periodic recurrence, proportion, limitation, — of that sense out of which all rhythm and metre springs." Latin sacred poetry was satisfying because it combined a rhythm-mark with a new melody, the one promoting and sustaining the other. Quantity, in the fading away of classical learning, became less and less known, while every one recognized accent. Indeed, "quantity itself was not indigenous to the Latin soil, and therefore had struck no deep root"; so the later poets abandoned the ancient metres, to "expatiate in the free region of accented verse. Then came Christian chanting, with real, not fictitious and inconsistent, values for the ear. Latin rhyme, thus naturally appearing after a period of suppression, belongs to the third and fourth Christian centuries, though not largely employed before the eighth or ninth. Thenceforward it was used in every sort of way: within the line, at the end, in pentameters, in hexameters, in Sapphics, etc. At first it was "very far from that elabørate and perfect instrument which it afterwards became." Assonance was enough, to begin with; then rhymes were used only when convenient; sometimes they fell on unstressed syllables, and sometimes they had only the same ending-letter. But from "rude, timid, and uncertain beginnings, rhyme came in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to display all its latent capabilities and attain its final glory, satiating the ear with a richness of melody scarcely anywhere to be surpassed." The early Latin hymns ranged all the way from loose similarities of sound, anywhere in the lines, to assonances at the end, visible identities of unaccented last syllables, and absolute endrhymes. Sometimes the same word ended alternate stanzas, as we would now call them. Repetitions seem to have answered every purpose of rhymes; and end-rhymes themselves, when introduced, occur sporadically. By such means, perhaps, accentual metre, addressed to the comparatively illiterate, became the verse of the church, which, says Fauchet, "ayans ceux qui prenoient plaisir à la versification, employé tout leur esprit à composer des vers de cadence unisone vulgairement nommee ryme.' In the twelve hymns attributed to Ambrosius, bishop of Milan (333?-397), the lines are frequently, but not regularly, rhymed. Ambrose's authorship is clearly established in but four hymns: "Deus creator omnium"; "Aeterne rerum conditor"; "Veni redemptor gentium"; "Iam surgit hora tertia." He introduced the practice of singing choral hymns antiphonally arranged (cantus Ambrosianus); and wisely selected the metre least markedly metrical and most nearly rhythmical—the iambic dimeter in a movement toward emancipation from classical pagan forms and restraints. It was really, says Trench, a return to the freedom of early Latin un-Grecised verse, in which placemarked stresses were more important than accurate feet. Ampere says that Ambrose's hymns show "une tendance à la rime se produire evidemment dans ces strophes analogues à celles d'Horace. Ce qui sera le fondement de la prosodie des temps modernes, la rime, n'est pas encore une loi de la versification, et déjà un besoin mysterieux de l'oreille l'introduit dans les vers pour ainsi dire à l'insu d'oreille elle même." 1 These points will be made clear by quoting, entire, the hymn which is perhaps the best of the four undoubtedly written by Ambrose: "DE ADVENTU DOMINI "Veni, Redemptor gentium, "Non ex virile semine, Sed mystico spiramine, "Alvus tumescit Virginis, Claustrum pudoris permanet, Vexilla virtutum micant, Versatur in templo Deus. "Procedit e thalamo suo, Geminae Gigas substantiae,' Alacris ut currat viam. "Egressus ejus a Patre, Regressus ejus ad Patrem, 1 Histoire Littéraire de la France, I, 411. "Aequalis aeterno Patri, Virtute firmans perpeti. "Praesepe jam fulget tuum, This hymn is on the whole a fair representative of the NewLatin verse of its time. In its thought-rhymes, sound-rhymes irregularly put in this or that place, identities, assonances, etc., it is constructively something like modern juvenile jingles, in which the immature mind does not care for nice accuracies. Sedulius, in the first half of the fifth century, followed similar methods. In one of his hymns the same words form both the first half of the hexameter and the second half of the pentameter (epanaleptic construction), the result, according to Teuffel and Schwabe (History of Roman Literature), "being intolerably monotonous." Another hymn is a so-called abecedarius. The suppression of final m, s, t, then customary, says the same authority, — shows itself in rhymes such as inpie: times; personat: pignora; millia: victimam; plurimus: febrium. In the ringing "Vexilla regis proderunt" (written a little later) are rhymes throughout, but without any fixed rule as to sequence or alternation. Trochaic tetrameter is well suited to the Latin language and also to church hymns, as, for instance, in the anonymous "Apparebit repentina dies magna Domini." In this metre assonance easily took its place. At this time we reach the earliest English writer on poetry, Bede, — who says nothing about rhyme, but gives the following interesting passage: "Videtur autem rhythmus metris esse consimilis, quae est verborum modulata compositio non metrica ratione, sed numero syllabarum ad judicium aurium examinata, ut sunt carmina vulgarium poetarum. Et quidem rhythmus sine metro esse potest, metrum vero sine rhythmo esse non potest: quod liquidius ita definitur. Metrum est ratio com modulatione; rhythmus modulatio sine ratione: plerumque tamen casu quodam invenies etiam rationem in rhythmo non artificis moderatione servatam, sed sono et ipsa modulatione ducente, quem vulgares poetae necesse est rustice, docti faciant docte; quomodo et ad instar iambici metri pulcherrime factus est hymnus ille praeclarus: "[O] Rex aeterne Domine, Rerum creator omnium Et alii Ambrosiani non pauci. Item ad formam metri trochaici canunt hymnum de die judicii per alphabetum: Apparebit repentina Fauchet's comment on this passage is as follows: "Mais ne trouvant en ces Hymnes aucune cadence omioteleute, ie pense que le Rhythmus des Poetes dont Bede parle, n'estoit qu'un vers de certaine quantite de syllabes sans loy ne pieds, tel que ces deux couples Latines cydessus transcriptes ["Rex aeterne Domine" and "Apparebit repentina"], lequel n'estant en usage entre les doctes, Terentianus Maurus n'a daigne en faire mention en sa versificatoire." In the work of Marbod (1035-1125), Bishop of Rennes, is a perfect specimen of end-rhyme: "ORATIO AD DOMINUM "Deus-homo, Rex coelorum, Ad peccandum proni sumus, Quid est homo, proles Adae? 1 Bedae Venerabilis De Arte Metrica: 24: De Rhythmo. Ne digneris huic irasci, Qui non potest mundus nasci: In this melodious little lyric the rhymes Adae: clade and aequum: tecum give us an intimation of contemporary pronunciation. In the twelfth century came the once famous "leonine" rhyme (the origin of the term is not known), hexameters in which the syllables before the caesura rhymed with the final syllables. For it Trench has no liking; it is useless, he says, to try to superinduce end-rhyme on the classical hexameter — a remark which may also be made of our few and mostly poor English hexameters. At about the same time appeared the great 3000-line De Contemptu Mundi of Bernard of Clugny, or Bernard of Morlaix; born in Morlaix, Brittany, of English parents; monk of Clugny, 1122-1156. The author, like an early Jones Very, believed himself inspired in the composition of these tripping hexameters, so prodigal in assonances and rhymes of every kind. Certainly the world had a new music in "Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus. Assonance is frequent, as in "Pax sine crimine, pax sine turbine, pax sine rixa, This easy careless jingle may become displeasing or ludicrous; loose facility of rhyming is a positive distress to some delicate ears in such lines as |