"I, the writer [L'Ottimo Comento, Inferno, X, 85, cited in Longfellow's translation] heard him say that never a rhyme had led him to say other than he would, but that many a time and oft he had made words say in his rhymes what they were not wont to express for other poets." So, under his hand, the Divina Commedia became the first monument of the Italian language, the first great poem of the Christian world, the first masterpiece of modern literature, and the first great treasury of end-rhyme.) In Italian, no longer mere Tuscan, all subsequent end-rhymers were given a model of perfection. "To write in rhyme in the vulgar is, after a manner, the same thing as to write in verse in Latin. If any figure or rhetorical coloring is allowed to [classical] poets, it is also allowed to the rhymers," said Dante in the Vita Nuova (XXV). Never was a great literary change more concisely stated, by one who had every right to speak.

In Italian poetry, as the language demands, the feminine ending is the rule and the masculine the exception.) Masculine rhyme is most frequently used by truncation; thus mare becomes mar; sole, sol; stare, star, etc. A few words once feminine are now masculine (always with à), as cittate, città; pietate, pietà; caritate, carità. Similarly available for poetic use as masculine rhymes are some verb-forms, such as accosterà, andrà, troverà (future), or trovò, vendè, servì (preterite). Among monosyllabic verb-forms are è, fu, da, sta, do, fo, etc. Other monosyllabic words are dì, re (nouns); mi, si, me, se, te (pronouns); lì (adverb).

Thus masculine rhymes appear all the way from the thirteenth to the twentieth century, when Carducci used them effectively. They are more frequent in popular and religious verse than in the more literary forms. Dante used them sparingly, there being only twenty-eight in the whole of the Divina Commedia.

1

In Lo Splanamento dei proverbj di Salomone, per Maestro Girardo Patecchio da Cremona (thirteenth century) are such makes the interesting point that, of the 93 words used only by Dante, 75 are found only in the verse-ending. Of the 93, 62 are in the Paradiso, because, he thinks, of the necessarily greater number of philosophical and theological terms, the inclination to portray the higher glories by unusual words, and the fact that Dante, "after he had been crowned and mitred lord of himself, felt freer than before to choose and coin the words his subject or his rhyme demanded."

1 Crestomazia, 101–3.

rhymes as rason: Salamon; mendar: omiliar; dé: lé; mal: val; da: farà; tant: favelant; mescladament: cent.

In the song Ogni giorno tu mi di (fifteenth century)1 the rhymes are entirely masculine, with the recurrent refrain of the title-line. Many other illustrations may be found in fourteenth and fifteenth century verse. Thus in the Lirica Italiana antica, "Fatti inderiera, non t'acostare in za" (p. 105; fourteenth century) has za: illà: fa': m'à: dà: acosterà: za; acosterò: t'ubbidirò; mi: ti: sì; fè: è: re; più: tu. In “Giù per la mala via" (p. 121; fifteenth century) are va: sarà: falsità: ha: iniquità: aiuterà: dà: fa: sta: darà: farà: volontà: adversità, and so on, in thirteen more à rhymes. This use of mono-rhyme also appears in thirteen e rhymes in "La charitad e spenta" (p. 147; fifteenth century); but in this case some words are repeated, as in the rondeau and similar poems. I rhymes are carried through the poem (pp. 254-5; fifteenth century) taking its title from its refrain "Se mi dicessi, di'."

Rhythm or rhyme, in any language, must frequently modify the usual accents. Thus in English, even such a word as "water" is either water, as in prose, or watér, as in Rossetti and other mediævally-inclined poets. Proper names in English, however, are invariable. But in the earliest Italian poetry great freedom was taken, of which a full account is given in Dr. C. N. Caix's study of Le Origini della Lingua Poetica Italiana (Florence, 1880), pp. 193-6. "The exigencies of rhythm and of rhyme,' says Dr. Caix, "caused frequent anomalies in the accent, whereby it was now thrown backward, now forward. Formerly in Latin the vowel quantity was free within certain limits in the positio debilis, and the same liberty naturally remained to the Italian poets; thus tenébre, penétro, side by side with tenebre, pénetro, and the like, are still in poetic use. But in other cases the poetic accent is not less opposed to the Latin use than to the popular Italian use. Thus, to cite but a few of his examples, he gives onésta, libérta, and piéta, instead of onestà, etc., among common nouns; while for proper nouns, he notes that "the poets continued to follow, in names of mythological origin, the French accent with much greater frequency when these names were less 1 Lirica Italiana antica, per Eugenia Levi. Florence, 1905, 190.

popular and they could change the accent in the service of harmony or rhyme, without running against custom." Thus in Dante: Naiáde, Etiópe, Pisistráto, Eteócle, Arábi, Climené, Leté, Satán, Polinestór, París, etc., and in Petrarch: Alcibiáde, Penelope, Cleomenés, Annibál, etc.

The accent may be pushed forward in adjectives, úmile becoming umíle, símile, simile, etc.

