When we presently come to contrast this little scene between man and wife in what may fairly be called the nearest approach to the modern novel that can be found before the fifteenth century, we shall find a surprising number of particulars, besides the unmusical tendency to run into the sententious or proverbial form, in which the modern mode of thought differs from that of the old writers from whom Chaucer got his Melibœus. This sententious monotune (if I may coin a word) of the prose, when falling upon a modern ear, gives almost a comical tang, even to the gravest utterances of the period. For example, here are the opening lines of a fragment of prose from a MS. in the Cambridge University Library, reprinted by the early English Text Society in the issue for 1870. It is good, pithy reading, too. It is called "The Six Wise Masters' Speech of Tribulation." Observe that the first sentence, though purely in the way of narrative, is just as sententious in form as the graver proverbs of each master that follow. It begins: Here begynyth A shorte extracte, and tellyth how þar ware sex masterys assemblede, ande eche one askede oþer quhat thing þai sholde spek of gode, and all þei war acordet to spek of tribulacoun. The fyrste master seyde, þat if ony thing hade bene mor better to ony man lewynge in this werlde þan tribulacoun, god wald haue gewyne it to his sone. But he sey wyell that thar was no better, and tharfor he gawe it hum, and mayde hume to soffer moste in this wrechede worlde than euer dyde ony man, or euermore shall. The secunde master seyde, þat if þar wer ony man þat mycht be wyth-out spote of sine, as god was, and mycht levyn bodely þirty yheris wyth-out mete, ande also were dewote in preyinge þat he mycht speke wyth angele in þe erth, as dyde mary magdalene, yit mycht he not deserve in þat lyffe so gret meyde as A man deservith in suffring of A lytyll tribulacoun. The threde master seyde, þat if the moder of gode and all the halowys of hewyn preyd for a man, þei should not get so gret meyde as he should hymselfe be meknes and suffryng of tribulacoun.