As for the classical languages, it was after the invasion of barbarism, and on account of the destruction of accentuation and the assertion of that uniquely personal note of emotion referable to Christianity, that the rhythmical system of verse passed into that of rhyme. Thus, in his hymn to the Holy Spirit, Ambrosius entirely regulates the versification according to the accent of the meaning expressed, and breaks into rhyme. The first work of St. Augustine against the Donatists is in the same way a rhymed song; and also the so-called Leonine versicles, as expressly rhymed hexameters and pentameters, are easily distinguishable from the accidental exceptions of rhyme previously noticed. These and other examples like them mark the point of departure of rhyme from the more ancient rhythmical system.
(ββ) Certain writers have no doubt attempted to trace the origin of the new principle of versification in Arabian literature. The artistic education, however, of the famous poets of the East is of later date than the appearance of rhyme in western Christendom; and any Mohammedan art of a more early time exercised no real influence on the West. We should, however, add that we find from the first in Arabian poetry essential affinities with the romantic principle, in which the knights of Europe, at the time of the crusades, very readily made themselves at home; and consequently it is not difficult to understand how, in the affinity of spiritual tendencies[38] which they shared, and in which the poetry of Eastern Mohammedanism no less than Western Christianity finds its source, though removed in the world from each other, we meet for the first time and on its own independent footing a novel type of verse writing.
(γγ) A third source, to which again, independently of either the influence of the classic languages or the Arabic, we may trace the origins of rhyme and all that it implies, are the Germanic languages, as we find them in their earliest Scandinavian development. As illustration of this we have the songs of the ancient Edda, which, though only in more recent times, collected and edited, unquestionably date from a former age. In these, as we shall see later on, it is not, it is true, the genuine rhyme-sound which is elaborated in its perfection, but rather an effective emphasis upon particular sounds of language, and a regularity defined by rule, with a definite repetition of both aspects.
(β) Yet more important than the question of origin is the characteristic difference between the new system and the old. I have already adverted to the fundamental feature of importance here; it only remains to establish it more narrowly.
Rhythmical versification attained its most beautiful and richest development in the field of Hellenic poetry, in which we may discover the most eminent features of the type wherever it obtains. Briefly they are as follows:
First, the sound, as such, of letters, syllables, or words does not here constitute its material, but rather the syllabic sound in its temporal duration, so that attention must neither exclusively be directed to particular syllables or words, nor to the purely qualitative similarity or identity of their sound. On the contrary, the sound still remains in inseparable union with the static time-measure of its specific duration; and in the forward movement of both the ear has to follow the value of every separate syllable no less than the principle which obtains in the rhythmical progression of all equally together. Secondly, the measure of long and short syllables, no less than that of rhythmical rise and fall, and varied animation derived from more deliberate caesurae and moments of pause, depends upon the natural element of the language, without permitting any introduction of that type of accentuation, by virtue of which the actual meaning of the word leaves its impress on a syllable or a word. The versification asserts itself in its collocation of feet, its verse accent, its caesurae, and so forth in this respect as fully independent as the language itself, which also, outside the domain of poetry, already accepts accentuation from the natural quantity of syllables and their relations of juxtaposition, and not from the significance of the root-syllable. On this account, thirdly, we have as the vital emphasis of certain syllables, first, the verse accent and rhythm, and, secondly, all other accentuation, both of which aspects, in their twofold contribution to the varied character of the whole, pass in and out of one another without any mutual derangement or suppression; and in like manner respectively they satisfy the claim of the poetical imagination in fully admitting the expressiveness due, by virtue of the nature of their position and movement, to words which, in respect to their intelligible meaning, are of a greater importance than others.
(αα) The first alteration, then, effected by rhymed verse in the previous system is this indisputable validity of natural quantity,[39] If, therefore, any time-measure at all is permitted to remain, it is compelled to seek for a basis for such quantitative pause or acceleration, which it refuses any longer to find in the natural quantity, of syllables, in some other province. And this, as we have seen, can be no other than the intrinsic meaning of syllables and words. It is this significance which in the final instance determines the quantitative measure of syllables, so long as such is still regarded as essential at all, and by doing so transfers the criterium from the purely objective medium[40] and its natural structure to the ideal subject-matter.
(ββ) A further result follows from this of yet more importance. As I have already pointed out, this collocation of the emphasis on the significant stem-syllable dissipates that other independent diffusion of it in manifold forms of inflexion, which our rhythmical system is not yet forced to treat as negligible, in contrast to the stem, because it deduces neither the natural quantity of syllables nor the accent which it asserts from the intelligible significance. In the case, however, where such an explication,[41] with its co-ordination in verse-feet according to the quantity of syllables in their natural stability, falls away the entire system therewith necessarily collapses, which reposes on the time-measure and its laws. Of this type, for example, is French and Italian poetry, the metre and rhythm of which are absolutely non-existent as understood by the ancients. The entire question is here merely one of a definite number of syllables.