their diversions may be, if they are public they must be innocent. It is the duty then of the good magis strate to protect the people in these simple pastimes, to lay out and keep in order the places destined for them, to remove all obstacles, and to leave the inhabitants at full liberty to abandon themselves to their boisterous merriment, their rude but harmless effusions of joy. If he appear sometimes among them, it should be to encourage, not to intimidate them; it should be like a father, gratified at the mirth of his children; not like a tyrant, envious of the gaiety of his slaves. "In short, to return to our former remark, the peo ple do not call upon the government to divert them, but merely to permit them to divert themselves." APPENDIX. No. 3. In addition to a variety of metres borrowed from the Italians, the Spaniards have several others peculiar to themselves. Such are the redondilla mayor and menor, and the trochaic metre commonly used in their ballads. They occasionally employ blank verse, but most of their poetical compositions are in rhyme. Of rhymes they 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 which resembles an other in the vowel on which the last accent falls, as well as the vowel or vowels that follow it; but every consonant after the accented vowel must be different from that in the corresponding syllable. Thus tòs and amòr, pecho, fuègo, àlamo, pàraro, are all asonantes. In modern compositions where the asonante is used, every alternate verse is blank, but the poet is not at liberty to change the asonante till the poem is concluded. The old writers were, I be lieve, under no such restriction. The dramatic authors certainly assumed the privilege of varying their numbers at pleasure; for, when the asonante be came buthensome, they interposed a couplet, a sonnet, or a full rhyme, and were thus relieved from their embarrassment. Whatever facility this lax mode of rhyming may afford, it accounts very insufficiently for the fertility of Lope de Vega; as there are few poets 2 of his time who use it so sparingly, and none who more frequently display their ingenuity in other more difficult forms of composition, Since that period the asonantes are become more popular, but the public more severe in their judgment of them. All modern comedies written in verse are written in asonantes; but the same vowels are required to recur at every other termination throughout each act, and some severer critics object to its being altered even in the course of the play. Such, however, is the fertility of the Castilian language in rhymes of this nature, that the difficulty is said to consist in avoiding a resemblance of sound in the blank places, rather than in finding it for the others. APPENDIX. No. 4. (See Page 203.) THE reader may be curious to compare the following imitations of this little poem: Ma foi, c'est fait de moi; car Isabeau En voilà cinq pourtant en un monceau. Si je pouvois encor de mon cerveau VOITURE. |