which at least has the requisite number of syllables. It appeared in France as early as the first part of the twelfth century, and in four-line stanzas was the favorite for didactic poetry as late as the beginning of the fifteenth century; otherwise, in the close of the fourteenth century, it was supplanted by the decasyllabic. In the middle of the sixteenth century it again won precedence over the decasyllabic--in part through the influence of Ronsard--and is of course the standard measure of modern French poetry. The name "alexandrine" seems to have been applied in the fifteenth century, from the familiar use of the measure in the Alexander romance. The earliest known mention of the term is in Herenc's _Doctrinal de la secunde Retorique_. (See Stengel's article in Gröber's _Grundriss der Romanischen Philologie_, from which these statements are taken.) The French alexandrine is in a sense a quite different measure from the English form. Accent is an element of so comparatively slight importance in the French language and French rhythm, that its place seems partly to be filled by regularity of cesural pause and regularity in the counting of syllables. The French alexandrine, therefore, may often be described as a verse of twelve syllables, divided into two equal parts by a pause, with marked accents on the sixth and twelfth syllables, but with the other accents irregularly disposed. Often it seems to an English reader to have an anapestic effect, and to be best described as anapestic tetrameter. In English, however, while the regularity in the number of syllables is followed, and very commonly the medial pause, there is also observed the regularity of alternate accents which gives the verse the characteristic form indicated by the term "six-stress." 'Ye nuten hwat ye biddeþ, þat of gode nabbeþ imone; for al eure bileve is on stokke oþer on stone: ac þeo, þat god iknoweþ, heo wyten myd iwisse, þat hele is icume to monne of folke judaysse.' 'Loverd,' heo seyde, 'nu quiddeþ men, þat cumen is Messyas, þe king, þat wurþ and nuþen is and ever yete was. hwenne he cumeþ, he wyle us alle ryhtleche; for he nule ne he ne con nenne mon bipeche.' (_De Muliere Samaritana_, ll. 51-58. In Morris's _Old English Miscellany_, p. 84; and Zupitza's _Alt- und Mittelenglisches Übungsbuch_, p. 83. ab. 1250.) This early poem illustrates the irregular use of alexandrines near the time of their introduction into English. The poem opens with a septenary-- "Tho Iesu Crist an eorthe was, mylde weren his dede;"