He knew the diverse went of mortall wayes,
And in the minds of men had great insight;

Which with sage counsell, when they went astray,
He could enforme," &c.

I think Spenser, who is so strict in his rhymes, must have
written, by one of his usual licenses, astrayes, according to
a supposed analogy with certain adverbs, which are written.
indiscriminately with or without the final s.
Calender, Ægl. x. St. vii.,—

"Abandon then the base and viler clowne;

Lift up thyself out of the lowly dust,

Shepheards

And sing of bloody Mars, of wars, of giusts;
Turne thee to those that weld the awefull crowne,
To doubted knights, whose woundlesse armour rusts,
And helmes unbruzed wexen daylie browne."

Ægl. iv. 1. 5,

"Or bene thine eyes attempred to the yeare,

Quenching the gasping furrowes thirst with rayne? Like Aprill showre so stream the trickling teares Adowne thy cheeke, to quench thy thirstie paine." I have since noticed another instance, F. Q. ii. v. xxxii.,— a flock of damzelles fresh and gay,

That round about him dissolute did play Their wanton follies, and light merriment;" -rhyming to habiliments and ornaments.

Surely we should read merriments.

In Fairfax's Tasso, B. xii. St. lxiii. Knight (Knight has injured Fairfax in several places by injudicious corrections), the alternate rhymes are blast-cast-lasts. Read with Singer, blasts-casts—lasts. In B. vii. St. lxxxii., stand— land-bands, I doubt not we should read stands and lands, though on this passage I have not consulted Singer. In

these places, the alteration, to whomsoever it is owing, no doubt originated in a zeal for grammar. B. xii. St. iv., feed-deed-weeds; read feeds-deeds. B. viii. St. xxvii., ran—began—son, read run and begun, old forms, the latter of which has only of late become obsolete.

Chapman, II. xxi. Taylor, vol. ii. p. 175,—

"Pelides, do not stir a foot; nor those waves, proudly curl'd Against thy bold breast, fear a jot; thou hast us two thy friends

(Neptune and Pallas) Jove himself approving th' aid we lend."

Friend, I conjecture, paullo audacius. iv. vol. i. p. 114, foe —goes; read foes; see context. xxiii. vol. ii. p. 214, ad fin., fist-lists; read fists. I have noticed an instance in Butler; it would not be worth quoting, on account of Butler's habitual license in rhyming, but that it may be considered as one of those archaisms in his writings which I have noticed elsewhere; Miscellaneous Thoughts, line 43, the rabble

"Discharge all damages and costs

Of knights and squires of the post."

Knee-eye, lie-be, geer-fire, seek-like, these-immortalize, and the like, are frequent in Hall's Satires, butso far at least as I have observed-occur very rarely in the other writers of those times. Seek-like, and others with k, are found, I think, more frequently than the rest.

Note also man-on, and the like, which occur now and then.

Oy-ay are met with sometimes, but very seldom, in the poets of Elizabeth and James's time; perhaps only in the more slovenly writers. I except Daniel, in whom they are frequent. (Here, as elsewhere, I speak only of the poets

VOL. I.

10

I have myself read, which, however, are the majority. Daniel's xxivth Sonnet, alternate rhymes, annoy—pay. Poems, ed. 1623, p. 19, Funeral Poem on the Death of the Earl of Devonshire, alternate rhymes, joy'd-paid. Complaint of Rosamond, St. cxi. p. 142, alternate rhymes, stay -way-joy. Cleopatra, i. p. 465, destroyer-betray her. Daniel is, I think, a loose rhymer as regards some particular endings; or is it with him a matter of system? Note the strange rhyme in The Faithful Friends, ad fin.,—

t
"For, whilst I reign, on virtue will I smile,
And honour only with me still prevail."

I suspect that, in the Elizabethan and earlier ages, ai was sometimes pronounced as we now pronounce the Greek ai. Butler's Miscellaneous Thoughts, 1. 449,—

"They that do write in authors' praises,

And freely give their friends their voices."

Id., Satire on the Ridiculous Imitation of the French, 1. 109, rhymes, noise-says. Id., Ode on Modern Critics, St. v., oy-ey,—

"The feeblest vermin can destroy

As soon as stoutest beast of prey."

In the Fragments of a Second Part of the Satire on Human Learning, Stoics rhymes to Cyrenaics. (By the way, four lines below this latter couplet, for academics read academies.) I know not whether rhyme was intended in the common proverb,―

“All work, and no play,

Makes Jack a dull boy."

Such rhymes as discover—mother, sometimes occur. Flecknoe, Retrospective Review, vol. v. p. 272,

I find this even in an early poem of Pope's, the Essay on Criticism, 1. 30, at least in ed. 6, Linton, 1719,

"These hate as rivals all who write, and others

But envy wits as eunuchs envy lovers." 50

Sense-elements, and the like. This, as far as I have observed, is very rare, except in Sylvester.

The following, Browne, Britannia's Pastorals, B. i. Song iii. 1. 11, Clarke, p. 89,—

in came the watery nymph,

To raise from sound [i.e., swoon] poor Doridon (the imp,
Whom Nature seem'd," &c.,

may be compared with wish-this, &c.

I have noticed, but very rarely, such rhymes as backcataract.51 Dubartas, i. iv. p. 37, col. 2, cataract-make.

Sustain'd-wind, &c. I know not that I have noticed this, except in Chapman's Homer, and that very rarely; e.g., Odyss. i. ed. 1, p. 5. Chapman resorts sometimes to licenses of rhyme scarcely (if at all) authorized by the custom of his age, owing to the unusual demand for rhymes which his translation of Homer involved. Hence, too, Spenser's bold alterations of the forms of words for rhyme's sake. Sylvester too employs some occasionally which are perhaps peculiar to him: i. iv. p. 33, col. 1, sand-adamant; ii. iv. iii. p. 225, col. 1, 1. 3, mount-profound; i. iv. p. 35, col. 2, months-fronts; and so vi. p. 54, col. 1, in 't-labyrinth; and ii. p. 14, col. 1, out-south.

50 This couplet now stands thus,—

"Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write,

Or with a rival's or an eunuch's spite.-Ed.

51 In O'Connor's Child, Campbell rhymes backs-cataracts.-Ed.

In Chapman's Iliad, xi. Taylor, vol. i. p. 243, we have,~

The son of Esculapius, the great physician :

To fleet they flew. Cebriones perceiv'd the slaughter done
By Ajax," &c.

But Chapman wrote phisition, according to the common old spelling. [So Butter's folio, p. 152.-Ed.] xiv. vol. ii. p. 39,

"She swore, as he enjoin'd, in all, and strengthen'd all his joys, By naming all th' infernal gods, surnam'd the Titanoes." Write (meo periculo) Titanois. And so I find it to be in the old edition.

Note in Butler, Satire on Human Learning, P. ii. 1. 223,"Words are but pictures, true or false design'd,

To draw the lines and features of the mind;
The characters and artificial draughts,

T'express the inward images of thoughts.”

at least if I understand the construction aright.) So in his Miscellaneous Thoughts, 1. 95,

"The copy of a copy, and lame draught,

Unnaturally taken from a thought;"

I suppose draught must be pronounced as caught, taught.

XXI.
Wistly-wistfully.

K. Richard II. v. 4,—

"Have I no friend? quoth he: he spake it twice,

And urg'd it twice together; did he not?