The rhyme scheme employed, in conjunction with the kind of measure used, determines the structural character of poetry (q.v.). The most complex forms now used in English are found in the sonnet (see Portal() and in the Spenserian stanza, so-called because adopted by Spenser and used in his (Faerie Queene.) There are a number of artificial forms of verse known as the French forms, because invented and brought to perfection by the poets of that nation, in which the positions of the rhymed lines vary greatly not only in the stanzas, but in the poem as a whole. The most commonly employed of these forms are the triplet, model, rondeau, vilanelle and ballade.
The modern use of rhyme was not known to the ancient Greeks and Romans. We meet, indeed, with some rhymed verses in Ovid, in which the rhyme was evidently intentional; but these examples are rare. It has been used, on the other hand, from time immemorial among the Chinese, Hindus, Arabs and other Oriental nations. Rhyme began to be developed among Western nations in the Latin poetry of the Christian Church. It is found used as early as the 4th century, and in subsequent centuries grew to common use in the writings of Church officers and ecclesiastical students. The use of rhyme in the vulgar dialects of Latin was even more general than in ecclesiastical poems, as is shown by the poetic monuments of the Ro mance nations belonging to the 9th and 10th centuries. In the Latin poems of the Fathers of the Church of the 4th century rhymes are more frequently used. The most ancient relics
of Teutonic and Scandinavian poetry are not in rhyme, hut are distinguished by alliteration. The earliest use of rhyme in a Teutonic dialect is in Otfried's (Evangely,' written in Frankish, in the latter part of the 9th century. The oldest forms of rhymed verse are the couplet and the continuation of one and the same rhyme through a whole piece. The oldest poems of the Chinese, Indians, Arabians and of other ancient peoples are rhymed; so are those of the Irish and the Welsh. In the fragments of the earliest Latin poetry yet found, where the metre is accentual, not quantitative, there is a marked tendency toward rhymed endings. This tend ency was lost for a time under the influence of Greek poetry in which the measures are quantitative. Still the partiality for rhymes was not lost, as is proven by the verses of Ovid, and upon the decline of classicism, they became common. An attempt at sustained rhymed verses can be found as far back as the 4th cen tury, as evidenced in the verses of Hilary. By the end of the Middle Ages rhymed Latin verse had reached its perfection. For a general dis cussion of rhyme schemes and verse-forms con sult Raymond, G. L.,