which, if literally transposed into modern English, are nonsense. Those who think it is beneath the dignity of an intelligent reader to weigh such gossamer should turn to Zupitza's commentary on the Fifteenth Century Version of _Guy of Warwick_,[27] and see how a master among editors of Middle English relishes every phrase, missing nothing, and yet avoiding the opposite fault of pressing anything too hard. For these tags, more or less emptied of meaning through common use, and ridiculous by modern standards, have their importance in the economy of spoken verse, where a good voice carried them off. They helped out the composer in need of a rime; the reciter on his feet, compelled to improvise; and the audience who, lacking the reader's privilege to linger over close-packed lines, welcomed familiar turns that by diluting the sense made it easier to receive. [Foot-note 27: Early English Text Society, extra series, 1875-6.] Repeated reading will bring out clearly the formal elements of style—the management of rime and alliteration in verse, the grouping and linking of clauses in prose, the cadences in both verse and prose: and before the value of a word or phrase can be settled it is often necessary to inquire how far its use was dictated by technical conditions, compliance with which is sometimes ingenuous to the point of crudity. Where a prose writer would be content with _Mathew sayth_, an alliterative poet elaborates (VIII _a_ 234) into: _Mathew with mannes face mouthed þise wordis_ and in such a context _mouthed_ cannot be pressed. The frequent oaths in the speeches in _Piers Plowman_ are no more than counters in the alliteration: being meaningless they are selected to prop up the verse, just as the barrenest phrases in the poem _On the Death of Edward III_ owe their inclusion to the requirements of rime. Again, it will be easier to acquiesce in a forced sense of _bende_ in _On bent much baret bende_ V 47 when it is observed that rime and alliteration so limit the poet's choice that no apter word could be used. Conversely, in the absence of disturbing technical conditions, a reader who finds nonsense should suspect his understanding of the text, or the soundness of the text, before blaming the author. When the sense expressed and the methods of expression have been studied, it remains to examine the implications of the words—an endless task and perhaps the most entertaining of all. Take as a routine example the place where the Green Knight, preparing a third time to deliver his blow, says to Gawayne— _Halde þe now þe hyȝe hode þat Arþur þe raȝt, And kepe þy kanel at þis kest, ȝif hit keuer may_ V 229 f. A recent translator renders very freely: 'but yet thy hood up-pick, Haply 'twill cover thy neck when I the buffet strike'—