"Make no deep scrutiny Rash and undutiful; Past all dishonour, Death has left on her Only the beautiful : Still for all slips of her's, One of Eve's family, Wipe those poor lips of her's, Oozing so clammily!" As a rhymed curiosity, and illustrative of that strange neglect of old, our special theme, take a verse or two of English Sapphics : "Never went man courageously to dangers, Fear and his constant spirit being strangers, But when he found his enemies and hew'd them, "As he goes onward, perils seem to scatter,- "Even the torrents, riotously wrathful, "O man of faith, of energy and boldness, Onward! in spite of darkness and of coldness, "Never, on right and Providence relying, Fail'd of success, while duteously trying, Yielding to no man!" And I dare say that one copy still remains unsold at Virtue's of the prettily-bound book, yclept "Cithara," whence this rhymed Sapphic Ode is extracted! And now to bring matters to an end. After having sweetened our mouths with so many lumps of "Turkish delight," after having regaled our ears by such dulcet hints of lyrical melody, I return to my mystery. How could it have come to pass that never once in nearly 5,000 years did our world in her poets think of rhyming? that love managed to warble without its music, wit to sparkle without its sprightliness, hate to satirize without its point, piety to praise without its beauty?—and I will encourage repetition of all this, that the matter may, by hammered recapitulation, get a better chance of being heard and talked about. How did it happen, I repeat, that no ancient poet ever discovered this art (with some of us a very nature), this charming art of Rhyme? What slyness would it not have added to erotics, what sweetness to lyrics, what stately cadence to heroic song, what witty turns to satire, what elegiac beauties to grief, what triumph to odes, what dignity to choruses! Somehow or other, everybody for five millenaries poetized in blank verse-blank verse of every sort of rhythm, elaborate as well as simple, from the strophed and anti-strophed chorus to the plain iambics of an Angelus, but in no one instance intentionally (barely in one accidentally) breaking into rhyme. Can it be that those delicately practised ears misliked the jingle? Yet its music is to us more exquisite than any mere rhythm can supply. Furthermore, if intentionally disavowed, how should Horace, in an ode especially built for immortality, have only just that once stumbled into the great fault all seem to have eschewed? I verily believe the discovery escaped them—all the more strangely, too, in such languages as Greek and Latin, where the cases of nouns and the tenses of verbs, and inflections of cognate words, are almost only too fertile in rhymes; the wonder being thus the greater that they are incessantly missed, avoided, or neglected. How is it, then [who'll tell me?], that till the medieval monks filled their choirs with music, till Gregory chanted and A'Kempis sung, the dignity and beauty of the rhymed Latin ode were never even suspected? and that, till troubadours arose in the crusading era, the ballad, or the serenade, or the joyous outburst of song otherwise, bacchanalian or military, seems in all countries to have escaped the terminal enchantment of rhyme? Did it all on a sudden occur to some obscure chorister, a Columbus-egg thought? and, infectious in its witchery, did it catch the world's great ears so universally and all at once, that no one appears to have considered how modern was the discovery? Is there extant any treatise on rhyme, attempting to explain the mystery of its long absence from the pages of poetry? From Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, from Anglo-Saxon, and from the earliest poems of every European tongue, it seems to have been systematically or universally excluded, either because all hated it as an easy and vulgar jingle, or none had invented such dulcet terminations to a measure. Possibly, the extreme East was the cradle, the officina, of rhymes; possibly some earliest Hindoo, or Chinese, or Japanese poetry may have been tagged with rhyme as long ago as when Job suffered, and Abram left Haran; possibly the music of rhyme went westward with the Kelti, lingering eastwardly among the Persians and Arabians until the Saracens brought rhyme to Europe with the flash of their scimitars. At all events the incursion of troubadours and trouvères, with their epidemic of sweet singing, into Europe, was simultaneous with their invasion. However considered, the thing is a mystery, and many times have I marvelled at it, seeking vainly in all sorts of books, not merely for an elucidation of the puzzle, but for any allusion to its existence. Is, then, your present scribe (and let some pundit answer?) the only man alive to whom it ever has occurred to ask these questions? 1. Did mankind-and why did they,-enjoy blank poetry from four to five thousand years before any one thought of putting rhymes to it? 2. Did the ancients avoid rhyming intentionally, or only miss it by an accident the more wonderful as pervading eras and nations? 3. Who was the true inventor and first maker of rhyme? 4. Is there any book or essay on the subject beside this present paper? 5. Isn't the matter a puzzle worthy to be worked out (chiefly from Eastern sources) by our modern unravellers of every labyrinthine skein, our cutters of all old Gordian knots? 