In the matter of the rhythms, caesuras and elisions which it allows, the metrical treatment is much more severe than that of Catullus, whose elegiacs are comparatively rude and barbarous; but it is not bound hand and foot, like the Ovidian distich, in a formal and conventional system.
There are long streets and terraces of fine houses belonging to the merchants and manufacturers of the city which amply testify to its prosperity, and recall the 16th century distich that Antwerp was noted for its moneyed men ("Antwerpia nummis").
The possibility that it had been brought to England by Cabot or some of his successors earlier in the century is not to be overlooked, and reasons will presently be assigned for supposing that one of the breeds of English turkeys may have had a northern origin;' but the of tenquoted distich first given in Baker's Chronicle (p. 298), asserting that turkeys came into England in the same year - and that year by reputation 2524 - as carps, pickerels and other commodities, is wholly untrustworthy, for we know that both these fishes lived in the country long before, if indeed they were not indigenous to it.
These dates are given in the following memorial distich with a frank indifference to quantity and metre "Vult Crux, Lucia, Cinis, Charismata dia Quod det vota pia quarta sequens feria."
A manuscript distich, which was found in the Toulouse library, deals with the death of an infant named Theodule, whose country was Lyons and his father Rabelais, but we know nothing more about the matter.