Note 785 — Chapter II
Reading edition
For example,—
Albanio, si tu mal comunicáras Con otro, que pensáras, que tu péna Juzgara como agéna, o que este fuego, etc.
I know of no earlier instance of this precise rhyme, which is quite different from the lawless rhymes that sometimes broke the verses of the Minnesingers and Troubadours. Cervantes used it, nearly a century afterwards, in his “Cancion de Grisóstomo,” (Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 14,) and Pellicer, in his commentary on the passage, regards Cervantes as the inventor of it. Perhaps Garcilasso’s rhymes had escaped all notice; for they are not the subject of remark by his learned commentators. In English, instances of this peculiarity may be found occasionally amidst the riotous waste of rhymes in Southey’s “Curse of Kehama,” and in Italian they occur in Alfieri’s “Saul,” Act III. sc. 4. I do not remember to have seen them again in Spanish except in some décimas of Pedro de Salas, printed in 1638, and in the second jornada of the “Pretendiente al Reves” of Tirso de Molina, 1634. No doubt they occur elsewhere, but they are rare, I think.