good rhubarb has been grown at Banbury from Rheum officinale, but these two varieties are not equal in medicinal strength to the Chinese article, yielding less extract—Chinese rhubarb affording, according to H. Seier, 58%, English rhubarb 21% and R. officinale 17%. In France the cultivation of rhubarb was commenced in the latter half of the 18th century-R. compactum, R. palmatum, R. rhaponticum and R. undulatum being the species grown. The cultivation has, however, now nearly ceased, small quantities only being prepared at Avignon and a few other localities.
The culture of Rheum compactum was begun in Moravia in the beginning of the present century by Prikyl, an apothecary in Austerlitz, and until about fifty years ago the root was largely exported to Lyons and Milan, where it was used for dyeing silk. As a medicine 5 parts are stated to be equal to 4 of Chinese rhubarb. Rhubarb root is also grown at Auspitz in Moravia and at Ilmitz, Kremnitz and Frauenkirchen in Hungary; R. emodi is said to be cultivated for the same purpose in Silesia. Rhubarb is also prepared for use in medicine from wild species in the Himalayas and Java.
2. The rhubarb used as a vegetable consists of the leaf stalks of R. rhaponticum and its varieties, and R. undulatum. It is known in America as pie-plant. Plants are readily raised from seed, but strong plants can be obtained in a much shorter time by dividing the roots. Divisions or seedlings are planted about 3 ft. apart in ground which has been deeply trenched and manured, the crowns being kept slightly above the surface. Rhubarb grows freely under fruit-trees, but succeeds best in an open situation in rich, rather light soil. The stalks should not be pulled during the first season. If a top-dressing of manure be given each winter a plantation will last good for several years. Forced rhubarb is much esteemed in winter and early spring, and forms a remunerative crop. Forcing under glass or in a mushroom house is most satisfactory, but open-ground forcing may be effected by placing pots or boxes in a good depth of stable litter over the roots and burying and leaves. Several other species, such as R. palmatum, R. officinale, R. nobile and others, are cultivated for their fine foliage and handsome inflorescence, especially in wild gardens, margins of shrubberies and similar places. They succeed in most soils, but prefer a rich soil of good depth. They are propagated by seeds or by division.
RHYL, a watering-place and urban district of Flint, N.
Wales, practically equidistant by rail from Bangor (29½ m.)
and Chester (30 m.), and 209 m. from London on the London
81 North-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 8473. It is situated
near the mouth of the Clwyd. Formerly, like Llandudno, a
small fishing village, the town has now all the appointments
of a popular resort. In winter the gales often fill the streets
to the depth of several feet, with drifts of sand from the surrounding dunes, which, however, are noted in summer for
the dry and bracing air. The neighbouring country is interesting
from its scenery and antiquities. Among the institutions
of the town may be mentioned the Queen Alexandra
Hospital (1902), and several hydropathic establishments and
convalescent homes. The estuary harbours coasting vessels,
and some shipbuilding is carried on. On the beach towards
Prestatyn can be seen the remains of a submerged forest.
RHYME, more correctly spelt Rime, from a Provençal word
rim (its customary English spelling is due to a confusion with
rhythm), a literary ornament or device consisting of an identity
of sound in the terminal syllables of two or more words. In
the art of versification it signifies the repetition of a sound at
the end of two or more lines in a single composition. This
artifice was practically unknown to the ancients, and, when
it occurs, or seems to occur, in the works of classic Greek and
Latin poets, it must be considered to be accidental. The
natural tendency of the writer of verse unconsciously to repeat
a sound, however, is shown by the fact that there have been
discovered nearly one thousand lines in the writings of Virgil
where the final syllable rhymes with a central one, thus—
Bella per Emathios plus quam civilia campos.
It is more than doubtful, however, whether the difference of stress would not prevent this from sounding as a rhyme in in antique ear, and the phenomenon results more from the contingencies of grammar than from intention on the part of the poet. Conscious rhyme belongs to the early medieval periods of monkish literature, and the name given to lines with an intentional rhyme in the middle is Leonine verse, the invention being attributed to a probably apocryphal monk Leoninus or Leonius, who is supposed to be the author of a history of the Old Testament preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris. This “history ” is composed in Latin verses, all of which rhyme in the centre. Another very famous poem in Leonine rhyme is the “ De Contemptu Mundi ” of Bernard of Cluny, which was printed at Bremen in 1595. Rhyme exists to satisfy the ear by the richness of repeated sound. In the beginnings of modern verse, alliteration, a repetition of a consonant, satisfied the listener. A further ornament was discovered when assonance, a repetition of the vowel-sounds, was invented. Finally, both of these were combined to procure a full identity of sound in the entire syllable, and rhyme took its place in prosody. When this identity of sound occurs in the last syllable of a verse it is the typical end rhyme of modern European poetry. Recent criticism has been inclined to look upon the African church-Latin of the age of Tertullian as the starting-point of modern rhyme, and it is probable that the ingenuities of priests, invented to aid worshippers in hearing and singing long pieces of Latin verse in the ritual of the Catholic church produced the earliest conscious poems in rhyme. Moreover, not to give too great importance to the Leonine hexameters which have been mentioned above it is certain that by the 4th century a school of rhymed sacred poetry had come into existence, classical examples of which we still possess in the “ Stabat Mater ” and the “ Dies Irae.” In the course of the middle ages, alliteration, assonance and end-rhyme held the field without a rival in vernacular poetry. There is no such thing, it may broadly be said, as medieval verse in which one or other of these distinguishing ornaments is not employed. After the 14th century, in the north of Europe, and indeed everywhere except in Spain, where assonance held a powerful position, end-rhyme became universal and formed a distinctive indication of metrical construction. It was not until the invention of Blank Verse (q.v.) that rhyme found a modern rival, and in spite of the successes of this instrument rhyme has held its own, at all events for nondramatic verse, in the principal literature of Europe. Certain forms of poetry are almost inconceivable without rhyme. For instance, efforts have been made to compose rhyme less sonnets, but the result has been, either that the piece of blank verse produced is not in any sense a sonnet, or else that by some artifice the appearance of rhyme has been retained. In the heyday of Elizabethan literature a serious attempt was made in England to reject rhyme altogether, and to return to the quantitative measures of the ancients. The prime mover in this heresy was not a poet at all, but a pedantic grammarian of Cambridge, Gabriel Harvey (1545 ?–1630). He considered himself a great innovator, and for a short time he actually seduced no less melodious a poet than Edmund Spenser to abandon rhyme and adopt a system of accented hexameters and trimesters. Spenser even wrote largely in those measures, but the greater portion of his experiments in this kind, of which The Dying Pelican is supposed to have been one, have disappeared. From 1576 to 1579 the genius of Spenser seems to have been obscured by this error of taste, but he shook it off completely when he composed The Shepherd's Calendar. Harvey considered Richard Stonyhurst (1547–1618) the most loyal of his disciples, and this author published in 1582 four books of the Aeneid translated into rhyme less hexameters on Harvey's plan. The result remains, a portent of ugliness and cacophony. A far greater poet, Thomas Campion (1575–1620), returned to the attack, and in a tract published in 1602 advocated the remission of rhyme from lyrical poetry. He, by dint of a prodigious effort, produced some unrhymed odes which were not without charm, but the best critics of the time, such as Daniel, repudiated the innovation, and rhyme continued to have no serious rival except blank verse.
