The Spanish poets had cultivated up to this time almost every species of Italian versification. The harmonious and rounded octave, the exact and laborious terza, the artificial sonnet, the trifling sextine, the canzone in its infinite combinations, and blank verse, although for the most part extremely ill managed[N]--were the forms of all their compositions, which came to be reflections, more or less luminous, of ancient, and of Tuscan poetry. Some coplas and trobas were made, though very few, in which the taste prior to Garcilasso prevailed; but when the use of the _asonante_[O] became general in the last third division of this sixteenth century, the taste and inclination for _Romances_ became equally in vogue, and in them were continued, and, as it were, perpetuated, the old Castilian poesies. Utterly stript of the complexity and force, to which imitation in other kinds of writing obliged them to have recourse, their authors little caring for a resemblance with the odes of Horace, or the canzone of Petrarch, and composing them more happily by instinct than by art, the _Romances_ could not have the pomp and loftiness of the odes of Leon, Herrera, and Rioja. Yet were they peculiarly the lyric poetry of Spain: in them music employed its accents; they were heard at night in the halls and gardens to the sound of the harp or guitar; they served as the vehicle and the incentive of love, as well as shafts for satire and revenge; they painted most happily Moorish customs and pastoral manners, and preserved in the memory of the vulgar the prowess of the Cid and other champions. In fine, more flexible than other kinds of composition, they accommodated themselves to all kinds of subjects, made use of a language rich and natural, clothed themselves with a mezzo-tinto soft and sweet, and presented on every hand that facility and freshness which rise from originality, and which flow without effort and without study. There are in them more fine and energetic expressions, more delicate and ingenious passages, than in the whole range of Spanish poetry besides. The Morisco ballads, in particular, are written with a vigour and a sprightliness of style that absolutely enchant. Those customs in which prowess and love are so beautifully blended, those Moors so gallant and so tender, that so romantic and delicious country, those names so sweet and so sonorous, each and all contribute to give novelty and poetry to the compositions wherein they are portrayed. The poets afterwards grew weary of disguising gallantries under the Morisco dress, and had recourse to the pastoral. Then to challenges, tournaments, and devices, succeeded green meads, brooks, flowers, and ciphers carved on trees; and what the Romances lost in vigour by the change, they gained in sweetness and simplicity.