ROMANCE VERSIFICATION.
Like the Romance languages, versification in the various Romance countries can be treated under one head, for they all have a common foundation and undergo various influences.
The influence of classic Latin. Oriental, and German versifications is very slight as compared with the influence in the :Middle Ages of Proven cal, and in the Renaissance of Italian versifica tion on those of other countries.
The long or short quantity of vowels plays no part in Romance versification, except in some scattered and fruitless attempts at imitations of antique verse, as in the errs mcsures of Bail in the sixteenth century and even more recently. There arc, also, mere accented remodelings of thd old measured verse which show an inclination to replace syllable length by word accent. Exam ples of this are to be found all the way from the 'Eulalia-sequence down to the `Odi barbare' of the Italian Carducci in our own day.
The principle of fixed syllable count is funda mental in all Romance verse. The rhythm is marked by one or more fixed accented syllables. These are the final syllables of the verse and of the syllabic series when there is more than one accented syllable in the verse. The counting of syllables in each syllabic series or verse includes this last accented syllable; the one or two optional additional syllables at the end of the syllabic series or verse cannot alter the rhythm, for these syllables are unaccented. In the earlier Romance verse we find verses with three or even four fixed accents, as in the troelmic cleven-syl lable and fourteen-syllable \WS(' : also the t welve syllable verse with accented fourth. eighth, and twelfth, long used in the French folk-songs.
A second principle of Romance versification is the vocalic or consonant-vocalic likeness in sound of the last accented syllable at the end of two or more verses. ASS011a nee (likeness of vowels) and rhyme (likeness of vowels and con sonants) emphasize the verse-ending and make the rhythm of the verse fall more sharply on the ear, thus compensating in some measure for the deereasc, as time went on, in the number of fixed accented syllables.
Very few Romance verses are found entirely without rhyme or assonance; yet even more scl Join is rhyme found confined to the same sound of the consonant, or on an unaccented or 'binding accented with unaccented syllables.
However, from the beginning of the sixteenth century in Italian, under the influence of classic Latin, rhymeless Verses rersi Seiaiii) are which were used in various genres and were well liked, as is shown by their use in Trissino's Soio nisba, Ariosto's comedies. Rucellai's and A Ile manni's Co/firczionc. The Spanish rcrsos sod tos, the French reps Wanes, and also English blank verse are learned productions and largely imitations of Italian models. Verses without assonance or rhyme are not present. in the older French and Provencal poetry: unbound single lines like those at the ends of the armies in Aucassin et Nicolet e are very rare.
The fundamental principles of Romance versi fication lie, then, in a fixed number of syllables before the last accented syllable of each syllabic series and verse, and in the like sound of the last accented vowels respectively of the last ac cented syllables of at least two verse lines. It is probable that the roots of Romance versifica tion go back even to the time of archaic Latin. By the first century A.D. there is a perfected sys tem of fixed syllable count. In vulgar Latin verse, the coincidence of verse and word accent is frequently met, and especially at the end of the verse. Alliteration is very popular here, and alliteration from principle is proper only in ac cented verse. It is necessary to presuppose an accented old Latin poetry from which Romance versification is descended.
The gradual development of Romance asso nance and rhyme out of analogous bindings of the syllabic series and verses in older popu lar Latin poetry is as probable as the similar development of popular Romance verse. Such bindings are found only sporadically in Latin learned poetry, And the examples found in Com modianus and Saint Augustine are doubtless mere borrowings from popular use. Assonance or rhyme was obligatory to Romance authors from the very beginning, and its origin lies as far back as the principle of the fixed number of syllables. Tice strophes of popular Romance verse were of two kinds: those which came from very primitive vulgar Latin forms, and those in the poetry of trained artists, Ivlio borrowed their models partly from popular poetry. but also from the perfected forms of middle Latin and other artistic literatures.