nobody praise the miracles of August to use anymore; |- |Louis de bien regnir lui feroit des|Lecons : |Louis [feroit] him the lessons of good ruling: |- |Horace en vain l'egale aux Dieux dans ses|Chansons. |Horace vainly compares him to the gods in his songs. |- |Moins que mon Heros il etoit sage et|juste, etc. | Less than my hero, he was wise and just, etc. |- |} In 1701 Etienne Mallemans (d. 1716) published a collection of serious sonnets, all written to rhymes selected for him by the duchess of Maine. Neither Piron, nor Marmontel, nor La Motte disdained this ingenious exercise, and early in the 19th century the fashion was revived. The most curious incident, however, in the history of bouts-rimés is the fact that the elder Alexandre Dumas, in 1864, took them under his protection. He issued an invitation to all the poets of France to display their skill by composing to sets of rhymes selected for the purpose by the poet, Joseph Méry (1798-1866). No fewer than 350 writers responded to the appeal, and Dumas published the result, as a volume, in 1865. W. M. Rossetti, in the memoir of his brother prefixed to Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Collected Works (1886), mentions that, especially in 1848 and 1849, he and Rossetti constantly practised their pens in writing sonnets to bouts-rimés, each giving the other the rhymes for a sonnet, and Dante Gabriel writing off these exercises in verse-making at the rate of a sonnet in five or eight minutes. Most of W. M. Rossetti's poems in The Germ were bouts-rimés experiments. Many of Dante Gabriel's, a little touched-up, remained in his brother's possession, but were not included in the Collected Works''. Their sister, Christina Rossetti, was considered particularly good. Dante prized the following sonnet she had composed in this fashion: Notes References External links Play Bouts-Rimés online Word games Poetic forms 1640s in France 1640s introductions 1640s in literature French inventions