harmonize with the feelings in sublime subjects, and in the grand style of poetry. But in the less elevated compositions it is undoubtedly pleasing. It is of use in distinguishing between prose and verse, in marking the termination of the lines, and in assisting the memory. It adds point and ridicule to subjects of gaiety, wit, and humour; beauty and tenderness to sonnets of love; and it gives grace and value to elegant trifles. In hymns and other pieces, both sacred and profane, which are set to music, it is almost indispensable. To didactic poems, like that which occasions the present inquiry, it is peculiarly applicable1. Their subjects are not naturally poetical, and they require every embellishment to raise them above prose. Rhyme gives life and spirit to the precepts, and impresses them on the memory. It contributes to that proverbial conciseness in which instruction is best communicated, and the couplet is the most appropriate form in which it can be conveyed.

Rhyme then being so natural and pleasing an adjunct to verse, it is not extraordinary that it should be found to have been in use, more or less, amongst almost all the nations in the world.

It prevailed in the EAST from the remotest anti

1 This essay was originally intended as part of an introduction to the Schola Salerni.

quity. It sometimes occurs in the poetical books of the Old Testament. In a simple language, where the inflexions were few, they would often return, and constitute rhymes; but whether this was owing to chance or design, is a question which has been disputed by learned men, but is immaterial to the present inquiry, since the fact itself is indisputable1. It was afterwards employed by the rabbinical poets in all its various modes 2.

The poetry of that extraordinary language, the Sanscrit, besides the harmony of regular feet, similar to those of the Greeks, was usually embellished by rhymes, in couplets and other forms. And they are found likewise in the languages of the nations bordering upon India, which are of the Sanscrit family 4.

Rhythmus curatus non aliter fuit, quam qui sua sponte prodiret quod non raro etiam Davidi imprimis accidisse animadvertimus. Buxtorf. Thes. Gram. p. 629. Quod ad eorum attinet sententiam, qui Hebraici carminis artificium in òμotoréλevTo unice ponunt--eam, quanquam multos habuerit fautores, et eruditos propugnatores,-multo tamen esse arbitror omnium vanissimam. Lowth, Met. Har. Confutatio. Jones, Poes. Asiat. Com. p. 72. 2 Buxtorf, As Aben Ezra, Kimhi, etc.

3 Colebroke's masterly Dissertation on Sanscrit Poetry. Asiatic Researches, vol. x.

4 Dr. Leyden on the Indo-Chinese Languages. Ibid. vol. xi.

It appears in the oldest Chinese poetry. The Shee is an ancient collection of above three hundred odes, of various dates, the earliest written one thousand three hundred years before Christ, and the others during the following period of seven hundred years. The greater part of them is in rhyming stanzas: the modern Chinese verses abound in rhyme to a degree of nausea3.

A

In a specimen of the Zend, or old Persian, given by sir William Jones, every sentence rhymes. It was in use amongst the Arabians from the earliest times. Schultens has printed a poem written by Amrou, the last of the race of Jorham, princes of Mecca near the time of Solomon, lamenting their expulsion from that kingdom. He has published another poem written seven hundred years before Mohammed, and others very ancient, mostly in rhyme. The Moallakat, or poems suspended in the temple at Mecca, have the same addition; and one identical rhyme is sometimes continued through the whole poem. The subsequent Arabic poetry, the modern Persian, the Turkish, Tartarian, and perhaps all the other oriental languages, have fol

5 Marshman's Chinese Grammar, Serimpore, 1814. 6 Asiat. Res. vol. i. p. 45.

7 Schultens, Monumenta Vetustioris Arabiæ, Leip. 1740.

lowed these examples 8. And the works of the many fine native poets of Russia prove that it is equally known in the Sclavonic dialects9.

The principal WESTERN nations may be divided into two branches, the Celtic and the Gothic. The first comprehends the Irish, the Welsh, the Gaelic, and some other less extensive dialects.. The latter, the Scandinavian, the Teutonic, and the AngloSaxon.

The Irish

Rhyme was common to all the Celts. seems to be the purest of these dialects. A sort of learning prevailed early in that island. The language was cultivated, refined, and committed to writing before either the Welsh or the Erse. Hence their compositions are more ancient, and less barbarous than the others. As a proof of their attachment to poetry, Saint Patrick is said to have destroyed three hundred volumes of their bards 10. Rhyme is found in the earliest specimens. O'Halloran has quoted a poem of the fourth century. There is a hymn in honor of Saint Patrick, written

8 See Jones, Poeseos Asiat. Comm. Asiatic Researches,

etc. etc.

9 Vaters, Russiches Leyrbuch. Leips. 1815. Bowring's Russian Anthology.

10 Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, dissert. I. P. xlviii.

in the sixth century by an Irish bishop, in quatrains, of which the second and fourth lines, and sometimes the first and third, rhyme together; and there are others of great antiquity. About the middle of the ninth century, alliteration was introduced, and much used by the Irish poets 12.

In the British language it seems to be coeval with poetry itself, and is applied in a great variety of modes. An oracle respecting the fatal stone, which was said to have been originally in Ireland, was removed to Scotland, and is now in Westminster abbey, consists of four lines, of which the two first and the two last rhyme to each other, and are supposed to be of druidical origin 13. Some of the celebrated triads upon the tombs of the warriors are thought to be of the third century, and show the practice to have been then fully established. Taliessin and Aneurin, who flourished in the fifth and sixth centuries, are both rhyming poets 14. Alliteration was seldom in

1 Hymnus, seu Prima Vita Sancti Patricii Hiberniæ Apostoli, S. Fieco, Episcopo Sleptensi, authore.

12 See Vallancey's Grammar of the Iberno-Celtic, 1773. O'Molloy, Walker, etc.

13 Borlase's Cornwall, vol. i. p. 175.

14 Joh. David. Rhæsi, (Rhys,) Cambro-Britannica Institutiones, London, 1592. Johns's Bardic Museum, 2 vols. London, 1794. 1802.