6. Who'll do it? Since the foregoing was in print I have been told of, but have not seen, Bishop Hare on Attempted Rhymes in the Hebrew Scriptures," and Archbishop Trench on 66 Accidental Classic Rhyming." These works, now too late to be consulted, certainly regard our present subject, and possibly anticipate much of what I may have said. I have also heard of, and have seen, Mr. Dallas's "Poetics," wherein I find no allusion to the mysterious absence of intended rhyme in classic poets. But a literary friend tells me, that in a forthcoming edition of that elaborate and exhaustive "Ars Poetica," the subject of our present writing is not unlikely to be discussed. UNDER THE LIMES. CHAPTER I. THE POOL IN THE PADDOCK. THE blinds were down in the little sitting-room of the curate's lodging. They were down because the landlady was a careful woman, and meant that her piece of felt carpet should last as long as possible. I think that the curate knew all about his landlady's carefulness, and in a general way respected it; but on this evening, when he came into the sitting-room and saw how dull it looked, he gave a little impatient stamp on the precious carpet, and began drawing up a blind. He had no business to do so, for he was going out, and it could not matter to him how the room looked, and, therefore, when the cord snapped in his impatient hand and the blind came rolling down again, he felt himself justly punished. He made a grimace of dismay at it, took his hat and gloves, and went out, passing his landlady in the little entrance hall. "It is just possible that I may be late, Mrs. Toser," said the curate meekly; he was thinking of the blind. Mrs. Toser looked at him, and probably divined why he should be late, for she replied, "Oh, indeed, sir; you're going there then. Somebody shall wait up, Mr. Lifford." Mr. Lifford passed on with a look which was half frown, half amusement, on his face. He went down the steps, whose whiteness was the glory of Mrs. Toser's heart, and through the little green gate into the road. It could not be called a street, for there were houses only on one side, and on the other a row of limes, somewhat dismal, it is true, and oppressed with the dust and smoke which reached them at times from the town, but still trees, and having a sort of freshness about them. Mr. Lifford crossed the road and walked under them, for it was still warm, and the sun shone full on the row of red-brick houses, in one of which he had lived some nine or ten years, ever since he had been ordained. When the limes came to an end he could turn his back upon the row and fancy himself in the country-indeed, it was almost country. There were a few houses scattered about, but they were far between, well-to-do houses, which did not much mar the distant green fields and blue hills, and the gold and purple clouds, towards which the curate's eyes were wandering with an expression of content. As he leaned over a gate looking at them he heard a footstep coming up the dry road behind him. He listened to it with no misgiving; he could not know how often he should hear it again in fancy; he could not know that a sharp trial was coming upon him, and that this footstep was bringing it. The step ceased and a voice accosted him, a friendly voice which he knew well. "How are you, Lifford? You are the very man I wanted to see." The curate turned round with a little astonishment in his face. "I was going up to your house, Dr. Guise," he said. "Yes, I know; to dinner. But a dinner party is not favourable to private conversation, and-the truth is, I want to speak to you,have wanted to speak to you some time. It is about my daughterabout Helen." Mr. Lifford raised his eyes sharply to his companion's face, and then they fell, and his gloved hands tightened over the top bar of the gate. "There is a sort of uncomfortable engagement between you, I know," said Dr. Guise, slowly. "Hear me out, please; I would not pain you for the world if I could help it; but now look here, Lifford : my advice was against it being entered into; my consent at last was only conditional, and given-do you know how many years ago?" 66 Eight," supplied the curate, briefly. "I dare say you are right. Well then, eight years ago you told me frankly that it was impossible for you to marry, is it any more possible now? Have you any ground for hoping that it will ever be possible?" "None." Dr. Guise waited a minute or two. He understood the curate's dryness of tone, and was troubled more than he had expected to be. "Lifford," he said at last, "I am very, very sorry about this, believe me; more so because I am not altogether blameless. With my practice it might be reasonably expected that I should have laid by a considerable portion for my daughter. This is not the case. I am compelled to keep up a certain show of wealth, and my sons have drained any surplus funds from time to time to the last farthing. I am getting old, and Helen has known hitherto only luxury; what is to become of her if I die? Read this, will you?" Mr. Lifford took the envelope mechanically, and the doctor turned away from him while he read its contents. At first he hardly seemed to understand them, then there came a sort of grey light over his face, and he stretched out the letter again to its owner. "Does she know, Dr. Guise?" "No," said the docter uneasily. "As you see, Sir John is |