42. The Castilian language is rich in perfect rhymes. But in their lighter poetry the Spaniards frequently contented themselves with _assonances_, that is, with the correspondence of final syllables, wherein the vowel alone was the same, though with different consonants, as _duro_ and _humo_, _boca_ and _cosa_. These were often intermingled with perfect or consonant rhymes. In themselves, unsatisfactory as they may seem at first sight to our prejudices, there can be no doubt but that the assonances contained a musical principle, and would soon give pleasure to and be required by the ear. They may be compared to the alliteration so common in the northern poetry, and which constitutes almost the whole regularity of some of our oldest poems. But though assonances may seem to us an indication of a rude stage of poetry, it is remarkable that they belong chiefly to the later period of Castilian lyric poetry, and that consonant rhymes, frequently with the recurrence of the same syllable, are reckoned, if I mistake not, a presumption of the antiquity of a romance.[287] [287] Bouterwek’s Introduction. Velasquez, in Dieze’s German translation, p. 288. The assonance is peculiar to the Spaniards. |Nature of the gloss.| 43. An analogy between poetry and music, extending beyond the mere laws of sound, has been ingeniously remarked by Bouterwek in a very favourite species of Spanish composition, the _glosa_. In this a few lines, commonly well known and simple, were glosed, or paraphrased, with as much variety and originality as the poet’s ingenuity could give, in a succession of stanzas, so that the leading sentiment should be preserved in each, as the subject of an air runs through its variations. It was often contrived that the chief words of the glosed lines should recur separately in the course of each stanza. The two arts being incapable of a perfect analogy, this must be taken as a general one; for it was necessary that each stanza should be conducted so as to terminate in the lines, or a portion of them, which form the subject of the gloss.[288] Of these artificial, though doubtless, at the time, very pleasing compositions, there is nothing, as far as I know, to be found beyond the Peninsula;[289] though, in a general sense, it may be said, that all lyric poetry, wherein a burthen or repetition of leading verses recurs, must originally be founded on the same principle, less artfully and musically developed. The burthen of a song can only be an impertinence, if its sentiment does not pervade the whole. [288] Bouterwek, p. 118. [289] They appear with the name Grosas in the Cancionero General of Resende; and there seems, as I have observed already, to be something much of the same kind in the older Portuguese collection of the thirteenth century. |The Cancionero General.|