History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3

by Henry Thomas Buckle

[422] Burton's Sindh, p. 59.

[423] Burnes's Travels into Bokhara, 8vo. 1834, vol. ii. pp. 107, 115, 116.

[424] Clarke's Travels, 8vo. 1816, vol. ii. p. 101.

[425] Compare Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, vol. ii. p. 304, with Bunsen's Egypt, vol i. p. 96, vol. ii. p. 92.

[426] I have mislaid my note on the bards of Western Africa, and can only refer to a hasty notice in Mungo Park's Travels, vol. i. p. 70. 8vo. 1817.

[427] Buchanan's Sketches of the North-American Indians, p. 337.

[428] Prescott's History of Peru, vol. i. pp. 31, 32, 117.

[429] Ellis, Polynesian Researches, vol. i. pp. 85, 199, 411; Ellis, Tour through Hawaii, p. 91. Compare Cook's Voyages, vol. v. p. 237, with Beechey's Voyage to the Pacific, vol. ii. p. 106. Some of these ballads have been collected, but, I believe, not published. See Cheever's Sandwich Islands, 8vo. 1851, p. 181.

[430] It is a singular proof of the carelessness with which the history of barbarous nations has been studied, that authors constantly assert rhyme to be a comparatively recent contrivance; and even Pinkerton, writing to Laing in 1799, says, ‘Rhyme was not known in Europe till about the ninth century.’ Pinkerton's Literary Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 92. The truth is, that rhyme was not only known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, but was used, long before the date Pinkerton mentions, by the Anglo-Saxons, by the Irish, by the Welsh, and, I believe, by the Brétons. See Mure's Hist. of the Literature of Greece, vol. ii. p. 113; Hallam's Lit. of Europe, vol. i. p. 31; Villemarqué, Chants Populaires de la Bretagne, vol. i. pp. lviii. lix. compared with Souvestre, les Derniers Bretons, p. 143; Turner's Hist. of England, vol. iii. pp. 383, 643, vol. vii. pp. 324, 328, 330. Rhyme is also used by the Fantees (Bowdich, Mission to Ashantee, p. 358); by the Persians (Transac. of Bombay Soc. vol. ii. p. 82); by the Chinese (Transac. of Asiatic Soc. vol. ii. pp. 407, 409, and Davis's Chinese, vol. ii. p. 269); by the Malays (Asiatic Researches, vol. x. pp. 176, 196); by the Javanese (Crawfurd's Hist. of the Indian Archipelago, vol. ii. pp. 19, 20); and by the Siamese (Transac. of Asiatic Soc. vol. iii. p. 299).

[431] The habit thus acquired, long survives the circumstances which made it necessary. During many centuries, the love of versification was so widely diffused, that works in rhyme were composed on nearly all subjects, even in Europe; and this practice, which marks the ascendency of the imagination, is, as I have shown, a characteristic of the great Indian civilization, where the understanding was always in abeyance. On early French historians who wrote in rhyme, see Monteil, Hist. des divers Etats, vol. vi. p. 147. Montucla (Hist. des Mathémat. vol. i. p. 506) mentions a mathematical treatise, written in the thirteenth century, ‘en vers techniques.’ Compare the remarks of Matter (Hist. de l'Ecole d'Alexandrie, vol. ii. pp. 179–183) on the scientific poetry of Aratus; and on that of Hygin, p. 250. Thus, too, we find an Anglo-Norman writing ‘the Institutes of Justinian in verse;’ Turner's Hist. of England, vol. vii. p. 307: and a Polish historian composing ‘his numerous works on genealogy and heraldry mostly in rhyme.’ Talvi's Language and Literature of the Slavic Nations, 8vo. 1850, p. 246. Compare Origines du Droit Français, in Œuvres de Michelet, vol. ii. p. 310.