though the etiquette of decapitation, and the delicacy of the stroke that the Green Knight has in mind, require just the opposite interpretation:—Gawayne's hood has become disarranged since he bared his neck (V 188), and the Green Knight wants a clear view to make sure of his aim. An observation of Gaston Paris on the Latin story of the Dancers of Colbek will show how much an alert mind enriches the reading of a text with precise detail. From the incident of Ave's arm he concludes that the dancers did not form a closed ring, but a line with Bovo leading (I 55) and Ave, as the last comer (I 43-54), at its end, so that she had one arm free which her brother seized in his attempt to drag her away (I 111 ff.). Intensive reading should be combined with discursive. Intensive reading cultivates the habit of noticing detail; and it is a sound rule of textual criticism to interpret a composition first in the light of the evidence contained within itself. For instance, the slight flicker in the verse _Sche most wiþ him no lenger abide_ II 330 should recall as surely as a cross-reference the earlier line _No durst wiþ hir no leng abide_ II 84 and raise the question whether in both places in the original work the comparative had not the older form _leng_. Discursive reading is a safeguard against the dangers of a narrow experience, and especially against the assumption that details of phrase, style, or thought are peculiar to an author or composition, when in fact they are common to a period or a kind. A course of both will enable the reader to cope with a school of critics who rely on superficial resemblances to strip the mask from anonymous authors and attach their works to some favoured name. Whether _Sir Gawayne_ and _The Destruction of Troy_ are from the same hand is still seriously debated. Both are alliterative poems; but it is impossible to read ten lines from each aloud without realizing the wide gap that divides their rhythms. The differences of spirit are more radical still. The facility of the author of _The Destruction_ is attained at the cost of surrender to the metre. Given pens, ink, vellum, and a good original, he could go on turning out respectable verses while human strength endured. And because his meaning is all on the surface, the work does not improve on better acquaintance. The author of _Sir Gawayne_ is an artist who never ceases to struggle with a harsh medium. He has the rare gift of visualizing every scene in his story: image succeeds image, each so sharply drawn as to suggest that he had his training in one of the schools of miniature-painting for which early England was famous. It is this gift of the painter that, more than likeness of dialect or juxtaposition in the manuscript, links _Sir Gawayne_ with _The Pearl_.