"I have seen creatures" (dogs), quoth he, "in the city of London Bearing collars full bright around their necks.... Were there a bell on those collars, assuredly, in my opinion, One might know where the dogs go, and run away from them! And right so," quoth this rat, "reason suggests to me To buy a bell of brass or of bright silver, And tie it on a collar for our common profit, And hang it on the cat's neck; in order that we may hear Where he rides or rests or runneth to play." ... All this rout (crowd) of rats to this reasoning assented; But when the bell was bought and hanged on the collar, There was not a rat in the crowd that, for all the realm of France Would have dared to bind the bell about the cat's neck. The second selection is from Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" (_cir_. 1375). It was written "in the French manner" with rime and meter, for the upper classes, and shows the difference between literary English and the speech of the common people: In th' olde dayës of the Kyng Arthour, Of which that Britons speken greet honour, Al was this land fulfild of fayerye. The elf-queene with hir joly companye Dauncëd ful ofte in many a grene mede; This was the olde opinion, as I rede. I speke of manye hundred yeres ago; But now kan no man see none elves mo. The next two selections (written _cir_. 1450) show how rapidly the language was approaching modern English. The prose, from Malory's _Morte d' Arthur_, is the selection that Tennyson closely followed in his "Passing of Arthur." The poetry, from the ballad of "Robin Hood and the Monk," is probably a fifteenth-century version of a much older English song: "'Therefore,' sayd Arthur unto Syr Bedwere, 'take thou Excalybur my good swerde, and goo with it, to yonder water syde, and whan thou comest there I charge the throwe my swerde in that water, and come ageyn and telle me what thou there seest.' "'My lord,' sayd Bedwere, 'your commaundement shal be doon, and lyghtly brynge you worde ageyn.' "So Syr Bedwere departed; and by the waye he behelde that noble swerde, that the pomel and the hafte was al of precyous stones; and thenne he sayd to hym self, 'Yf I throwe this ryche swerde in the water, thereof shal never come good, but harme and losse.' And thenne Syr Bedwere hydde Excalybur under a tree." In somer, when the shawes be sheyne, And leves be large and long, Hit is full mery in feyr foreste To here the foulys song: To se the dere draw to the dale, And leve the hillës hee, And shadow hem in the levës grene, Under the grene-wode tre.