The Allowable Rhyme
by H. P. Lovecraft
"Sed ubi plira nitent in carmine, non ego paucis Offendar maculis."
- Horace
The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been
divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction
of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general
culture, seems to have abandoned all the properties of versification and
reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and
quieter school constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the
Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to
the polished artists of the age of Pope.
The rational contemporary disciple of the Nine, justly ignoring the
dissonant shrieks of the radicals, is therefore confronted with a grave
choice of technique. May he retain the liberties of imperfect or
"allowable" rhyming which were enjoyed by his ancestors, or must he
conform to the new ideals of perfection evolved during the past century?
The writer of this article is frankly an archaist in verse. He has not
scrupled to rhyme "toss'd" with "coast", "come" with "Rome", or "home"
with "gloom" in his very latest published efforts, thereby proclaiming his
maintenance of the old-fashioned pets as models; but sound modern
criticism, proceeding from Mr. Rheinhart Kleiner and from other sources
which must needs command respect, has impelled him there to rehearse the
question for public benefit, and particularly to present his own side,
attempting to justify his adherence to the style of two centuries ago.
The earliest English attempts at rhyming probably included words whose
agreement is so slight that it deserves the name of mere "assonance"
rather than that of actual rhyme. Thus in the original ballad of
"Chevy-Chase," we encounter "King" and "within" supposedly rhymed, whilst
in the similar "Battle of Otterbourne" we behold "long" rhymed with
"down," "ground" with "Agurstonne," and "name" with "again". In the ballad
of "Sir Patrick Spense," "morn" and "storm," and "deep" and "feet" are
rhymed. But the infelicities were obviously the result not of artistic
negligence, but of plebeian ignorance, since the old ballads were
undoubtedly the careless products of a peasant minstrelsy. In Chaucer, a
poet of the Court, the allowable rhyme is but infrequently discovered,
hence we may assume that the original ideal in English verse was the
perfect rhyming sound.
Spenser uses allowable rhymes, giving in one of his characteristic stanzas
the three distinct sounds of "Lord", "ador'd", and "word," all supposed to
rhyme; but of his pronunciation we know little, and may justly guess that
to the ears of his contemporaries the sounds were not conspicuously
different. Ben Johnson's employment of imperfect rhyming was much like
Spenser's; moderate, and partially to be excused on account of a chaotic
pronunciation. The better poets of the Restoration were also sparing of
allowable rhymes; Cowley, Waller, Marvell, and many others being quite
regular in this respect.
It was therefore upon a world unprepared that Samuel Butler burst forth
with his immortal "Hudibras," whose comical familiarity of diction is in
grotesqueness surpassed only by its clever licentiousness of rhyming.
Butler's well-known double rhymes are of necessity forced and inexact, and
in ordinary single rhymes he seems to have had no more regard for
precision. "Vow'd" and "would," "talisman" and "slain," "restores" and
"devours" are a few specimens selected at random.
Close after Butler came Jon Oldham, a satirist whose force and brilliance
gained him universal praise, and whose enormous crudity both in rhyme and
in metre was forgiven amidst the splendor of his attacks. Oldham was
almost absolutely ungoverned by the demands of the ear, and perpetrated
such atrocious rhymes as "heads" and "besides," "devise" and "this,"
"again" and "sin," "tool" and "foul," "end" and "design'd," and even
"prays" and "cause."
The glorious Dryden, refiner and purifier of English verse, did less for
rhyme than he did for metre. Though nowhere attaining the extravagances of
his friend Oldham, he lent the sanction of his great authority to rhymes
which Dr. Johnson admits are "open to objection." But one vast difference
betwixt Dryden and his loose predecessors must be observed. Dryden had so
far improved metrical cadence, that the final syllables of heroic couplets
stood out in especial eminence, displaying and emphasizing every possible
similarity of sound; that is, lending to sounds in the first place
approximately similar, the added similarity caused by the new prominence
of their perfectly corresponding positions in their respective lines.
