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Some decades later, about 1360, Fazio degli Uberti describes, in his rhyming geography, the wide panorama from the mountains of Auvergne, with the interest, it is true, of the geographer and antiquarian only, but still showing clearly that he himself had seen it.
Perhaps he, he! perhaps Ysabeau de Montigny might inform us, you say? Doubtless Ysabeau knows more of him than she would care to confess, but I measure the lad by other standards. Francois is inoffensive enough, I dare assert, but what does Catherine see in him? He is a scholar? well, the College of Navarre has furnished food for the gallows before this. A poet? rhyming will not fill the pot.
Most commonly, the narratives took the form of long rhyming poems; not because the people in those days were so poetical indeed, some of these poems would be thought, in present times, very dreary doggerel but because rhyme is easier to remember than prose.
I suppose fifty-year-old birthday parties should lead one to serious thinking! But now show me how far your nonsense rhyming has progressed. It's nearly supper time." The Three R's were early comers and late stayers. Before the summer twilight was over, they had gathered in force. Alice, counting, suddenly said: "Why, there are just forty-nine. Wouldn't it be fun if just one more should come?"
It is a quaint little cottage, and after going through it we drank a glass of water drawn up by a well sweep from the very same old well from which Shakespeare drank so many times. As I stood there I saw in fancy the rosy, dimpled Ann handing the crystal water to the boy, Will, who mebby whispered to her as he took the glass sweet words, all rhyming with youth and joy and love.
In those good old times for the fashionable Nine, an epic was sure to lead to a Ministry-of-State, and even an epigram produced its pension: to be a poet, or reputed so, was to be eligible for all things; and the fortunate possessor of a rhyming dictionary might have governed Europe with his metrical protocols. But these halcyon times are of the past and so, verily, are their heroes.
What is the meaning of this rush into rhyming of such a multitude of people, of all ages, from the infant phenomenon to the oldest inhabitant? Many of my young correspondents have told me in so many words, "I want to be famous." Now it is true that of all the short cuts to fame, in time of peace, there is none shorter than the road paved with rhymes.
The tragedy of Selimus, Emperor of the Turks, published in 1594, may then serve to indicate this brief and obscure period of transition. Whole scenes of this singular play are written in rhyming iambics, some in the measure of Don Juan, some in the measure of Venus and Adonis.
Most of his pieces were written in the dialect of his ancestors, which was well understood by his neighbors and friends, the only audience upon which he could venture to calculate. He loved all old things, old language, old customs, old theology. In a rhyming letter to his cousin Silas, he says:
We hold the translation of any first-rate poem, nay, even of any second-rate one which has any peculiar charm of rhythm or tone, to be an impossibility. The translation of rhyming Latin verses presents peculiar difficulties.
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