Dr. Caix also shows that in the Poema dell' Intelligenza such verb-endings as the third person plural of the imperfect were accented for the sake of rhyme, -eáno, iáno; while in the same poem when they are not rhyme-words they are given the normal accent, -éano, -íano.

Early Italian poets also changed the verb-endings from one conjugation to another; thus Dante changed schermire (third conj.) into schermare (first conj.), and many others at will, most easily turning the second into the third or the third into the second. These transfers included not only the infinitive but also the participial and personal terminations. Such alterations would, of course, be possible only in the case of a language in a state of formation.

Other changes of verb-spelling for the sake of rhyme are, for instance, aita for ajuta (Le Origini, 220–1).1

This is not the place for an extensive history of Italian rhyme; as in the case of other languages thus far considered, those points only have been noted which have borne upon the general study. Its origins in Italy were, as has been seen, Latin and Provençal; but, of course, the usual attempts have been made to assign its beginnings to the Goths, the Huns, or what-not. The Goth-Hun fallacy, the predecessor of the Arabian, survived as late as Mitford's time; he says that "Italian, Spanish, and Romanesk were compelled to depose the ruling power of the harmony of their parent language, and receive new laws of verse from the Teutonic conquerors." But, as a matter of fact, the Teutonic and the Romance languages, without influence the one upon the

1 In all phonetic history, we find vowels freely changing into similar vowels, and consonants somewhat less freely into similar consonants. The exigencies of rhyme, for a thousand years, have continually, though sporadically, increased this tendency, sometimes in the line of permanent changes in orthography, sometimes not.

other, took the same pleasure in adding end-rhyme for the sake of new enjoyment in stress, and so reached the same result.

I am tempted to turn to the modern poets, to take up the farreaching influence of the Italian sonnet, or to study the details of the canzone, the sestina, etc., but must take space for nothing more than the first, and the last two, stanzas of the triumphant tribute to rhyme paid by the latest of the greater Italian singers - himself, in his Odi Barbari, a "rebel" against it:

In German, notwithstanding the primeval vogue of alliteration, end-rhyme appeared early in the famous work of Otfried, who finished in 868 a paraphrastic translation of the Gospels, the earliest piece of such verse in the language, and one of the most valuable monuments of Teutonic speech. Longfellow, in his Poets and Poetry of Europe, as late as 1845, spoke of it as having been written in "Frankish," but the old term, used from Fauchet's time for more than two centuries, has now been abandoned for the more proper word.

Otfried's rhyme is irregular, often a mere similarity of sound, and subordinate to rhythm, — as in Latin end-rhyme, and in the German rhymers immediately following him. But it is unmistakable, as, for instance, in the two concluding stanzas of his poem in praise of the Franks:

"Nu freuuen sih es alle

So uuer so uuola uuolle
Joh so uuer si hold in muate
Francono Thiote

Thaz uuir kriste sungun
In uusera zungun.

Joh uuir ouh thaz gilebetun

In frengiskon nan lobotun." 1

Here, at first, as in some of our early English rhymed ballads, it makes no particular difference whether the line be regarded as one or two, one, with internal rhyme, or two, with rhymes at the end.

Naturally, such early rhyming has long attracted the attention of scholars. Fauchet argues that Charlemagne took pleasure in hearing the deeds of kings recited in his own tongue, and thinks that Eginhard intimates that this singing was in rhyme. It may well have been, he says, that rhyme was in use in Charlemagne's day, even in vulgar tongues, such was the vogue of ecclesiastical Latin hymns. In fact, "ie dy qu'il y a grande apparence que nos François ont monstre aux autres nations d'Europe l'usage de la ryme consonante ou omioteleute, ainsi que voudrez,” for the Franks overcame the Provençals and the Sicilians, from whom the Italians got rhyme. Joan de la Enzina, says Fauchet, had confessed "que la ryme est passee d'Italie en Espagne.” But after this bit of guesswork, so similar to that which we have in our own day, Fauchet wisely concludes that the origin of rhyme is "vne si grande obscurite," "pour laquelle esclaircir tant de sçavans hommes d'Italie se sont iusques icy trauillee." However, "Que si les Provençaux veulent dire qu'ils sont autheurs de la ryme, c'est à eux à monstrer vn tesmoinage plus ancien que la translation qu' Otfried a faicte des Evangiles: ou que leur langue fut en prix du temps de Charles le Grand." 2

1 "And now may all men of good will rejoice and be content, all those of the Frankish nation who have a right heart; for we have lived to sing Christ in the tongue of our fathers."

2 Recvil de l'Origine de la Langve et Poésie Françoise, Ryme et Romans; ch. VII - Quand la Ryme, telle que nous l'avons, commença: & que les Espagnoles & Italiens l'ont prise des François. Paris, 1581. -This entire chapter, in its discussion of the decline of classical quantity, the new rhymed rhythms of the church, and north-European pleasure in strongly stressed similar consonantal sounds, was far in advance of the prevalent English criticism of the time.