It were needless to dwell upon the rhetorical polish of the age
immediately succeeding Dryden's. So far as English versification is
concerned, Pope was the world, and all the world was Pope. Dryden had
founded a new school of verse, but the development and ultimate
perfections of this art remained for the sickly lad who before the age of
twelve begged to be taken to Will's Coffee-House, that he might obtain a
personal view of the aged Dryden, his idol and model. Delicately attuned
to the subtlest harmonies of poetical construction, Alexander Pope brought
English prosody to its zenith, and still stands alone on the heights. yet
he, exquisite master of verse that he was, frowned not upon imperfect
rhymes, provided they were set in faultless metre. Though most of his
allowable rhymes are merely variations in the breadth and nature of vowel
sounds, he in one instance departs far enough from rigid perfection to
rhyme the words "vice" and "destroys." Yet who can take offence? The
unvarying ebb and flow of the refined metrical impulse conceals and
condones all else.
Every argument by which English blank verse or Spanish assonant verse is
sustained, may with greater force be applied to the allowable rhyme. Metre
is the real essential of poetical technique, and when two sounds of
substantial resemblance are so placed that one follows the other in a
certain measured relation, the normal ear cannot without cavilling find
fault with a slight want of identity in the respective dominant vowels.
The rhyming of a long vowel with a short one is common in all the Georgian
poets, and when well recited cannot but be overlooked amidst the general
flow of the verse; as, for instance, the following from Pope:
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Of like nature is the rhyming of actually different vowels whose sounds
are, when pronounced in animated oration, by no means dissimilar. Out of
verse, such words as "join" and "line" are quite unlike, but Pope well
rhymes them when he writes:
While expletives their feeble aid do join,
and ten low words oft creep in one dull line.
It is the final consonantal sound in rhyming which can never vary. This,
above all else, gives the desired similarity. Syllables which agree in
vowels but not in the final consonants are not rhymes at all, but simply
assonants. Yet such is the inconsistent carelessness of the average modern
writer, that he often uses mere assonants to a greater extent than his
fathers ever employed actually allowable rhymes. The writer, in his
critical duties, has more than once been forced to point out the attempted
rhyming of such words as "fame" and "lane," "task" and "glass," or "feels"
and "yields" and in view of these impossible combinations he cannot blame
himself very seriously for rhyming "art" and "shot" in the March
Conservative; for this pair of words have at least identical consonants at
the end.
That allowable rhymes have real advantages of a positive sort is an
opinion by no means lightly to be denied. The monotony of a long heroic
poem may often be pleasantly relieved by judicious interruptions in the
perfect successions of rhymes, just as the metre may sometimes be adorned
with occasional triplets and Alexandrines. Another advantage is the
greater latitude allowed for the expression of thought. How numerous are
the writers who, from restriction to perfect rhyming, are frequently
compelled to abandon a neat epigram, or brilliant antithesis, which
allowable rhyme would easily permit, or else to introduce a dull expletive
merely to supply a desired rhyme!
But a return to historical considerations shows us only too clearly the
logical trend of taste, and the reason Mr. Kleiner's demand for absolute
perfection is no idle cry. In Oliver Goldsmith there arose one who, though
retaining the familiar classical diction of Pope, yet advanced further
still toward what he deemed ideal polish by virtually abandoning the
allowable rhyme. In unvaried exactitude run the couplets of "The Traveler"
and of "The Deserted Village," and none can deny to them a certain
urbanity which pleases the critical ear. With but little less precision
are molded the simple rhymes of Cowper, whilst the pompous Erasmus Darwin
likewise shows more attention to identity of sound than do the Queen Anne
Bards. Gifford's translations of Juvenal and Persius show to an almost
equal degree the tendency of the age, and Campbell, Crabbe, Wordsworth,
Byron, Keats, and Thomas Moore are all inclined to refrain from the
liberties practiced by those of former times. To deny the importance of
such a widespread change of technique is fruitless, for its existence
argues for its naturalness. The best critics of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries demand perfect rhyming, and no aspirant for fame can
afford to depart from a standard so universal. It is evidently the true
goal of the English, as well as of the French bard; the goal from which we
are but temporarily deflected during the preceding age.
But exceptions should and must be made in the case of a few who have
somehow absorbed the atmosphere of other days, and who long in their
hearts for the stately sound of the old classic cadences. Well may their
predilection for imperfect rhyming be discouraged to a limited extent, but
to chain them wholly to modern rules would be barbarous. Every limited
mind demands a certain freedom of expression, and the man who cannot
express himself satisfactorily without the stimulation derived from the
spirited mode of two centuries ago should certainly be permitted to follow
without undue restraint a practice so harmless, so free from essential
error, and so sanctioned by precedent, as that of employing in his
poetical compositions the smooth and inoffensive allowable rhyme.
