to the occasion.
We _know_--this time to his credit--how he has improved, in the act of
borrowing them, the earlier verse-pictures of the final parting of the
lovers, and there are many other episodes and juxtapositions of which as
much may be said. That except as to Lancelot's remorse (which after all
is the great point) there is not much actual talk about motive and
sentiment is nothing; or nothing but the condition of the time. The
important point is that, as the electricians say, "the house is wired"
for the actual installation of character-novelling. There is here the
complete scenario, and a good deal more, for a novel as long as
_Clarissa_ and much more interesting, capable of being worked out in the
manner, not merely of Richardson himself, but of Mr. Meredith or Mr.
Hardy. It _is_ a great romance, if not the greatest of romances: it has
a great novel, if not the greatest of novels, written in sympathetic ink
between the lines, and with more than a little of the writing sometimes
emerging to view.

Little in the restricted space here available can be, though much might
be in a larger, said about the remaining attempts in English fiction
before the middle of the sixteenth century. The later romances, down to
those of Lord Berners, show the character of the older with a certain
addition of the "conjuror's supernatural" of the _Amadis_ school. But
the short verse-tales, especially those of the Robin Hood cycle, and
some of the purely comic kind, introduce an important variation of
interest: and even some of the longer, such as that _Tale of Beryn_,
which used to be included in Chaucer's works, vary the chivalrous model
in a useful way. Still more important is the influence of the short
_prose_ tale:--first Latin, as in the _Gesta Romanorum_ (which of course
had older and positively mediaeval forerunners), then Italian and French.
The prose saved the writer from verbiage and stock phrase; the shortness
from the tendency to "watering out" which is the curse of the long verse
or prose romance. Moreover, to get point and appeal, it was especially
necessary to _throw up_ the subject--incident, emotion, or whatever it
was--to bring it out; not merely to meander and palaver about it. But
language and literature were both too much in a state of transition to
admit of anything capital being done at this time. It was the great good
fortune of England, corresponding to that experienced with Chaucer in
poetry three quarters of