This jubilee last forever;
That foreign spite, or civil fight,
Our quiet trouble never!
Bouts Rimés.
Bouts Rimés, or Rhyming Ends, afford considerable amusement. They are said by Goujet to have been invented by Dulot, a French poet, who had a custom of preparing the rhymes of sonnets, leaving them to be filled up at leisure. Having been robbed of his papers, he was regretting the loss of three hundred sonnets. His friends were astonished that he had written so many of which they had never heard. “They were blank sonnets,” said he, and then explained the mystery by describing his “Bouts Rimés.” The idea appeared ridiculously amusing, and it soon became a fashionable pastime to collect some of the most difficult rhymes, and fill up the lines. An example is appended:—
nettle,
pains.
mettle.
remains.
natures.