contingent materials.”h

It may be fairly doubted, whether Chaucer took this from the original Greek; it is more probable he took it from the Latin version of the Spanish Arabic version, which Latin was then current, and admitted through Western Europe for the Aristotelic text.

The same thought occurs in one of our most elegant modern ballads; though whence the poet took it, I pretend not to decide.

How can they say, that nature

Has nothing made in vain?
Why then beneath the water
Do hideous rocks remain?
Those rocks no eyes discover,
Which lurk beneath the deep,
To wreck, &c.

But to return to Chaucer.

If in the tale we have just quoted, if in the tale of the Nun's Priest, and in many other of his works, there are these sprinklings of philosophy; if to these we add the extensive knowledge of history, mythology, and various other subjects, which he everywhere shews: we may fairly, I think, arrange him among our learned poets, and take from him an estimate of the literature of the times, as far at least as possessed by men of superior education.

After having mentioned (as we have lately done) Petrarch and some of the Italians, I can by no means omit their countryman Sannazarius, who flourished in the century following, and whose eclogues in particular, formed on the plan of fishing life instead of pastoral, cannot be enough admired both for their Latinity and their sentiment. His fourth eclogue, called Proteus, written in imitation of Virgil's eclogue called Silenus, may be justly valued as a master-piece in its kind. The following slight sketch of it is submitted to the reader.

"Two fishermen sailing during a dark night from Caprea into the bay of Naples, as they silently approach the promontory of Minerva, hear Proteus from the shore, singing a marvellous narrative of the strange events of which those regions had been the well-known scene. He concludes with the unhappy fate of the poet's friend and patron, Frederic, king of Naples, who, having been expelled his kingdom, died an exile in France."

h De Animal. incessu, c. 12.

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