ASSONANCE, a term defined, in its prosodical sense, as "the corresponding or riming of one word with another in the accented vowel and those which follow it, but not in the consonants" (New English Dictionary). Much rustic or popular verse in Eng land is satisfied with assonance, as in such cases as And pray who gave thee that jolly red nose? Cinnamon, Ginger, Nutmeg and Cloves, where the agreement between the two o's permits the ear to neglect the discord between s and v. Assonance appears to have preceded rhyme in several of the European languages, and to have led the way towards it. It is particularly observable in the French poetry which was composed before the 12th century, and it reached its highest point in the "Chanson de Roland," where the sections are distinguished by the fact that all the lines in a laisse or stanza close with the same vowel-sound. When the ear of the French became more delicate, and pure rhyme was intro duced, about the year 1120, assonance almost immediately re tired before it and was employed no more, until recent years, when several French poets have re-introduced assonance in order to widen the scope of their effects of sound. It held its place longer in Provencal and some other Romance literatures, while in Spanish it has retained its absolute authority over rhyme to the present day. It has been observed that in the Romance languages the ear prefers the correspondence of vowels, while in the Teutonic languages the preference is given to consonants. Various German poets of considerable merit, and in particular Tieck and Heine, have endeavoured, as English rhymers have done, to mix pure rhyme with assonance, but the result of this in almost all cases is that the assonances are drowned in the stress of pure rhymes. Assonance as a conscious art, in fact, is scarcely recognized as legitimate in English literature. In Irish (Gaelic) poetry, on the other hand, assonance triumphed over pure rhyme, and the Irish poets writing in English who rhymed "Blarney" with "charming" were merely following a national tradition.