Beaumont and Fletcher, Wit at Several Weapons, iii. 1,

Then do your worst: there I'll deceive you, sir. Old Knight. You are a dolt, and so I leave you, sir.” Note in Daniel, Civil Wars, B. vii. St. xxxviii.,

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"Sad want, and poverty, makes men industrious,

But law must make them good, and fear obsequious." Dubartas, i. v. p. 41, col. 1,

House unto house, sea to sea, strand to strand,
Mountain to mountain, and (most-most insatiable)
World unto world, if they could work it possible."
iv. p. 37, col. 2,-

"In brief, mine eye, confounded with such spectacles,
In that one wonder sees a sea of miracles."

(This seems a sort of cross between such rhymes as credulous-ridiculous, &c., and the species noted below, art. xvi.

e.g.,

"Is there not something more than to be Cæsar?

Must we rest there? it irks t' have come so far.")

Perhaps our old poets were led to this by observing the comparative weakness and inefficiency of a rhyme falling on unaccented syllables; e.g., vanity—economy; whence they instinctively called in the aid of the two syllables preceding to render it more sensible. 39

39 Similar rhymes occur in old German poetry. See Lachmann's Remarks on the Nibelungen, St. 1916 of his edition, p. 239.-Ed.

XV.

Another peculiar Mode of Rhyming.

Tarquin and Lucrece, St. li.,

"Then Love and Fortune be my gods, my guide!
My will is back'd with resolution :

Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried;
The blackest sin is clear'd with absolution :

'Against love's fire fear's frost hath dissolution."

It is possible indeed that something may be lost in line 2; but the peculiarity in the metre and rhyme, as the passage at present stands, is one which occurs frequently in the poets of that age. Harrington, Preface to Ariosto, last page :"Now for them that find fault with polysyllable meeter, we thinke they are like those that blame men for putting suger in their wine, and chide to bad about it, and say they marre all, but yet end with Gods blessing on their hearts. For indeed if I had knowne their diets, I could haue saued some of my cost, at least some of my paine; for when a verse ended with ciuillitie, I could easier after the auncient maner of rime, haue made see or flee or decree to aunswer it, leauing the accent vpon the last syllable, then hunt after three syllabled wordes to answere it with facillitee, gentillitee, tranquillitie, hostillitie, scurrilitie, debillitie, agillitie, fragillitie, nobillitie, mobillitie, which who mislike, may tast lamp oyle with their eares." King Richard II. ii. 1 (for rhyme seems to be intended; see context),—

"Whose manners still our tardy apish (tardy-apish) nation Limps after in base imitation."

Venus and Adonis, St. cxxvii.,

"What is thy body but a swallowing grave,

Seeming to bury that posterity

Which by the rights of time thou needs must have,
If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity ?"

These are the only instances I have noticed in Shakespeare.
Dubartas, ii. i. ii. p. 94, col. 2,-

"Man's seed then justly, by succession

Bears the hard penance of his high transgression ;"

the only instance, thus far, in the poem.

Ford, Fame's Memorial, 1606, St. iv. Gifford, vol. ii. p. 568 (a juvenile work),—

"Base Fear, the only monument of slaves,

Progenitor to shame, scorn to gentility,
Herald to usher peasants to their graves,
Becomes abjected thoughts of faint servility;
While haughty Fame adorns nobility.”

St. ciii. p. 592,

"He whom we treat of was a president (read precedent)
Both for the valiant and judicious;

Both Mercury and Mars were resident
In him at once; sweet words delicious

And horrid battle were to him auspicious," &c.

and so cv. p. 593, cvii. p. 593, cxviii. p. 596, cxxxviii. p. 606, cxlvi. p. 608, cxlvii. p. 608. Jonson, Underwoods, Eupheme, ix. Gifford, vol. ix. p. 74,

whither they must come

To hear their judge, and his eternal doom;
To have that final retribution,

Expected with the flesh's restitution."

Spenser, Hymne in Honour of Love, xxviii.,

"Such is the powre of that sweet passion,
That it all sordid basenesse doth expell,
And the refyned mynd doth newly fashion

Unto a fayrer forme, which now doth dwell," &c.

Middleton, Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased, Dyce, vol. v. p. 350,-a youthful work, I suspect,

"He that could give such admonition,

Such vaunting words, such words confirming vaunts,
As if his tongue had mounted to ambition,

Or climb'd the turrets which vain-glory haunts."

Chapman and Shirley, Chabot i. 1, near the end, Gifford and Dyce's Shirley, vol. vi. p. 97,

I must on, [:] I see,

That, 'gainst the politic and privileg’d fashion,

All justice tastes but affectation."

Spenser, Colin Clout, 1. 612,

"There she beholds, with high aspiring (high - aspiring] thought,

867,

The cradle of her own creation,

Emongst the seats of angels heavenly wrought,
Most like an angel in all form and fashion."

"But man, that had the spark of reason's might
More than the rest, to rule his passion,
Chose for his love the fayrest in his sight,
Like as himselfe was fayrest by creation."

Faerie Queene, B. v. C. ii. St. xxviii.,—
"And lastly all that castle quite be raced,
Even from the sole of his foundation,
And all the hewen stones thereof defaced,
That there mote be no hope of reparation
Nor memory thereof to any nation.

All which when Talus throughly had perfourmed,
Sir Artegall undid the evil fashion," &c.

B. iv. c. xii. St. xxxiv. perfection-inspection, &c.

"Thus there long while continu'd Artegall,

Serving proud Radigund with true subjection;

However it his noble heart did gall
Tobay a woman's tyrannous direction,

That might have had of life or death election:
But, having chosen, now he might not chaunge.
During which time the warlike Amazon,
Whose wandring fancie," &c.

XVI.

A third peculiar Mode of Rhyming.

The following are instances (the only ones that I have yet discovered in Shakespeare) of a singular mode of rhyming -rhyming to the eye, as at first sight it appears to bewhich occurs every now and then in the poets of the Elizabethan (or rather, to use the term which Coleridge coined for the nonce, the Elizabetho-Jacobæan) age. Its origin and explanation are probably to be sought for in our earlier poetry.

Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2,

-Here was a consent

Knowing aforehand of our merriment

To dash it like a Christmas comedy:

Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany,
Some mumble-news," &c.

(On zany note, by the way, Donne, Poems, ed. 1633, p. 94,

"Then write, then I may follow, and so bee

Thy debter, thy 'eccho, thy foyle, thy zanee.)

Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 1,—

"O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible,

As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple!"

VOL. I.

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