I believe, to be found of either rhyme or metre in our language till fome years after the conqucft; so that verfes, that is, fome portions of words fimilar to each other in the nature and order of their component fyllables, and occurring either in a continued feries or at itated intervals. If all external proofs of the nature of the Roman poetry were loft, å few verses of Virgil or Horace would be fufficient to convincé us that their metres were regulated by the quantity of syllables; and if Cædmon had really written in a metre regulated by the quantity of fyllables, a few of his lines muft have afforded us the fame conviction with respect to the general laws of his Verfification. For my own part, I confess myself unable to dif cover any material distinction of the Saxon poetry from profe, except a greater pomp of diction and a more ftately kind of march. Our ancestors affected a certain pomp of ftyle in all their compofitions; " Ang|P” (says Malinefoury, l. i. p. 13,) pompatice dictare amant.” And this affectation I suspect was the true cause of their fo frequently inverting the natural or der of their words, especially in poetry. The obscurity arifing from these inverfions had the appearance of pomp: that they were not owing to the conftraint of any metrical laws (as Hickes fuppofes) may be prefumed from their being commonly ufed in profe, and even in Latio profe, by Saxon writers. E thelwerd, an historian defcended in the fifth degree from King Ethelred; [Inter Script. poft Bedam, p. 831-850,] is full of them. The following passage of his hiftory, if literally tranflated, would read very like Saxon poetry:" Abftrahuntur "tunc ferventes fide | anno in eodem ́s Hibernia ftirpe || "tres viri lecti ; furtim confuunt lembum | taurinus byrfis; alimentum fibi ['hebdomadarium fuppient; | ele**vant dies per vela feptem | totidemque notes," &c.-. We do not fee any marks of ftudied alliteration in the old Saxon poetry, fo that we might attribute the introduction of that practice to the Danes, if we were certain that it made a part ofthe Scaldick Verfification at the time of the Danith fettlements in England.- However that may have been Giraldus Cambrenfis [Defer. Camb. p. 889,] fpeaks of annomina I should apprehend we must have been obliged for both to the Normans, who very early (41) diftin- ? tion, which he describes to be what we call alliteration, as the favourite rhetorical figure of both the Welsh and English in his time: "Adeo igitur hoc verborum ornatu duæ nationes, "Angli fcil. et Cambri, in omni fermone exquifito utuntur, ut nihil ab his eleganter dictum, nullum nisi rude et agreste "cenfeatur eloquium, fi non schematis hujus limâ plene fue"rit expolitum." It is plain that alliteration must have had very powerful charms for the ears of our ancestors, as we find that the Saxon poetry, by the help of this embellishment alone, even after it had laid afide its pompous phraseology, was able to maintain itself without rhyme or metre for feveral centu ries. See Dr. Percy's Ejay on the Metre of Pierce Ploughman's Vifions. Rel. of Ancient Poetry, vol. ii. (41) I cannot find that the French antiquaries have been able to produce any poetry, in any of the dialects of their language, of an earlier date than the conquest of England, or indeed than the beginning of the 12th century. However we read of a Thibaud de Vernun, canon of Rouen, who before the year 1053, "multorum gefta Sanctorum, fed et Sti Wandregefili, a "fuâ latinitate tranftulit, atque in communis linguæ ufum "fatis facunde refudit, ac fic, ad quamdam tinnuli-rythmi fimi litudinem, urbanas ex illis cantilenas edidit." [De Mirac. Sti Wulframni. Auctore Monacho Fontanell. Temp. Will. I. ap. Daberii Alta SS. Ord. Ben. t. iii. p. 379.] It is probable too that the Vulgares Cantus, which according to Raimond de Agiles [Gefa Dei, p. 180,] were composed against Arnoulph, a chap lain of the Duke of Normandy, in the firft croifade, were in the French language; and there can be little doubt that William IX. Duke of Aquitain, upon his return from Jerufalem in 1101, made ufe of his native tongue when "miferias captivitatis fuæ, "erat jocundus et lepidus, multotiens retulit rythmicis ver"fibus cum facetis modulantionibus." Ord. Vital. 1. x. p. 793. The hiftory of the taking of Jerufalem, which is faid to have been written by the Chevalier Gregoire Bechada of Tours in Limoges, "maternâ linguâ rythmo vulgari, ut populus pleniter intelligeret,” [Labbe, Bibl. Nov. t. ii. p. 296,] has guiled themfelves by poetical performances in their vulgar tongue. The metres which they used, and which we feem to have borrowed from them, were plainly copied from the Latin (42) rythmical verfes, which in the not yet been brought to light; fo that probably the oldest French poem of any length now extant is a tranflation of the Bidiarius by Philippe de Thaun, it being addrefled to Aliz (A, deliza of Louvain) the second queen of our Henry There is a copy of this poem among the Cotton mff. Nero. A.v. The authors of the Hijioire Literaire de la France, t, ix. po173--90, fuppofe it to have been written about. 