3. The Leonine[185] rhyme or middle rhyme, which recurs throughout the Old English Rhyming Poem, and is occasionally used in other Old English poems. This rhyme connects the two hemistichs of an alliterative line with each other by end-rhyme and, at the same time, causes the gradual breaking up of it into two short lines; we find it in certain parts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in Layamon, in the Proverbs of Alfred, and other poems, e.g.: his sedes to sowen, his medes to mowen Prov. 93–4; þus we uerden þere, and for þi beoþ nu here Lay. 1879–80. See §§ [49], [57–58], [78] for examples from Middle and Modern English literature of this kind of rhyme (called by the French rimes plates) as well as of the following kind, when used in even-beat metres.
4. The interlaced rhyme (rime entrelacée), by means of which two long-lined rhyming couplets are connected a second time in corresponding places (before the caesura) by another rhyme, so that they seem to be broken up into four short verses of alternate or cross-rhyme (a b a b), e.g. in the latter part of Robert Mannyng’s Rhyming Chronicle (from p. 69 of Hearne’s edition), or in the second version of Saynt Katerine (cf. the quotations, §§ [77], [78], [150]). When, however, long verses without interlaced rhyme are broken up only by the arrangement of the writer or printer into short lines, we have
5. The intermittent rhyme, whose formula is a b c b (cf. p. [196]). Both sorts of rhyme may also be used, of course, in other kinds of verse, shorter or longer; as a rule, however, the intermittent rhyme is employed for shorter, the alternate or cross-rhyme for longer verses, as, for example, those of five feet.
6. The enclosing rhyme, corresponding to the formula a b b a, e.g. in spray, still, fill, May, as in the quartets of the sonnet formed after the Italian model (cf. below, Book II, [chap. ix]). This sort of rhyme does not often occur in Middle English poetry; but we find it later, e.g. in the tail or veer of a variety of stanza used by Dunbar and Kennedy in their Flyting Poem.
7. The tail-rhyme (in French called rime couée, in German Schweifreim), the formula of which is a a b c c b. (For a specimen see § [79].)
This arrangement of rhymes originated from two long lines of the same structure, formed into a couplet by end-rhyme, each of the lines being divided into three sections (whence the name versus tripertiti caudati). This couplet, the formula of which was – a – a – b || – c – c – b, is, in the form in which it actually appears broken up into a stanza of six short lines, viz. two longer couplets a a, c c, and a pair of shorter lines rhyming together as b b, the order of rhymes being a a b c c b. (For remarks on the origin of this stanza see [§ 240.])
§ 219. As to the quality of the rhyme, purity or exactness, of course, is and always has been a chief requirement. It is, however, well known that the need for this exactness is frequently disregarded not only in Old and Middle English poetry (cf. e.g. the Old English assonances meant for rhymes, § [40], or the often very defective rhymes of Layamon, § [45]) but even in Modern English poetry. Many instructive examples of defective rhymes from Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare, and Dryden are given by A.J. Ellis, On Early Engl. Pronunciation, iii. 858–74, 953–66, iv. 1033–9.
From these collections of instances we see how a class of imperfect rhymes came into existence in consequence of the change in the pronunciation of certain vowels, from which it resulted that many pairs of words that originally rhymed together, more or less perfectly, ceased to be rhymes at all to the ear, although, as the spelling remained unaltered, they retained in their written form a delusive appearance of correspondence. These ‘eye-rhymes’, as they are called, play an important part in English poetry, being frequently admitted by later poets, who continue to rhyme together words such as eye: majesty Pope, Temple of Fame, 202–3; crowns: owns ib. 242–3; own’d: found id. Wife of Bath, 32–3, notwithstanding the fact that the vowel of the two words, which at first formed perfect rhymes, had long before been diphthongized or otherwise changed while the other word still kept its original vowel-sound.