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. The peculiarity to which we refer is that of the _asonante_,--an imperfect rhyme confined to the vowels, and beginning with the last accented one in the line; so that it embraces sometimes only the very last syllable, and sometimes goes back to the penultimate or even the antepenultimate. It is contradistinguished from the _consonante_, or full rhyme, which is made both by the consonants and vowels in the concluding syllable or syllables of the line, and which is, therefore, just what _rhyme_ is in English.[172] Thus, _feróz_ and _furór_, _cása_ and _abárca_, _infámia_ and _contrária_, are good _asonantes_ in the first and third ballads of the Cid, just as _mál_ and _desleál_, _voláre_ and _caçáre_, are good _consonantes_ in the old ballad of the Marquis of Mantua, cited by Don Quixote. The _asonante_, therefore, is something between our blank verse and our rhyme, and the art of using it is easily acquired in a language like the Castilian, abounding in vowels, and always giving to the same vowel the same value.[173] In the old ballads, it generally recurs with every other line; and, from the facility with which it can be found, the same _asonante_ is frequently continued through the whole of the poem in which it occurs, whether the poem be longer or shorter. But even with this embarrassment, the structure of the ballad is so simple, that, while Sarmiento has undertaken to show how Spanish prose from the twelfth century downwards is often written unconsciously in eight-syllable _asonantes_,[174] Sepúlveda in the sixteenth century actually converted large portions of the old chronicles into the same ballad measure, with little change