A rhyme, moreover, consists in the combination of like and unlike articulate sounds. Hit and it are not rhymes, but identical endings; the h being no articulation. To my ear, at least, the pair of words, hit and it, comes under a different class from the pair hit (or it) and pit.
[§ 637]. A full and perfect rhyme (the term being stringently defined) consists in the recurrence of one or more final syllables equally and absolutely accented, wherein the vowel and the part following the vowel shall be identical, whilst the part preceding the vowel shall be different. It is also necessary that the part preceding the vowel be articulate.[[69]]
The deviations from the above-given rule, so common in the poetry of all languages, constitute not rhymes, but assonances, &c., that, by poetic licence, are recognized as equivalents to rhymes.
[§ 638]. Measure.—In lines like the following, the accent occurs on every second syllable; in other words, every accented syllable is accompanied by an unaccented one.
The wáy was lóng, the wínd was cóld.
This accented syllable and its accompanying unaccented one constitute a measure. The number of the syllables being two, the measure in question is dissyllabic.
[§ 639]. In lines like the following the accent falls on every third syllable, so that the number of syllables to the measure is three, and the measure is trisyllabic.
At the clóse of the dáy when the hámlet is stíll.—Beattie.
The primary division of the English measures is into the dissyllabic and the trisyllabic.