1125, that is, thirty years before Le Brut, which Fauchet had placed at the head of his lift of French poems. I thall take occafion in ano❤ ther place to fhew that the real author of Le Brut was Wace, (the fame who wrote the Roman de Rou) and not Wiftace, as Fauchet calls him. 1 (42) The Latin rythmical verfes refembled the metrical in the number of fyllables only, without any regard to quantity. "Arma cano virumque qui primus Trojæ ab oris," would pafs for a very good rythmical hexameter. The greatest part how ever ofthese compofitions were in imitation of the iambick and trochaick metres; and in them, if the accents fell luckily, the unlearned ear would often be as well pleafed as if the laws of quantity were obferved. The two rythmical hymns quoted by Beda [De Metris, edition Putfcb. p. 2380,] are fufficient to prove this. The firft, he obferves," ad inítar iambici metri "pulcherrime factus eft." O rex æterne Domine. Rerum creator omnium, &c.. The other is " ad formam metri Trochaici." Apparebit repentina dies magna Domini Fur obfcura velut nocte improvifos occupans. In the former of thefe hymns Domine, to a modern ear at leaft, founds as well as nómine ; and in the latter dies and velut, being accented upon their first syllables, affect us no otherwise than dices and velum would have done. From such Latin declension of that language were current in various forms among thofe who either did not understand or did not regard the true quantity of fyllables; and the practice of rhyming (43) is probably to be deduced rythms, and chiefly those of the iambick form, the present poetical measures of all the nations of Roman Europe are clearly derived. Inftead of long and short fyllables, the feet of our poetry are composed of fyllables accented and unaccented, or rather of fyllables ftrongly and less ftrongly accented, and hence it is that we have fo little variety of feet, and confe quently of metres; because the poffible combinations of fyllables accented and unaccented are from the nature of speech much more limited in point of number than the combinations of long and thort fyllables were in the Greek and Latin lan guages. (43) We see evident marks of a fondness for rhyme in the hymns of S. Ambrofius and S. Damafus, as early as the 4th cen tury. One of the hymns of Damafus, which begins Martyris ecce dies Agathæ is regularly rhymed throughout. Prudentius, who had a more claffical tafte, seems ftudiously to have avoided rhymes; but Sedulius and Fortunatus, in the 5th and 6th centuries, use them frequently in their hymns. [See their works, and an hymn of the latter, ap. Fabric. Bib. Med. Etat. v. Fortunatus.]— The learned Muratori, in his Differtation de Rythmicâ Veterum Poefi, [Antiq. Med. Ævi. Differt. xl,] has collected together a vaft heap of examples, which prove that rhymes were very generally used in hymns, fequences, and other religious compofitions in Latin, in the 7th, 8th, and 9th, centuries; so that for my own part I think it as probable that the poets in the vulgar languages (who firft appeared about the 9th century) borrowed their rhymes from the Latin poetry of that age, as it is evident that they did the forms of their Verfification.---Otfrid of Weiffenberg, the earliest rhymer that is known in any of the modern languages, about the year 870, calls rhyme, in the ftyle of the Latin grammarians, Schema omoteleuton. from the fame original, as we find that practice to have prevailed in ecclefiaftical hymns, and other compofitions in Latin, fome centuries before Otfrid of Weiffenberg, the first known rhymer in any of the vulgar European dialects. § 2. I wish it were in my power to give a regular hiftory of the progrefs which our ancestors made in this new style of Versification; but (44) except a few [Pref. ad Liutbert, ap. Schilter. Thef. Antiq. Teuton. t.i. p. 11.] And when the monk who has been cited in note 41 fays that Thibaud de Vernun composed his fongs ad quomdam tinnuli rythmi fimilitudinem, he must mean I think that he composed them in imitation of [Latin] jingling rythm. I say Latin (or at Jealt fome foreign) rythm, because otherwife he would rather have faid in rythmo tinnulo. The addition of the epithet tinnulus feems to thew plainly enough that rythmus alone did not then fignify what we call rhyme. (44) William of Malmesbury [de Gest. Pont. Angl.l. iii. p. 271,] has preferved two rhyming verfes of Aldred Archbishop of York, which that prelate threw out against one Urfe, Sheriff of Worcestershire, not long after the conqueft; "Hatest thou "UrfeHave thou God's curfe." Vocaris UrfusHabeas Dei maledi&ionem. Malmesbury says that he inserts this English, quod Latina verba non ficut Anglica concinnitati respondent. The concinnity, I fuppofe, muft have confifted in the rhyme, and would hardly have been thought worth repeating if rhyme in English had not then been a novelty.-----The lines in the Saxon Chronicle, to which I mean to refer, arc in p. 191. ed. Gilf. The paffage begins, Lartelar he let pyncean. Jearme men spide pɲence an— All the lines are not in rhyme, but I fhall fet down a few in English characters which I think could not have chimed together fo exactly by mere accident. Thet he nam be rihte And did mycelan un-rihte |