ROMANTIC FICTION AND POETRY. 221 measure is called, rolling on its graceful, negligent chapter asonante, ^^ whose continued repetition seems by its '- — monotonous melody to prolong the note of feeling originally struck, is admirably suited by its flexibil- ity to the most varied and opposite expression ; a circumstance which has recommended it as the ordinary measure of dramatic dialogue. Nothing can be more agreeable than the gen- eral effect of the Moorish ballads, which combine the elegance of a riper period of literature, with the natural sweetness and simplicity, savouring Its date and origin. the Arabic. Conde has given a translation of certain Spanish-Ara- bian poems, in the measure of the original, from which it is evident, that the hemistich of an Arabian verse corresponds perfectly with the redondilla. (See his Domi- nacion de los Arabes, passim.) The same author, in a treatise, which he never published, on the
- ' poesia oriental," shows more
precisely the intimate affinity sub- sisting between the metrical form of the Arabian and the old Castil- ian verse. The reader will find an analysis of his manuscript in Part. I. Chap. 8, Note 49, of this History. This theory is rendered the more plausible, by the influence which the Arabic has exercised on Cas- tilian versification in other respects, as in the prolonged repetition of the rhyme, for example, which is wholly borrowed from the Spanish Arabs ; whose superior cultivation naturally affected the unformed lit- erature of their neighbours, and through no channel more obviously than its popular minstrelsy. 1"^ The asonante is a rhyme made by uniformity of the vowels, without reference to the conso- nants ; the regular rhyme, which obtains in other European litera- tures, is distinguished in Spain by the term consonants. Thus the four following words, taken at ran- dom from a Spanish ballad, are consecutive asonantes ; regozijo, pellico, luzido, amarillo. In this example, the two last syllables have the assonance ; although this is not invariable, it sometimes falling on the antepenultima and the final syllable. (See Rengifo, Arte Poetica Espaiiola, pp. 214, 215, 218.) There is a wild, art- less melody in the asonante, and a graceful movement coming some- where, as it does, betwixt regular rhyme and blank verse, which would make its introduction very desirable, but not very feasible, in our own language. An attempt of the kind has been made by a clever writer, in the Retrospective Review. (Vol. iv. art. 2.) If it has failed, it is from the impedi- ments presented by the language, which has not nearly the same amount of vowel terminations, nor of simple uniform vowel sounds, as the Spanish ; the double termi- nation, however full of grace and beauty in the Castilian, assumes, perhaps from the effect of associ- ation, rather a doggrel air in the English.
