[167] Argote de Molina (Discurso de la Poesía Castellana, in Conde Lucanor, ed. 1575, f. 93. a) may be cited to this point, and one who believed it tenable might also cite the “Crónica General,” (ed. 1604, Parte II. f. 265,) where, speaking of the Gothic kingdom, and mourning its fall, the Chronicle says, “Forgotten are its songs, (cantares,)” etc.
[168] W. von Humboldt, in the Mithridates of Adelung and Vater, Berlin, 1817, 8vo, Tom. IV. p. 354, and Argote de Molina, ut sup., f. 93;—but the Basque verses the latter gives cannot be older than 1322, and were, therefore, quite as likely to be imitated from the Spanish as to have been themselves the subjects of Spanish imitation.
[169] Dominacion de los Árabes, Tom. I., Prólogo, pp. xviii.-xix., p. 169, and other places. But in a manuscript preface to a collection which he called “Poesías Orientales traducidas por Jos. Ant. Conde,” and which he never published, he expresses himself yet more positively: “In the versification of our Castilian ballads and seguidillas, we have received from the Arabs an exact type of their verses.” And again he says, “From the period of the infancy of our poetry, we have rhymed verses according to the measures used by the Arabs before the times of the Koran.” This is the work, I suppose, to which Blanco White alludes (Variedades, Tom. II. pp. 45, 46). The theory of Conde has been often approved. See Retrospective Review, Tom. IV. p. 31, the Spanish translation of Bouterwek, Tom. I. p. 164, etc.
[170] Argote de Molina (Discurso sobre la Poesía Castellana, in Conde Lucanor, 1575, f. 92) will have it that the ballad verse of Spain is quite the same with the eight-syllable verse in Greek, Latin, Italian, and French; “but,” he adds, “it is properly native to Spain, in whose language it is found earlier than in any other modern tongue, and in Spanish alone it has all the grace, gentleness, and spirit that are more peculiar to the Spanish genius than to any other.” The only example he cites in proof of this position is the Odes of Ronsard,—“the most excellent Ronsard,” as he calls him,—then at the height of his euphuistical reputation in France; but Ronsard’s odes are miserably unlike the freedom and spirit of the Spanish ballads. (See Odes de Ronsard, Paris, 1573, 18mo, Tom. II. pp. 62, 139.) The nearest approach that I recollect to the mere measure of the ancient Spanish ballad, where there was no thought of imitating it, is in a few of the old French Fabliaux, in Chaucer’s “House of Fame,” and in some passages of Sir Walter Scott’s poetry. Jacob Grimm, in his “Silva de Romances Viejos,” (Vienna, 1815, 18mo,) taken chiefly from the collection of 1555, has printed the ballads he gives us as if their lines were originally of fourteen or sixteen syllables; so that one of his lines embraces two of those in the old Romanceros. His reason was, that their epic nature and character required such long verses, which are in fact substantially the same with those in the old “Poem of the Cid.” But his theory, which was not generally adopted, is sufficiently answered by V. A. Huber, in his excellent tract, “De Primitivâ Cantilenarum Popularium Epicarum (vulgo, Romances) apud Hispanos Formâ,” (Berolini, 1844, 4to,) and in his preface to his edition of the “Chrónica del Cid,” 1844.
[171] The only suggestion I have noticed affecting this statement is to be found in the Repertorio Americano, (Lóndres, 1827, Tom. II. pp. 21, etc.,) where the writer, who, I believe, is Don Andres Bello, endeavours to trace the asonante to the “Vita Mathildis,” a Latin poem of the twelfth century, reprinted by Muratori, (Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, Mediolani, 1725, fol., Tom. V. pp. 335, etc.,) and to a manuscript Anglo-Norman poem, of the same century, on the fabulous journey of Charlemagne to Jerusalem. But the Latin poem is, I believe, singular in this attempt, and was, no doubt, wholly unknown in Spain; and the Anglo-Norman poem, which has since been published by Michel, (London, 1836, 12mo,) with curious notes, turns out to be rhymed, though not carefully or regularly. Raynouard, in the Journal des Savants, (February, 1833, p. 70,) made the same mistake with the writer in the Repertorio; probably in consequence of following him. The imperfect rhyme of the ancient Gaelic seems to have been different from the Spanish asonante, and, at any rate, can have had nothing to do with it. Logan’s Scottish Gael, London, 1831, 8vo, Vol. II. p. 241.
[172] Cervantes, in his “Amante Liberal,” calls them consonancias or consonantes dificultosas. No doubt, their greater difficulty caused them to be less used than the asonantes. Juan de la Enzina, in his little treatise on Castilian Verse, Cap. 7, written before 1500, explains these two forms of rhyme, and says that the old romances “no van verdaderos consonantes.” Curious remarks on the asonantes are to be found in Renjifo, “Arte Poetica Española,” (Salamanca, 1592, 4to, Cap. 34,) and the additions to it in the edition of 1727 (4to, p. 418); to which may well be joined the philosophical suggestions of Martinez de la Rosa, Obras, Paris, 1827, 12mo, Tom. I. pp. 202-204.
[173] A great poetic license was introduced before long into the use of the asonante, as there had been, in antiquity, into the use of the Greek and Latin measures, until the sphere of the asonante became, as Clemencin well says, extremely wide. Thus, u and o were held to be asonante, as in Venus and Minos; i and e, as in Paris and males; a diphthong with a vowel, as gracia and alma, cuitas and burlas; and other similar varieties, which, in the times of Lope de Vega and Góngora, made the permitted combinations all but indefinite, and the composition of asonante verses indefinitely easy. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. III. pp. 271, 272, note.
[174] Poesía Española, Madrid, 1775, 4to, sec. 422-430.
[175] It would be easy to give many specimens of ballads made from the old chronicles, but for the present purpose I will take only a few lines from the “Crónica General,” (Parte III. f. 77. a, ed. 1604,) where Velasquez, persuading his nephews, the Infantes de Lara, to go against the Moors, despite of certain ill auguries, says, “Sobrinos estos agueros que oystes mucho son buenos; ca nos dan a entender que ganaremos muy gran algo de lo ageno, e de lo nuestro non perderemos; e fizol muy mal Don Nuño Salido en non venir combusco, e mande Dios que se arrepienta,” etc. Now, in Sepúlveda, (Romances, Anvers, 1551, 18mo, f. 11), in the ballad beginning “Llegados son los Infantes,” we have these lines:—
Sobrinos esos agueros