The use of alexandrines and septenaries together, we have seen, was common even in the Middle English period, but not in regular alternation. The Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester (about 1300) mingles both measures, but with alexandrines predominating. In some of the early Mystery Plays they are found in alternation; for example, where Jacob, in one of the Towneley plays, is relating his hunger to Esau: "Meat or drink, save my life, or bread, I reck not what: If there be nothing else, some man give me a cat." See also the specimen from _The Marriage of Wit and Science_, p. 256, above. Schipper says that he does not know who first brought the two measures together in alternate use for lyrical poetry. Guest says that the Poulter's Measure came into fashion soon after 1500 (_History of English Rhythms_), but gives no examples so early. The history of the measure should be further investigated. After the Elizabethan period the Poulter's Measure practically disappears from English poetry. A curious suggestion of it may be found in a little poem of Leigh Hunt's (_Wealth and Womanhood_), cited by Schipper, who calls the verse "Poulter's Measure in trochaics": "Have you seen an heiress in her jewels mounted, Till her wealth and she seemed one, and she might be counted?" Laid in my quiet bed, in study as I were, I saw within my troubled head a heap of thoughts appear: And every thought did show so lively in mine eyes, That now I sighed, and then I smiled, as cause of thought doth rise. (EARL OF SURREY: _How no Age is Content with his Own Estate_, in Tottel's _Songs and Sonnets_. Arber's Reprint, p. 30. Pub. 1557.) Her forehead jacinth like, her cheeks of opal hue, Her twinkling eyes bedeck'd with pearl, her lips as sapphire blue; Her hair like crapal stone, her mouth O heavenly wide; Her skin like burnish'd gold, her hands like silver ore untried. (SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Mopsa_, in the _Arcadia_. ab. 1580.) IV. THE SONNET The sonnet is an Italian verse-form, in fourteen five-stress lines, introduced into England at the time of the Italian literary influences of the sixteenth century. Almost from the first, the English sonnet has been divided into two classes: one based on more or less strict imitation of the structure of the Italian form, and variously called the Italian, the regular, or the legitimate sonnet; the other taking the Italian sonnet as the point of departure, but constructed according to more familiar English rime-schemes, and commonly called the Shaksperian or the English sonnet.