As the inventors of these stanzas were ignorant of the true principles of prosody, the attention paid to purity in the rhythm of the dactyles was even less than in the rhymes of the redondillas. This may account for these verses falling into disuse, as the progressive improvement of taste, which allowed the redondillas to maintain their original consideration, was not reconcileable with the half-dancing half-hobbling rhymed lines of the _versos de arte mayor._"--_Boutervek_, Introduction. (Translation.) Lord Holland observes, in the Appendix No. 3. to his "Life of Lope de Vega:"--"Of rhymes the Spaniards have two sorts; the consonante or full rhyme, which is nearly the same as the Italian; and the asonante, which the ear of a foreigner would not immediately distinguish from a blank termination. An asonante is a word that resembles another in the vowel on which the last accent falls, as well as the vowel or vowels that follow; but every consonant after the accented vowel must be different from that in the corresponding syllable. Thus, tòs and _amor_, _pecho_, fuego, _alamo_, paxaro, are all asonantes. In modern compositions, where the asonante is used, every alternate verse is blank, but the poet is not allowed to change the asonante till the poem is concluded. The old writers, I believe, were no such restriction." M. Gunins, a German annotator, followed by Mr. Lockhart, expresses his opinion that "the stanza was composed in reality of two long lines, and that these have been subsequently cut in four, exactly as we know to have been the case in regard to another old English ballad stanza." See Mr. Lockhart's Introduction to his Ancient Spanish Ballads. Thus, instead of printing it, as is usual,-- "Fizo hazer al Rey Alfonso el cid un solene juro, delante de muchos grandes, que se hallaron en Brugos"-- this ought to run-- "Fizo hazer al Rey Alfonso, el cid un solene juro, delante de muchos grandes, que se hallaron en Brugos." The u, in the penultimate syllable of juro, and in Brugos, makes the assonance of the redondilla. We need not mention to the Spanish reader the peculiar mode of printing Spanish poetry without the distinction of capitals at the beginning of lines; nor the peculiar punctuation--a note of interrogation reversed invariably being placed at the beginning of the sentence that ends with one; necessary to the otherwise obscure construction of the Spanish: as for instance,-- "¿Buelas al fin, y al fin te vas llorando?"] [Footnote 7: "'Rosa fresca, Rosa fresca, tan garrida y con amor, cuando os tiene en mis brazos no vos sabia servir no, y agora que vos serviria no vos puedo yo haber no.' Vuestra fué la culpa, amigo vuestra fué, que mia no, enviastes me una carta con un vuestro servidor, y en lugar de recaudar el digera otra razon, que erades casado, amigo, alia en tierras de León, que teneis muger hermosa y hijos como una flor.'