of their original phraseology;[175] two circumstances which, taken together, show indisputably that there can be no wide interval between the common structure of Spanish prose and this earliest form of Spanish verse. If to all this we add the national recitatives in which the ballads have been sung down to our own days, and the national dances by which they have been accompanied,[176] we shall probably be persuaded, not only that the form of the Spanish ballad is as purely national in its origin as the _asonante_, which is its prominent characteristic, but that this form is more happily fitted to its especial purposes, and more easy in its practical application to them, than any other into which popular poetry has fallen in ancient or modern times.[177] [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 Ven_u_s and Min_o_s; _i_ and _e_, as in Par_i_s and mal_e_s; a diphthong with a vowel, as gr_a_c_ia_ and _a_lm_a_, c_ui_t_a_s and b_u_rl_a_s; 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:--